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This study aims to refocus the field of Hip Hop based education on youth identities and epistemologies rather than on the tangible artifacts of Hip Hop culture. It argues that centering classroom pedagogy and curriculum on youth self-actualization best supports the critical literacy development of students grappling with social and structural inequities within an ever-evolving youth and media culture.

Building upon previous literature on critical literacy, Hip Hop pedagogy and adolescent identity formation, this paper shares data from a semester-long teacher–researcher case study of a high school Hip Hop literature and culture class to explore how young people develop critical literacies and self-actualizing practices through a critical study of youth culture.

For youth engaged in Hip Hop culture, co-constructing spaces to discuss their consumption of popular media and culture in class allows them to openly grapple with questions of identity, provide support for each other in dealing with these questions and reflect more critically upon their self-constructed, performed and perceived identities.

This form of English education challenges traditional notions of teaching and learning as it positions students as co-creators of curriculum and as part of the curriculum itself. Building on research that frames Hip Hop pedagogy as a culturally relevant tool for engaging urban youth, this paper argues that educators should approach critical Hip Hop literacy development as a means by which young people across diverse educational and social backgrounds come to know themselves and others as part of the process of self-actualization and critical resistance.

The purpose of this article is to report on a six‐year self‐study of a doctoral training program intended to promote social justice leadership via an “ethic of care” framework.

The primary data set utilized was an open‐ended survey completed by doctoral students after finishing core course requirements. Data analysis included a thematic analysis of 110 respondents which examined variation in students' understanding and application of issues associated with equity, justice, and diversity, as well as the ethic of care. As a collaborative self‐study the data analysis involved procedures of open, independent, and collaborative coding, as well as peer debriefing.

Suggests that the doctoral program has been effective at creating a caring environment and changing students' understanding of diversity and equity issues. Two programmatic weaknesses were uncovered; a lack of curricular integration and student perceptions of social justice and diversity as discrete concepts. Students reported that diversity discussions and readings were centered in one class, suggesting that this lack of integration may marginalize these issues. These weaknesses are explored using the concepts of “caring” and “colorblind” curriculums.

Reports on a self‐study of one unique program; the findings may not be generalizable to other programs. Additionally, it suggests that leadership preparation programs should attend to how the issue of colorblindness may permeate curricula, structure the classroom environment, and shape interactions with students.

This paper is among the first to evaluate the potential for colorblindness in the “ethic of care” as related to supporting social justice leadership in a doctoral preparation program.

The purpose of this paper is to present the gap between conceptualizations of social injustices and the desired social transformation that addresses multiple social subsystems and levels on one hand, and social justice leadership that addresses intra-school efforts on the other. The paper aims to expand the conceptualization of social justice leadership and tie it together with concepts of activism and social change.

The paper adopts a socio-ecological perspective. It reviews works about social justice leadership in education, activism, and social change to present the notion that in light of existing social justice barriers educational leaders should serve as activists in schools and in the community and policy areas.

The paper presents a macro framework, focussing on individual leaders in the field and on the consolidation of intentions, actions, and outcomes in a manner necessary for using social justice as an effective socio-political agenda in a socio-ecological system.

The paper presents a conceptual framework which can enable practitioners and researchers to better understand social justice efforts.

Although social studies teachers are charged with explicitly teaching about citizenship, all teachers in a school implicitly teach about citizenship. That is, in their daily interactions with students, whether specific to subject area content or not, teachers impart lessons to their students about what citizenship is and what it means to be a citizen. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Examining the “powerful” stories of three teachers, only one of whom teaches social studies, this paper focuses on “informal citizenship education” across schools.

It concludes with implications for workers in and beyond the field of social studies education.

Ultimately, it suggests that as notions of citizenship education expand to include informal citizenship education, teachers will better teach students to be effective citizens.

The purpose of this study is to examine the intersections of whiteness, anti‐racism and social justice in educational administration. It is an attempt to understand how white administrators who work in racially minoritized school communities reconcile the moral challenges of articulations of racial equity with the hierarchical institutions of schooling.

This qualitative study asks ten white administrators how they understand themselves as raced, the ways they see race operating at individual and institutional levels in schools and districts, and factors that facilitate and/or hinder social justice work as it pertains to race.

The data indicates that whiteness is a difficult subject for white administrators, even those who agreed to be interviewed about whiteness, racism, equity and social justice. As agents of the school districts where they are employed, the administrators generally view these issues from an organizational perspective that does not challenge hegemonic structures. They typically understand social justice from non‐critical perspectives, see whiteness at the level of the individual, racism as unacceptable individual acts, and multiculturalism as preferable to anti‐racism.

