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This book provides a deeper understanding of what it means to promote social justice and equity work in schools and communities around the world. Throughout this book, narratives describe how authors continue to reshape the agenda for educational reform. They remind us of the significance meaningful relationships play in promoting and sustaining reform efforts that address the injustices vulnerable populations face in school communities. Their voices represent the need for engaging with obstacles and barriers and a resistant world through a web of relationships, an intersubjective reality (see Ayers, 1996). As authors engaged in thinking about addressing injustices, they describe how their thoughts transformed into actions moving beyond, breaking through institutional structures, attempting to rebuild and make sense of their own situations (see Dewey, 1938).

Authors’ experiences encourage teachers and learners to consider the impact of integrating an intersensory transformative curriculum that explores how the senses interact with each other in different combinations and hierarchies (see Howes, 2003). Such efforts may require a deeper and more comprehensive analysis of the senses in understanding self with a focus on increasing consciousness, meaning-making, and embodied experiences (Boske, 2011b; Burns, 1978; Eisner, 1994; Noddings, 1984). All human experiences are essential to interpretation of the senses. Attending to the sensorium, which embeds the senses throughout learning, may encourage connectedness among self and others; and ultimately, provide spaces to promote equity in schools. Teachers and learners, in developing this socioecological perspective by designing curricula to include readings and activities centered on deepening personal knowings, can work to collectively engage in making connections among self, social justice and equity, and addressing larger societal issues (Furman, 2012; Jean-Marie et al., 2009).

Within this book Global Leadership for Social Justice: Taking it from the Field to Practice, editors Christa Boske and Sarah Diem, along with an array of contributors provide a variety of rich perspectives to the social justice phenomenon from the lens of empirical, and theoretical work in the area of educational leadership. Of equal importance, these scholars reiterate the importance of bridging theory and practice while simultaneously producing significant research and scholarship in the field as their work deepens understandings of what leading for social justice and equity-oriented work looks like within diverse schools. Collectively, the authors seek to give voice to empowering, social justice-focused research – an area that continues to garner much interest in the areas of educational leadership research, teaching, and learning. In conjunction with the theme of this book, the contributors offer research from an international perspective and offer suggestions, and implications for the field of educational leadership on both a national and international level.

As school leaders across the world wrestle with ways to think about, respond to, and act upon social justice, this chapter provides a way for school leaders to think about what it means to lead for social justice in schools. The chapter offers a template to ground school leaders in socially just practices. The authors contend those interested in leading schools do not need to wait for external agencies to take actions that align with their beliefs and vision to serve school communities in socially just ways. School leaders have the capacity to demonstrate their convictions and commitment to foster meaningful change. The authors suggest such changes promote opportunities to frame a new common discourse in educational leadership: pursuing a new vision for leading for social justice in schools.

Today's educational leaders are faced with a myriad of challenges. They must navigate through and meet the demands of a complex and ever-changing educational landscape, amidst the constant scrutiny placed on them by multiple interest groups internal and external to the school context. Further, while the concern for creating more equitable and just schools is given lip service in policy circles, the extent to which social justice and equity are placed in the forefront of existing educational leadership preparation programs remains problematic as those who prepare school leaders continue to grapple with what social justice means, as well as ways to embed such practices throughout their programs of study.

The author examines how school leaders understood issues of social justice. Despite rising standards for excellence and equity, increasing demands on teachers and school leaders to raise standardized test scores, and the push for schools to achieve equal educational outcomes, many US public schools have not eliminated long-standing achievement gaps for those who live on the margins (i.e., race, class, gender, immigration status, ability (both mental and physical), and native language). The study, based in grounded theory, examined how 72 aspiring school leaders understood what was meant by leading for social justice in US public schools. Participants were more successful when they internalized an increased critical consciousness that encouraged a dialogue around issues of social justice work in schools in order to utilize their new understanding as a platform to promote this work.