Head teachers’ spirituality and inclusive education: a perspective from critical realism

ABSTRACT

Spiritual leadership gains attention amongst researchers for closing the gap between achieving personal and organisational goals. Despite documentations that spirituality undergirds head teacher’s actions leading inclusive schools, research still remains thin in understanding how spirituality underpins leadership for inclusive education. This paper draws on the philosophy of critical realism to offer a conceptual tool that identifies head teachers’ spiritual actions in their efforts to include ethnic minority students. This is done through multiple qualitative methods collection from an in-depth case study at a multicultural primary school in Cyprus. The critical realist framework helps uncover head teacher’s spiritual actions in a more systematic, structured and holistic way. It reveals that head teachers’ spirituality supports the goals of inclusion and occurs in at least four interrelated and emergent ontological levels (psychological, social, cultural and policy levels) which are set in four scaler levels from microscopic to macroscopic (sub-individual, micro, meso and macro levels). This framework problematises mono-dimensional and reductionist understandings of spirituality in leadership. The paper concludes by suggesting solutions to enrich leadership programmes for inclusive education with fostering leaders’ spirituality at different ontological levels.

KEYWORDS:

• Inclusive education
• head teachers
• spiritual leadership
• critical realism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Areti Stylianou works at the Cyprus Pedagogical Institute. She gained her PhD in Education from UCL, Institute of Education, under the supervision of Roy Bhaskar and David Scott. Her research interests concern the application of critical realism in empirical research in education, particularly in the context of inclusive education.

Michalinos Zembylas is Professor of Educational Theory and Curriculum Studies at the Open University of Cyprus. He is also Visiting Professor and Research Fellow at the Institute for Reconciliation and Social Justice, University of the Free State, South Africa. He has written extensively on emotion and affect in relation to social justice pedagogies, intercultural and peace education, human rights education and citizenship education.