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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).

The purpose of this paper is to examine teacher perceptions of the practice of co‐creating leadership and its potential impacts on student achievement.

Using a quantitative approach, the study compared the levels of the practice of co‐creating leadership dispositional values and institutional conditions that facilitate the practice of co‐creating leadership between high‐ and low‐performing high schools. Data was collected using a survey. The respondents were teachers from high‐ and low‐performing high schools. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, t‐tests, correlations, and regression.

Teachers in high‐performing schools scored significantly higher on perceptions of the practice of co‐creating leadership dispositional values and the presence of institutional conditions that facilitate the practice. Correlation analyses found positive significant relations between dispositional values and institutional conditions facilitating co‐creating leadership. High‐performing schools had high correlations. Regression analyses indicated that active listening, deep democracy, and evolving power significantly predicted teachers' perceptions of the impact of dispositional values and organizational conditions on student achievement.

The paper offers insights into how co‐creating leadership may have potential impact on student achievement.

In this chapter, we argue that injustices experienced by children in Kenyan schools can be traced back to educational policies and corruption in government. However, few studies have focused on the links between policies, injustices, and the work of principals. Data collected on the work of school principals indicated that individual commitments and developing capacity for leadership in schools through the practice of dispositional values resulted in success.

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.