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The importance of socially just leadership has been increasingly acknowledged in recent years as integral for tackling issues of disadvantage and inequality across education and schooling systems. However, there are still remaining questions about what these leadership practices look like in the everyday work of school leaders. This chapter draws on a research project to embed Indigenous perspectives in schools as an example of socially just leadership. The links between Indigenous communities and schools are a key focus area for improving educational outcomes for Indigenous students. This project sought to bring Indigenous community members into classrooms in six schools in New South Wales, Australia. Community members were recruited to work with teachers as co-constructors of learning activities that explicitly value and work with Indigenous perspectives. This chapter outlines the positive outcomes from this project as well as challenges faced by schools, teachers, principals, and community members as part of this culturally responsive work. The practices of community members, teachers, and principals are theorized using the notion of culturally responsive leadership. The chapter argues for an approach to leadership that is grounded in culturally responsive understandings to improve the educational outcomes and opportunities for Indigenous students and the cultural understanding and awareness of non-Indigenous students, to better promote reconciliation. This chapter provides a concrete example of powerful leadership practices that are working towards equity and social justice for their schools and communities. While the cases are specifically from the Australian context, they are relevant for a variety of schooling contexts and leadership practices.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the leadership role(s) of vice-principals in diverse, multi-ethnic schools and communities and understand the supervision and mentoring support they require to help them become more effective leaders within them. The research questions guiding this study were: what forms of mentoring do vice-principals, who serve in diverse schools in rapidly changing communities, require? Who is in the best position to provide mentoring for them?

The author used a qualitative case study methodology. Data that were analyzed for this paper were drawn from surveys, semi-structured interviews, one focus group interview and school and community documents from three data sets within two case studies in Canada. The first data set was part of the author’s doctoral research program in a diverse school in Alberta; the other case study was part of a larger collective case study that the author is currently involved with and leading in New Brunswick. Several vice-principals were part of both studies. The author then constructed a survey questionnaire specifically focused on mentoring vice-principals in diverse schools. Vice-principals in both provinces, who were part of the two studies, were invited to respond to the follow-up survey. Using a constant comparative analytical approach, the author coded and analyzed the data from all three sets together. The author formed several categories and ultimately collapsed the categories into five distinct themes that illustrated and confirmed the social realities of the vice-principals in their schools and communities.

Five key findings emerged from the analysis of the data sets. They were building leadership capacity, fostering positive relationships, increasing global awareness, reducing stress and anxiety and becoming a diversity champion and peace-builder.

To this researcher’s knowledge, this paper contributes to a significant gap in the literature on vice-principals who serve in diverse schools and communities.

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 describe a study which investigated the relationship between the “health‐promoting school” (HPS) approach and social capital and tested the proposition that the implementation of an HPS intervention leads to a significant improvement in HPS features and social capital.

In this paper a prospective intervention study design was used and involved the comparison of an intervention population group and a comparison population group matched for school size, urban location, school type and socio‐economic status. The paper shows that the intervention group used the holistic HPS approach to promote resilience, whereas the comparison group did not use the HPS approach. In the intervention schools, 262 staff in the pre‐intervention phase, and 288 staff in the post‐intervention phase responded to the survey. In the control schools, 156 staff in the pre‐intervention phase, and 261 in the post‐intervention phase responded. The HPS Scale derived from the Ottawa Charter and the Social Capital Scale derived from the Social Capital Index were used at the school community level.

The findings of this paper show that there was a statistically significant relationship between HPS indicators and social capital. The evidence indicates that an HPS approach to build social capital is effective.

The results in this paper indicate that social capital embedded in the HPS structure has the capacity to substantially affect relationships that people have with one another and the school psychosocial environment.

This paper provides health educators with resource strategies to promote social capital within the HPS program framework.

The purpose of this research is to look at the development of schools in their communities and the tension within it. Existing theories in social development and school administration suggest that community is a place where individuals construct identity, and that a school needs to form partnerships with its community, so that together, they work to improve educational effectiveness. However, current education policies have forced schools to compete among each other for survival in the community.

The case study method is employed, and the sample is two subsidized schools in Hong Kong, one primary and one secondary.

Findings in the present study suggest that there exists a tension between schools and their community. Pressure to survive has forced schools to try various means to promote their image in order to attract students. This pressure has also forced schools to change from their detached attitude towards the community, to a concern about how to develop productive relations with it.

This paper provides a conceptual framework for the sustainable development of schools.

School administration needs to give balanced attention to two needs – an internal need for program differentiation and an external need for integration into the larger community. These two needs can be mutually enhancing.

