The place of professional growth and professional learning in leading socially just schools

This special issue of Professional Development in Education (PDiE), ‘The Place of Professional Growth and Professional Learning in Leading Socially Just Schools’, has come together at a unique point in history. The backdrop of the global Covid-19 pandemic and the growth in the Black Lives Matter Movement have highlighted the significant divide between advantaged and disadvantaged communities and the urgent need to address issues of inequality, marginalisation and discrimination. In this work, education has a key role. Policy imperatives, for example, characterised by the OECD’s twofold aim of ‘Excellence and Equity’, bring together the demand for overall improvements of achievement alongside, in a context of increasing diversity, the demand that the needs of all learners are addressed. However, leaders in schools are faced with many challenges, with greater understanding of the need for equity of outcome rather than equality of opportunity. There is then an important question about how school leaders are prepared for and prepare others in school to bring about and sustain the changes necessary to build socially just schools. There is a significant literature on the issues of social justice and education and within this, a growing recognition of the role of school leaders advocating for social justice. However, knowledge and understanding of the issues around the professional growth and development to support and sustain such practices are far less extensive. The purpose of this special issue is to contribute to the development of knowledge and practice around the role of professional growth and learning of socially just schools.

This special issue ‘The Place of Professional Growth and Professional Learning in Leading Socially Just Schools’ builds on the previous special issue of PDiE on ‘Leadership for Professional Learning’, by exploring the role and contribution of professional learning for leaders in the building of socially just schools. Leadership learning in the development of social justice leadership – of school leaders and of teachers – is one dimension of this theme. Another dimension is the pivotal role that school leaders and others play in providing professional learning opportunities for teachers to enable them to address issues of inequity in school.

The starting point for this special issue is the work of the International School leadership Development Network (ISLDN), a collaborative project established in 2010 between the British Educational Leadership, Management and Administration Society (BELMAS) and the University Council for Education Administration (UCEA) in the USA. The purpose of this network has been to build a comparative study examining the development and practice of social justice school leaders. The network has developed two research strands: the practice and development of (1) leaders in high need, low performing schools and (2) leaders who advocate for social justice. Members of the network have produced case studies in their own system and collaborated through joint conference papers and publications, including articles and edited volumes. The work contributed from members of the network in this special issue constitutes a further development for ISLDN, examining the issue of professional learning in social justice outcomes.

A number of articles have come from members of the ISLDN network (Miller; Torrance et al.; Potter and Chitpin; Angelle et al. and Szeto et al.). Other articles have come from authors who responded to the international call for papers (Huchting and Bickett; Stone-Johnston et al.; Kohli et al.; Buyruk; Vigo-Arrazola and Beach; Hattam and Weiler). Two final articles were submitted independently to PDiE and, as these address issues relevant to the theme of this special issue, have been included. This collection of articles comprises largely empirical studies undertaken in different contexts, regarding different dimensions of social justice and equity in education. The issue also includes a critical review of the literature (Torrance et al.) and two conceptual papers (Miller; Vigo-Arrazola and Beach).

The ISLDN research has identified that context is a critical dimension in the building of socially just schools (Angelle and Torrance 2019). Our intention, therefore, as editors of this special issue of PDiE is to advance thinking in the areas of professional learning and development, leadership development and social justice through a variety of different perspectives across different education systems. Much of the substantive literature is concerned with the development of social justice leadership practices in circumstances where learners experience significant marginalisation and disadvantage, archetypically the inner city school serving minority communities. Although this is a critical dimension, this collection of articles underlines the necessity and challenges of building socially just schools regardless of school location, in affluent or impoverished communities, rural or urban settings, in public education or market-driven contexts. This collection of articles is diverse, drawing from different education systems globally, providing myriad perspectives in critical reflection on issues of social justice and professional learning across different contexts.

Much of the focus of current literature is on formal leadership preparation programmes and so in this special issue, we have looked to present different perspectives, to map out various strategies, approaches and pedagogies in professional learning and development, to build social justice praxis across schools and within classrooms. Accordingly, the articles are organised around three broad themes:

(1) Leadership development and leading socially just schools

(2) Leading in socially just schools

(3) Teacher development to build practice in socially just schools.

In the first theme, ‘Leadership development and leading socially just schools’, the articles focus on leadership development for aspiring and serving school leaders. We use the conceptual paper by Miller and the critical review by Torrance et al. to frame this theme. Miller’s critical essay underlines the role of leadership development preparing school leaders for anti-racist leadership. Miller puts forward a useful ecological model to underpin antiracist leadership development, a model that could potentially be adapted to examine different dimensions of social justice leadership. He also provides a valuable outline of relevant areas that should be included in all leadership development programmes. In their critical review, Torrance et al. adapted a framework from political theory to interrogate the expanding body of literature on social justice leadership preparation, identifying the implications for the pedagogies of professional learning as well as issues for future research. Stone-Johnstone et al. continue the focus on leadership preparation, examining the question of candidate readiness for professional learning that is orientated towards issues of social justice and equity. This is an exploratory study considering the issues related to the selection of candidates on the basis of their preparedness to engage with social justice issues – an ‘equity mind set’ as others have advocated. Huchting and Bickett explore an area where there has been little research to date – social justice leadership in affluent contexts and highlight the importance of leadership development in raising awareness and building skills and resilience to sustain this focus in a context where there is limited obvious concern. This article also signals the importance of career-long leadership development an issue echoed in the final article in this theme by Potter and Chitpin. They explore the professional learning of serving school leaders as they grapple with issues of social justice and equity in their school, including data-driven decision-making. While data-driven decision-making might be conceived as a technical skill in a performance agenda, Potter and Chitpin argue that professional learning should foster a position that places values at the heart of decision-making in schools.

