Review of international research on school leadership for social justice, equity and diversity

ABSTRACT

The issue of social justice (SJ) leadership has become one of the central topics in educational leadership and management research in recent years. Despite increasing attention to the topic among policymakers and researchers during the last two decades, no comprehensive review of SJ leadership research has been conducted. By using bibliographic data from the Scopus database and employing various bibliometric analysis tools, this paper presents a systematic review of SJ leadership research, tracing its development and characteristics within a broad perspective. Results identify the key scholars, sources, and documents in the field of SJ leadership, as well as the most used concepts and their interconnections. A serious imbalance in the SJ leadership literature is also identified, with few studies from non-Western societies. Possible avenues for future research and review studies are suggested.

KEYWORDS:

• Educational leadership
• social justice
• diversity
• equity
• systematic review

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors

Sedat Gümüş is an associate professor in the Department of Educational Sociology at Aarhus University, Denmark. His research interests include comparative and international education, educational leadership, and higher education. His most recent research focuses on the relationship among leadership practices, teacher work attitudes, and learning in schools. He currently serves on the advisory board of Rowman & Littlefield School Leadership Book Series, as well as undertakes editorial responsibilities in several academic journals.

Khalid Arar is an Associate Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy, College of Education at Texas State University, Texas, USA, and Associate editor of International Journal of Leadership in Education for the past two decades his research on both K-12 and higher education policies through the lens of equity, social justice and diversity.

Izhar Oplatka is a professor of Educational Administration and Leadership at The School of Education, Tel Aviv University, Israel. Prof. Oplatka’s research focuses on the lives and career of school teachers and principals, educational marketing, emotions and educational administration, and the foundations of educational administration as a field of study.