This paper provides empirical evidence to a framework of school development which involves the external community as a critical factor.

Addington High School is a Visual and Media Arts College located in the community of New Addington on the edge of the London Borough of Croydon. The school is an 11‐16 Community school, which takes students from six local primary schools, all located, like AHS on an estate that was built, both pre‐ and post‐World War II, to house families after slum clearance. The area is one, which experiences high levels of social, economic and cultural deprivation and is characterised by significant unemployment levels and benefit dependency. The school achieved Specialist Status as a Visual and Media Arts College in September 2007 under the auspices of the government's specialist schools programme. This article describes how animation is used at the school as an assistive technology to build community relationships.

This paper presents a case study of successful rural school leadership in Victoria, Australia. The purpose of the paper is to identify how particular leadership practices were adapted to secure rural school success.

The author used the International Successful School Principalship Project research protocols to develop a multiple-perspective, mixed-method case study that investigated the principal's leadership at the school.

The findings illustrate how the leadership practices of the principal healed the fractured school–community relationships, which allowed the school community to work together towards a common school vision. A key factor in the school's success was the principal's personal connection to the local rural community of which he was a part. This notion of native connection could have practical implications for the recruitment and retention of rural principals in the future.

Whilst it is widely acknowledged that principals need to consider their school and community contexts when making leadership decisions, there have been few studies that have focussed on understanding how this can be achieved in the context of rural schools. This case provides a rich account of a principal's leadership practices in one successful school in rural Australia.

In the city setting in which this chapter's photographic investigation took place, high school dropout rates have remained at or above 50% for better than three decades. The research on which this chapter reports began with a photographic inquiry into urban youths' foundational perceptions of school itself, as well as their insights into the impediments to and supports for their school success. This examination revealed some of the reasons behind the multi-generational community disengagement that have lead to the strained relationship to schools represented by these graduation rate statistics. Grounded in critical pedagogy, “new literacy” and visual sociology traditions, this study looked to visually based mechanisms for research tools with which city students are already proficient. The findings presented here suggest that these tools can not only provide previously inaccessible data on school detachment but also supply perspectives on what these youth want to learn in school – lessons that might support their re-engagement with these institutions.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a review of an Australian health promoting schools (HPS) project to identify key features of the concept of resilience and how it can be used in a school setting to develop and strengthen protective factors in young people, as a mechanism for improving social functioning and reducing involvement in risk behaviours.

Methods used in the “Resilient Children and Communities” project are described. Then a revue of the academic literature published on theoretical and empirical findings from the “Resilient Children and Communities” project is presented.

The papers reviewed indicate there is a developing body of evidence to show that the “HPS” is an efficient and effective approach to building resilience amongst school children. Underpinned by Bronfenbrenner's broad ecological framework, benefits have been derived not only for students, but for the whole school community. Such benefits include not only building self-esteem and self-efficacy, peer relationships and relationships between students, teachers and parents, but also school connectedness and feelings of belonging.

The findings from this project provide a strong evidence base identifying the central role of “resilience” in the school culture. This role is cross-cultural and transnational and evidence that resilience can strengthen protective factors has clear implications for the African context, where communicable diseases and neglected tropical diseases pose intractable problems, typically in resource restricted environments.

These findings provide insight into the central role of the school setting in building resilience. Resilience, in turn, can help students survive and thrive under challenging and adverse conditions.

School connectedness is a well-established protective factor for young people’s physical, mental, and social health. The purpose of this paper is to explore the promotion of school connectedness through the practice of shared lunches within a secondary school context in New Zealand.

An ethnographic methodology was used to explore in-depth the mechanisms by which food practices included indicators of school connectedness, and used interviews and observations with teachers and 16-18-year-old students in a New Zealand secondary school.

The results describe six key mechanisms by which shared lunches fostered school connectedness: showing common humanity, creating an informal setting, encouraging sharing, enabling inclusive participation, demonstrating sacrifice for the communal good, and facilitating experiences of diversity. These mechanisms contributed to increased social interactions in which people got to know each other better and were able to gain insight into others’ personalities. This allowed for opportunities to establish and strengthen social relationships, and contributed to indicators of connectedness.

The study is exploratory with findings reported from one school. Further research in other contexts on the value of shared lunches for building school connectedness is required.

Shared lunches, as part of an overall strategy to develop a well-connected school community, are adaptable and can fit into a multitude of situations to meet different needs. The findings of this study contribute to understanding the mechanisms by which shared lunches can affect indicators of school connectedness.