Abstract

This article discusses social justice leadership in education, aiming to contribute to the Israeli discourse on this issue. The article resorts to international literature to point out the gap between the conceptualizations of social injustices and desired social changes, which are described as linked with multiple social systems on one hand, and with social justice leadership that operates only within schools on the other. The purpose of the article is to extend the conceptualization of social justice leadership in education and associate it with the concepts of activism and social change. The article embraces a socio-ecological perspective and reviews works on social justice leadership in education, activism, and social change in order to present the idea that in the presence of existing barriers to social justice, educational leaders should serve as activists in schools, communities, and in the policy arena. The article offers a macro framework focusing on individual leaders in the field, and emphasizes the need to maintain coherence between intentions, actions, and outcomes in order to promote effectively social justice in a socio-ecological system. The article also discusses the possible tensions that can emerge in a heterogeneous, multicultural, and sectoral society such as the Israeli one as a result of trying to translate abstract ideas of social justice into concrete actions and suggests a cooperative and pragmatic approach as a way to deal with this complexity.

Publication in Hebrew