The second theme, ‘Leading in socially just schools’, focuses on the role of professional learning to enable leaders at all levels in a school to contribute to socially just schools. Ready access to meaningful external development opportunities for leaders is not always available and so these articles provide valuable in-house examples of professional learning in contexts within there may be limited alternatives. Angelle et al. present a case study of four school principals serving rural communities in the USA where there is limited access to professional development. A key feature of the leadership of these principals is the shaping of professional learning opportunities in the day-to-day work of the school to enable teachers to address the learning needs of increasingly diverse groups of learners. Kohli et al.’s study examines the experiences and impact of the Racial Justice Institute, a tailored professional development programme for teachers of Colour. The authors explore the way in which this programme is both affirming of these teachers and also strengthens the ‘leadership-efficacies’ of these teachers to support their work in school. Buyruk also raises the question of how teachers can access professional learning on issues related to social justice where there is little available support. The article spotlights the role of a teacher union in Turkey, in providing professional development opportunities central to the fostering of a critical consciousness.

The final theme, ‘Teacher development to build practice in socially just schools’ turns to the issue of the development of teachers and their practice. These articles reflect the diversity of approaches to teacher development, including collaborative learning. Vigo-Arrazola and Beach provide insight into the developmental opportunities for teachers involved in an ethnographic study on family participation, itself an important concern in socially just schools. Through a meta-analysis of previous ethnographic studies, the authors highlight the way in which co-production of a research project between researchers and teachers, brings awareness and opportunities for dialogue and indeed, can contribute to more democratic schools. The title of the next article by Hattam and Weiler, ‘Every Student Counts’ is a theme underpinning this special issue. This article examines a professional learning programme for sessional tutors in an Australian university to develop more inclusive pedagogic practices, with many resonances for the development of pedagogic practice in different education sectors. Szeto et al.’s article provides a different perspective, developing pedagogic practice to address the needs of diverse learners through collaborative professional learning. The article links the professional development through a cross-school learning community where the focus is on robot-based pedagogies to address the needs of learners with diverse special educational needs. McQuillan and Leininger also look at the contribution of professional development in building inclusive education, here specifically gender-inclusive schools. They investigate the impact of gender-diversity training, looking at participants’ beliefs and how this training supports educators in the task of creating ‘a safe, educational environment for students’, finding positive outcomes but also the need for ongoing professional growth and learning, a theme echoed in many of the articles. The final article from Johnston et al. returns to the theme of collaborative professional learning in the form of an African American history centred collaborative teacher study group. The purpose of the study group was to build the cultural competence of educators. This study, like the other articles, reveals the power of different forms of professional learning in firstly, raising the awareness of school leaders and teachers around issues of social justice, in this case the question of cultural competence; and secondly, through engendering the self-efficacy necessary to bring about change in schools.

In this special issue, we are pleased that Ira Bogotch accepted the invitation to write an Afterword. In this Bogotch highlights several themes enhancing understandings of the issues raised but also challenging the contributing authors and the field more to think beyond the boundaries of the established programmes. Bogotch urges change: “With respect to leadership for social justice, we educators have to be more political, more critical in analyzing our own terminology, concepts and action inside contexts of professional development, professional learning and professional growth” before proposing that “The open-ended question is how do we as researchers participate in making social justice a reality [for practitioners] sooner rather than later?”.

In this special issue, we have been interested in presenting different approaches to professional development in different contexts and the contribution of this to bringing about change. Leading and teaching are deeply contextualised practices and the studies in this special issue reveal how school leaders and teachers grapple with specific challenges within their setting. However, there are many common threads and so there is much to learn from these articles from different systems across the world about how professional learning can enable school leaders and teachers to contribute to the creation and sustaining of socially just schools. As the Covid-19 pandemic rumbles on, we live in a context of uncertainty on many fronts. And yet schools and other educational establishments remain central to daily life. In contexts where the majority of learners attend virtually, educational establishments continue to play a significant role in sustaining learners, their families and communities grappling with the psychological, social and economic consequences of this pandemic. These articles highlight the importance of professional learning in fostering the understandings, skills and commitments of educators to build practice in teaching and in leadership that recognises and respects the identities of all learners and enables all learners to flourish.