Journal of School Leadership, Ahead of Print. PurposeThis case study examined the efforts of district and school level leaders related to the public gender transition of one high school teacher over a 2-year period. We employed Theoharis’ (2007) conceptualization of social justice education leadership to guide our analysis.Research MethodsThis qualitative inquiry drew from in-depth, semi-structured interviews with the superintendent, transgender teacher, high school principal and relevant teacher union leaders. Related documents were also collected to triangulate the data sources. Data analysi ..read more

Journal of School Leadership, Ahead of Print. The COVID 19 pandemic affected individuals and institutions globally, especially schools. As schools temporarily closed, teachers and administrators worked to develop innovative solutions to the problems generated by the crisis. In this qualitative case study, we examined the impact of leadership practices and responses to the COVID 19 pandemic as perceived by the pre-service principals who were enrolled in a university principal preparation program. Forty-four pre-service principals participated in an open-ended survey to identify leadership pract ..read more

Journal of School Leadership, Ahead of Print. PK-12 leaders use gender- and sexuality-inclusivity professional development (IPD) as a tool to improve the school climate for LGBTQ+ students, but IPD programs vary widely in their scope, breadth, duration, instructional approach, and content. In this paper, we present the IPD conceptual framework, which proposes a sustained, intensive, and expansive approach to PD can influence student outcomes through changes in educators’ beliefs, attitudes, skills, and knowledge concerning gender and sexuality. Using a large, Midwestern school district as a ca ..read more

Journal of School Leadership, Ahead of Print. This paper amplifies the voices of Black youth based on findings from a study on schooling experiences of Black youth in the Region of Waterloo, a mid-size Canadian community. Data for the qualitative study was collected using elder-facilitated youth dialogue (adaptation of focus group and Afrocentric sharing circles) and in-depth individual interviews. The findings show that the Black youth participants did not feel their lives matter in the eduational system due to discrimination, alienation, non-inclusive curriculum, absence of Black teachers an ..read more

Journal of School Leadership, Ahead of Print. Crisis events external to schools can present challenges for teaching and learning, and the ways that school leaders respond to these challenges both immediately and over time can have implications that extend beyond the crisis itself. Drawing on responsible leadership theory (Maak, 2007; Maak & Pless, 2006; Pless, 2007; Pless & Maak, 2011), our qualitative interview study with 26 elementary school principals in 14 states explores how school leaders facilitate learning in a time of crisis. We find that leaders who built and sustained relati ..read more

Journal of School Leadership, Volume 33, Issue 3, Page 239-240, May 2023 ..read more

Journal of School Leadership, Ahead of Print. Background: As gentrification transforms the physical, cultural, and demographic character of urban landscapes, an expansive body of research has generated insights into the meanings and implications of this process for public schools. How school leaders facilitate or constrain school gentrification is a growing area of inquiry. Research Design: This article analyzes the literature on school gentrification and presents a conceptual model to frame how school leaders’ responses influence the trajectory of school transformation. Results: Drawing on 18 ..read more

Journal of School Leadership, Volume 33, Issue 2, Page 95-97, March 2023 ..read more

Journal of School Leadership, Ahead of Print. Excellence, professional development, and educational leadership – all of these terms can be seen as unstable, dereferentialised, or empty signifiers - as their meaning (or the work they do) is not fixed. However, in spite of this, they have become ‘part and parcel’ of educational leadership in the Enlightenment institutions of the ‘not so’ modern universities and schools, which are in ruins. These terms are products of what Foucault (1977) termed regimes of truth, and they have become focused on meeting the perceived needs of the neoliberal market ..read more

Journal of School Leadership, Ahead of Print. How do school leaders make sense of the mess of the regimes of the normal (Warner, 1993) when they themselves are beyond the norm? While we may be beyond the normal, we are also “awash in the flow of the everyday” (Manalansan, 2018, p. 2). Though we may resist and see ourselves as beyond the norm (Weiser et al., 2019), we are never “in a position of exteriority in relation” (Foucault, 1978, p. 95) to the norms of power. Using data from several different projects collected over the past several years, we conceptualize a new way to consider not only ..read more