Shaping Social Justice Leadership: Insights of Women Educators Worldwide

(Paperback)

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Shaping Social Justice Leadership: Insights of Women Educators Worldwide contains evocative portraits of twenty-three women educators and leaders from around the world whose actions are shaping social justice leadership. Woven from words of their own narratives, the womens voices lift off the page into readers hearts and minds to inspire and inform. Representing fourteen countries, these members of Women Leading Education Across the Continents (WLE) portray the complexity of twenty-first-century leadership. The variety of continents, countries, personal backgrounds, professional positions, and ages of those who contributed narratives give the book credibility. The portraits are framed with relevant scholarship and grouped thematically. Each carefully crafted portrait highlights an aspect of a chapter theme, followed by practical insights. The chapters develop a range of cultural comparisons, illustrate imperatives for social justice leadership, and examine values, skills, resilience, leadership pathways and actions. The authors invite all educatorsboth women and mento shape social justice leadership through collective efforts around the globe that create new possibilities for a more just world.

Learn more about Shaping Social Justice Leadershiphere.

Reviews

This book breaks new ground in studies on education and social justice by bringing together an unprecedented conceptual richness and innovation combined with real-life narrations on the practice of leadership by leading women drawn from across continents and countries. The fact that these stories of leadership are drawn from a deliberate cross-national sample of education leaders breaks the ethnocentrism so evident in the major books and journal articles on leaders, leadership and social justice emanating from the West.

But these are not mere stories; each narrative is deeply grounded within theory and data that emerge naturally from the life-experiences of those who lead in difficult contexts and, quite often, against the grain of an androcentrism afflicting scholarship and practice on education leadership that remains susceptible to corporate models of how to lead. The books additional value lies in its valuing of complexity; gone are those simplistic and formulaic accounts of ten steps to leadership or leadership in thirty minutes. You are drawn as reader into the many layers of leadership, its contradictions and contestations, its emotions and politics, its spirituality and the resilience of its women practitioners.

-- Jonathan Jansen, rector and vice-chancellor of the University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa
A highly informative, accessible collection of narratives describing the work, challenges, and satisfactions of women academicsprovides both inspiration and sound advice. -- Nel Noddings, Lee L. Jacks professor of Education, Emerita, at Stanford University
Shaping Social Justice Leadership: Insights of Women Educators Worldwide was born in the Women Leading Education Across the Continents gatherings. This book is a collection of very personal accounts of the courageous leadership of women around the world paving the way for those who have been denied opportunity. Read it! You will be inspired and amazed at the strength, endurance, and resilience of these remarkable women. -- Sarah Jerome Ed.D, superintendent of schools in Arlington Heights, Illinois; past president of American Association of School Administrators
Stories have always been important. Through stories we learn about the experience of others, but also about ourselves and our society. We draw meaning and inspiration from them. The individual stories in this volume speak to us across nations, across race and culture of the struggles and achievements of women who serve education. This book will be a long-term resource from which we can draw ideas and moral courage to continue the fight for equality for women. The book is a testament both to how far we have yet to go and how much possibility there is to move along the road. -- Jacky Lumby, emeritus professor, University of Southampton, UK
Shaping Social Justice Leadership: Insights of Women Educators Worldwide is a powerful text dominated by multiple voices that speak up and speak back to the challenges women educators face in their everyday lives. It is impossible to read this text and not share the joys, sorrows, successes, and anxieties embedded in the narratives. This text is a renewed call for social justice leadershipleadership that matters. -- Tanya Fitzgerald, professor of Educational Leadership and Management, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia
Shaping Social Justice Leadership wonderfully depicts the realitiestriumphs and strugglesof women educational leaders in their pursuits of equity and justice. The powerful and moving use of narrative provides an important resource for educational leaders. Readers will come away with a better understanding of essential aspects to advancing issues of justice. -- George Theoharis, Associate Professor, Syracuse University
Socially just leadership as everyday practice is at the heart of these twenty-three narratives of women researchers and leaders in Shaping Social Justice Leadership: Insights of Women Educators Worldwide. These stories from fourteen countries illustrate how cultural context intersects with gender, race, ethnicity, and class to frame personal leadership possibilities, while exemplifying how social justice values can be embedded in everyday actions and relationships. This text, the work of the Women Leading Education network, takes up the cause of trans-national feminism, with all its differences, to necessarily focus again on the uses and abuses of power, promote human rights, and condemn violence and discrimination against women and girls. Educational leadership, enacted with a moral purpose, remains central. It is a text that provides hope as well as ways of leading for more equitable social, economic and political change within a globalized context of intensified insecurity. -- Jill Blackmore, director, Deakin University Centre for Research in Educational Futures and Innovation, Melbourne, Australia
Drawn from the voices and experiences of female leaders across different cultures, Shaping Social Justice Leadership is a must read for anyone interested in leadership and education for social justice. Hearing the personal stories of resilient, courageous women provides opportunity for all of us to reflect on past experiences as well as renew the energy and commitment necessary to overcome injustice in both personal and global settings. Read it and you will be inspired! -- Patricia Neudecker, superintendent, Oconomowoc Area School District, Wisconsin; president of the American Association of School Administrators, 2011-2012
Shaping Social Justice Leadership: Insights of Women Educators Worldwide is the story of the struggle, motivation, and will to achieve of every woman in the world. The stories and insights presented relate not only to the challenges of Afghan women, but to all women. While women have a long way to go, the words of Lyman, Strachan, and Lazaridou will inspire readers about a world where all can have access to justice. -- Samira Hamidi, Afghanistan Country Director, Afghan Womens Network, Kabul, Afghanistan

Author Bio

Linda L. Lyman is a professor in the Department of Educational Administration and Foundations at Illinois State University. Her scholarship and publications, including three previous books, focus on educational leadership with an emphasis on issues of gender, caring, poverty, women, and social justice.

Jane Strachan recently retired from her position as an associate professor at the University of Waikato in Hamilton, New Zealand. She has published widely on the subjects of educational leadership, social justice, gender, women, policy development, and Pacific education.

Angeliki Lazaridou is a lecturer on tenure track at the University of Thessaly, in Volos, Greece. Her teaching and research interests focus on school administration and leadership, particularly on issues of effectiveness, ethics and values, gender, women, and learning communities.