Armed Love in School Leadership: Resisting Inequality and Injustice in Schooling

ABSTRACT

While the notion of “armed love” has been discussed in the context of pedagogy in a limited way, it stands to reason that teachers cannot do this work alone; school leaders must guide teachers by practicing and enacting armed love in their leadership. In this article, I borrow from prior conceptualizations of armed love and, applying it to the field of leadership and the activism of two school leaders, in particular, I argue that actively resisting forces that stand in the way of access to high-quality educational experiences and opportunities is a form of armed love and exactly the kind of leadership we need.

Acknowledgments

I would like to acknowledge Mercy Agyepong, Alprentice McCutchen and Sherry Deckman for their valuable input on this manuscript. Additionally, I wish to thank the anonymous reviewers as well as the editors for their thoughtful feedback on an earlier draft of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. I use the term “Latinx” to refer to individuals who have historically been labeled as Latina/o. Salinas and Lozano (2017) note that the term is used to promote inclusivity with respect to the concept of gender.