Activist Leadership for Inclusive Schools: Canadian Insights

Activist Leadership for Inclusive Schools explores courageous methods for educational leadership and principalship in Canada to move beyond additive discourses of diversity to dismantling systems of oppression for thriving schools and communities. It is a timely collection rooted in diverse approaches to activism that names, disrupts, and challenges dominant leadership discourses and practices that perpetuate harm to underserved communities.

Throughout Canada, educational policies and mandates are often implemented without meaningful collaboration with the students, families, and communities they are intended to serve, thereby exacerbating systemic, structural, and institutional barriers. The collection’s social justice approach to activism and leadership bridges gaps between policies, institutions, and communities. It calls for a more just education system that carves out spaces of belonging by honouring the lived experiences, identities, and intersectionalities of all students.

This book is an invaluable resource for Canadian university education programs with courses focusing on educational leadership, diversity, social justice, or inclusive education. It also serves educational administration, existing teachers, principals, higher education instructors and researchers, policy makers, and activists.

Activist Leadership for Inclusive Schools explores courageous methods for educational leadership and principalship in Canada that move beyond additive and performative discourses about diversity to dismantling systems of oppression for thriving schools and communities. Editors Abawi, Eizadirad, Tuters, and Campbell have put together a timely collection, rooted in diverse approaches to activism, which names, disrupts, and challenges dominant leadership discourses and practices that perpetuate harm to underserved communities. The collection’s social justice approach to activism and leadership bridges gaps between policies, institutions, and communities and calls for a more just education system that carves out spaces of belonging by honouring the lived experiences, identities, and intersectionalities of all students and leaders. Across 13 chapters, the authors emphasize the importance of collaborative approaches, ethical practices, and intentional actions to create lasting systemic reform. This book is an invaluable resource for courses focusing on educational leadership, diversity, social justice, and inclusive education. It also serves educational administration, existing teachers, principals, higher education instructors and researchers, policymakers, and activists. Readers will walk away prepared to enrich the experiences of marginalized students and champion social justice in the school–community network.