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This chapter features leadership practices sourced from more than 25 Māori (Indigenous) and non-Māori women in Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ) who are leaders of schools where Māori-based best practices benefit Māori and other systemically underserved students (e.g., children in poverty, Pasifika [i.e., Samoan, Fijian, Cook Island, Tongan] descent). This study, by Auckland-based scholars of North American, Indigenous, and international descent (Māori, Latino, African American/American Indian [Choctaw], and East Indian immigrant) examines the expression of Applied Critical Leadership (ACL) in women leaders participating in Te Ara Hou or The Māori Achievement Collaboratives (MACS), an initiative aimed at challenging status quo leadership practices, which result in persistent inequitable educational outcomes for Māori learners. Based on an analysis of data, women leaders demonstrated leadership that mirrored and exemplified leadership practices suggested in ACL research. Qualitative stories evidenced from women leaders in MACS provided exemplars of authentic and appropriate pathways for implementing effective leadership practices aimed at promoting whānau (family), iwi (tribe), and hapū (subtribe) engagement, context-specific pedagogy, tikanga (cultural protocols), and whanaungatanga (relationships) within mainstream school contexts. These findings affirm and validate research on the benefits of critical and culturally appropriate leadership around the world in a number of diverse contexts.

This chapter examines our leadership journey as Black female social justice leaders and culturally responsive leaders from the Caribbean Diaspora in Canada. Borrowing from Mullen, Fenwick, and Kealy (2014) and Campbell’s (2008) notion of leadership as a journey, we critically examine what it means to navigate educational leadership contexts. Through our lived experiences as racialized leaders, border crossing spaces and cultures, and with a deep sense and agency to resolve social inequities and injustice we critically gaze at our leadership contexts. This chapter examines ways we, as critical leaders, challenge inequities, issues of power and marginalization, and find transformative actions and purpose by critically reflecting on our leadership journey. This work will add to the educational leadership discourse by positing ways that leaders can develop agency and engage in leadership that is transformative – bringing theory into action.

Drawing upon the findings from three related research projects focused on academic leadership provided by university professors, in this chapter a leadership-sceptic lens is applied to the examination of the concepts of, first, leadership, and second, academic leadership. Discussion then focuses on the ways in which their perceptions of their leadership roles were found to influence how professors carried out their work, and with what effect(s). The key challenge is to persuade senior managers to remove their blinkers so that they may then see leadership not primarily as embodied in a person, but as influential agency that may – and does – occur in a myriad of ways, many of which go unnoticed and unrecognised, and are difficult to monitor and assess through formal performativity mechanisms.

This chapter begins with a traditional, cultural story of indigenous leadership from a young woman of the Ngāti Awa tribe in the Bay of Plenty, New Zealand. Some would say her acts of leadership went against the traditional gender roles in order to ensure the safety of her people. Others would say she demonstrated the cultural duality between male and female leadership roles. We consider this story within the context of the ongoing marginalization and educational disparities faced by disproportionate numbers of indigenous Māori students in New Zealand’s secondary schools. If these students are to take their rightful place as successful and valuable contributors to society then education, as it is currently constituted, must be reimagined, reled, and reformed. We explore the pathway of critical, transformative leadership being undertaken by both Māori and non-Māori; by female and male; that is currently seeking to address the aspirations of Māori students in these schools. Such a model seeks to create “critical” spaces where the “creative potential” and diverse funds of cultural knowledge that Māori students bring with them to schooling can contribute to leading to more transformative educational reform.

In this empirical study, I describe how Muslim women leading American Islamic schools demonstrate emotionality by managing their own emotions and the emotions of others as core components of leadership practices. Using the lens of critical feminist studies, this research makes private emotional expressions a site for critical analysis of social, cultural and political influences that reflect patriarchal power imbalances and rising anti-Muslim sentiment. Through a national analysis of 13 interviews of Muslim women school leaders, centering their everyday leadership experiences as qualitative data, I found that these women skillfully managed emotions as both a demonstration of their faith and a professional effort to advance their school communities. The following themes emerged from the data as evidence of emotionality within American Islamic schools: (a) emotions as nurturing; (b) emotions as burdens; (c) emotional fluency and (d) emotions as resistance. This study expands the scholarship of critical feminist studies that examine the intersections of emotionality and leadership, by adding the voices of Muslim women school leaders who expertly manage emotions across cultural boundaries, through a difficult political environment, and as an embodiment of prophetic principles.

This chapter will highlight the process of engaging Black college men in leadership learning by centering their intersecting identities. We employed liberatory pedagogy through an anti-deficit achievement framework for course design and delivery. The chapter addresses the importance and implications of understanding how engaging with same-race and same-gendered peers in formal leadership curricula can support Black men in continuing to develop their leadership identity, capacity, and efficacy. This chapter will end with key course outcomes, pedagogical methods to center identity and build leadership capacity, and key takeaways for leadership educators developing courses that engage Black college men. This chapter concludes with recommendations for research, policy, and practice and offers reflection questions for educators, advisors, and mentors to consider when designing curricula that center on Black men and their leadership learning.