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The purpose of this chapter is to illustrate the value of student voice in educational leadership research and practice. While much research has explored leading schools for social justice, it has rarely considered the student perspective as an integral component of leadership decision-making. In fact, listening to the student voice should be the sine qua non of leadership responsibilities and investigations. This chapter provides examples of this more inclusive approach to researching and leading schools. It operationalizes student-focused and social justice practices that hold promise to sensitize our research efforts, destabilize oppressive school leadership structures, and create positive and innovative environments for students in all global contexts.

We describe a holistic approach to promoting school safety that merges an emphasis on student voice with staff training in restorative practices. We first describe current approaches to keeping schools safe based on the existing research literature. Given that most of these approaches rely on access to credible information about potential threats to school safety, we then discuss student voices as one critical source of information, especially at the middle and high school level. We report on a recently developed tool designed to encourage students to share threats to school safety they are aware of with adults. Initial testing identified potential barriers and facilitators to students' willingness to share information. We discuss teacher training in restorative practices as one approach that might address some of these barriers, including anti-snitching cultures in schools, students' lack of trust in adult responses to student-identified concerns, and punitive school climates. Based on recent work, we identify barriers and facilitators to implementing restorative practices in schools. We provide recommendations about potential strategies to merge student voice with school personnel's training in restorative practices to minimize peer victimization that can escalate into violent behavior.

Schools exist because of the children they educate but examples of their voice influencing their education in an authentic manner can be rare. This chapter outlines the importance of pupil voice and defines the key aspects of authenticity. It uses the themes emanating from this definition as examples of establishing practices to support pupil voice in the classroom. Such practices are based upon the findings of a pupil voice study into the experiences of 14–16-year-old children in physical education (PE) lessons. This PE project was driven by the pupils and adult voice was militated in order to enhance the authenticity of the findings. The project empowered children to raise and discuss the issues they deemed important and find their own solutions without steering or influence by their teachers. The implementation of these findings in one school demonstrated the dynamism and potential of learning based upon child-centred practice.

The COVID-19 pandemic has propelled higher education institutions (HEIs) to rethink, redesign, and respond in real time. The dramatic closure of education institutions in South Africa, and in other countries worldwide, raised several questions in terms of the adaptability and readiness of the HEI sector to adapt and respond to the changes. The changes called into question issues such as in-person teaching and learning practices, digital resources, academic staff and student readiness for learning in digital environments, and connectivity and access to internet services and facilities. As a consequence of the COVID-19 crisis, the roles of academics and students have changed drastically. This has prompted worldwide scrutiny of teaching and learning in a way never experienced. The implementation of sustainable pedagogical approaches requires broad consultation particularly with key stakeholders such as academics and students. Lack of academic and student engagement can gravely affect the sustainability of any new pedagogical models that are rolled out. The aim of this chapter is to appraise the voices of students and academics working in teacher education during the rapid, unplanned, move to digital teaching and learning. Using an interpretative paradigm and case study design that involved online class observations and personal interviews with professors, lecturers and students, the chapter reports on the distress, discomfort, and frustration that students and staff in emergency remote teaching and learning suffered. The experience resulted from, inter alia, uneven access to digital literacy, mental health support, power generation supply, and digital learning and information communication technologies. Framed within notions of humanising pedagogy, the chapter provides critical reflections on lessons learnt from these voices.