The findings cannot be generalized; however, they show that academic education and certification programs need to be revised in order to prepare administrators to deal with issues of locatedness and difference.

The study is set in a Canadian context where, in spite of overwhelming evidence that visible minority students are marginalized in and by school policies and practices, racism is often overtly and emphatically conceptualized as a phenomenon that happens in other times and places.

This article proposes the concept of an ethic of community to complement and extend other ethical frames used in education (e.g. the ethics of justice, critique, and care). Proceeding from the traditional definition of ethics as the study of moral duty and obligation, ethic of community is defined as the moral responsibility to engage in communal processes as educators pursue the moral purposes of their work and address the ongoing challenges of daily life and work in schools. The ethic of community thus centers the communal over the individual as the primary locus of moral agency in schools. The usefulness of the ethic of community in regard to achieving the moral purposes of schooling is illustrated with the example of social justice. The author concludes that the ethic of community is a vehicle that can synthesize much of the current work on leadership practices related to social justice and other moral purposes of educational leadership.

A 34‐item Likert‐type survey instrument, The Reflective, Ethical, and Moral Assessment Survey (REMAS), measuring perceptions of use of reflective, ethical and moral dispositions and leadership practices was developed. Items, component factors, and results of the self‐assessment of graduates from an educational leadership preparation program in which the reflective, ethical and moral constructs are two of four curricular strands are reported.

Data from mailed surveys from 106 program graduates and 113 co‐workers were compiled and analyzed. Descriptive statistics, factor analysis, and analyses of variance (ANOVA) were used for analyses of program graduate responses on the factor scores based on demographic variables of age, gender, and position, i.e. higher education, p‐12, or other.

Its show differences among the graduates by gender for the defensive behavior factor with males tending to be more defensive than females, and for age on the reflective dimensions factor, with older graduates tending to be more reflective. Data were subjected to factor analysis to confirm that the hypothesized items were measuring predicted constructs. Extraction of principal components, with orthogonal rotation yielded four factors, with approximately 62.3 per cent of the variance explained. Alpha reliabilities ranged from 0.91 on the first factor to a low of 0.71 on the third.

The REMAS instrument is newly developed and fulfills a void in the literature on this topic. Both the literature review and instrument will be useful to universities as changes emphasizing reflective, ethical and moral leadership are made to preparation programs and increased needs for program assessments are articulated.

Principals’ leadership has become a subversive activity that is carried out strategically to challenge and disrupt the status quo and resist policies and practices that are counterproductive to their work. The purpose of this paper is to reveal subversive tactics principals use in pursuit of justice and equity in schools and identify challenges and risks associated with their subversive leadership practices. Power tactics were used as a conceptual framework to guide the analysis of subversive activities by school principals.

This qualitative study focuses on 18 elementary and secondary school principals from six district school boards in the Metro Vancouver area who participated in the semi-structured interviews on their practices that epitomize different tactics in response to increasing demand and accountability.

The power tactics identified in this study illuminate many of the dilemmas principals face in their work and demonstrate the various ways principals exercise their political acumen to “act strategically to determine which tactics to use, when, and with whom.” In exercising ethics of subversion and critique, participants are more likely to use soft, rational, and bi/multilateral rather than hard, non-rational, and unilateral power tactics. Such tendency reveals their concern about causing relational harm and shows their strategic avoidance of direct confrontation.

Considering the limitations on the sample size and the research context, more research is needed to examine to what extent subversive practices are exercised and how they play out in different contexts.

The study shows that leadership involves upholding morals and values, even if this means having to use subversive practices to ensure inclusive, equitable, and just outcomes.

The purpose of this article is to propose one possible framework for conceptualizing the preparation of leaders for social justice. To this end, three central questions guided this conceptualization: “What are the common themes in the literature and research on preparing leaders for social justice?”; “How can this framework serve as a guide for developing a course, set of courses, or an entire program toward preparing leaders to lead socially just schools?”; and “How can this literature and conceptualization inform future scholarship in administrator preparation?”.

This work included a review of 72 pieces of literature. To address the research questions, the growing body of leadership for social justice literature was reviewed. Each of these articles was analyzed and explicit recommendations for preparing school leaders noted. These recommendations were then catagorized into the proposed framework.

Three domains: critical consciousness; knowledge; and practical skills focused on social justice are positioned on the horizontal dimension of the framework. To achieve these ends, requires curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment oriented toward social justice – the vertical dimension of the framework.

It is suggested using this framework to guide the review and development of administration preparation programs whose aim is to prepare socially just leaders. Additionally, this article calls for increased attention to assessing preparation programs and how they prepare leaders for social justice.