This article calls for educational leaders to reexamine Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) frameworks through decolonial leadership lens, during and post-COVID-19. “Based on our individual journeys, our collective voice is grounded on a bond that spans the decades …Our voice here is the enactment of our decision to listen to the oral traditions and connection to spirit of our ancestors…as mentors and collaborators in this work…[t]he validity of their voices…is unquestionable” (Sullivan TwoTrees and Pinto, p. 197). In this article, I intentionally center Mother Africa/Earth and incorporate indigenized expressions from narratives, dialogues, and interviews from assorted studies and sources. In the article Rekindling the Sacred: Toward A Decolonizing Pedagogy in Higher Education, Shahjahan et al. (2009) use a “tapestry of dialogical insights into… theorizing of how spirituality may be incorporated into teaching in higher education” (p. 1). So, with respect to K-12 education, anchoring decolonizing educational leadership to Mother Africa and practices and attitudes which support students who are behaviorally racialized and marginalized in our schools is integral. All through the chapter, I interweave my story with the narratives and dialogues of other voices to make the case for decolonization leadership approaches in our schools. Joining my voice are voices taken from a previous study focused on Special Education Workers who foster relationship and work directly with Students Labeled as Behavioral (will be defined later in this chapter) (Mitchell, 2020). In section one I locate myself in relationship to Mother Africa which informs this anthology chapter. Section two focuses on defining colonization and the theoretical framework and themes discussed in the anthology chapter. Section three examines the role educational leaders may play in creating school spaces for socially just relationship building, nimble student and teacher dissent, and opportunities for personal and community transformation. Section four provides a contextual analysis of educational leadership's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, namely how they impacted schools, classrooms, students, and teachers. Lastly, Section five introduces “ROCK”, a forward-looking conceptualization of a decolonizing leadership practice aimed at reclaiming one's indigeneity through nurturing connections to Mother Africa.

This chapter expresses the need for an increase or reforestation of Black scholarship and examines the complexity of race in a White privileged institution of higher education. It is written with an understanding of Critical Race Theory's counter-narrative benefits and models the power of voice in the classroom of a Black student and a White teacher and their roles in creating a “safe space for race talk” in the classroom.

In the 30 years since Giroux (1983) named schools as a site of resistance, little has happened to sustain and embed that practice in schools. The contexts, structures, and policies in schools do not foster opportunities for resistance, and schools of education do not prepare teachers to support students’ critical actions in schools, ensuring the reproduction of inequity and injustice. While this is true for all historically marginalized groups, the specific legacy of discrimination (i.e., threats of deportation) faced by Latinx students and communities in the western United States often serves to silence their voices and efforts at resistance (Darder, Noguera, Fuentes, & Sanchez, 2012). In this chapter, we examine data from a student voice research project, including weekly observations (n = 102) for the school year across three public school classrooms, teacher reflections, and student work. This work is framed by the theory of sociopolitical development, implicating both teachers and students in the process of resistance and liberation. The data we explore captures (1) early conversations between students and teachers about issues of racial and economic injustice, (2) the initial resistance of students to having those conversations, (3) increasing trust between teachers and students supporting engagement with the issues, (4) students’ active resistance toward the issues that impacted them, (5) teachers and students working together to challenge unjust policies – at the school, district, and state level.

This chapter provides an overview of approaches to collaboration in Ontario and then focuses in particular on the experiences of the Norway–Canada (NORCAN) programme involving nine schools across Alberta and Ontario (Canada) and Norway from 2014 to 2018. NORCAN was established through collaboration by the teachers’ unions in Alberta (Alberta Teachers’ Association), Norway (Utdanningsforbundet), and Ontario (Ontario Teachers’ Federation) and the Ontario Ministry of Education. A central guiding question was co-developed to inform the work of NORCAN: ‘How can an international network of schools and educators committed to mindful leadership help to identify obstacles to students’ mathematics learning and develop strategies for attaining success?’ With funding support, school teams involving school leaders, teachers, and students had opportunities to collaborate at NORCAN-facilitated events, school visits in each jurisdiction, through an online platform, and ongoing communication. The following important features of NORCAN are identified: the development of collaborative structures, processes, relationships, and trust; student voice, agency, and leadership; professional learning and agency; and sharing knowledge and de-privatizing practices. Four lessons for policy and practice are proposed: 1. school-to-school collaboration benefits from adequate resources of time, funding and a support infrastructure; 2. the intentional cultivation of mutually respectful and trusting relationships is essential; 3. bringing together educators and students as co-learners is powerful and beneficial; and 4. mobilizing knowledge and de-privatizing practices needs to be central to the purpose and operation of collaboration.