Utilizing Qualitative Research Methods in Doctoral Programs to Enhance the Importance of Social Justice in Educational Leadership

Background: Social Justice In Doctor Of Education Programs

One call for educational leaders to engage in the political work of social justice occurred in a 1932 speech by George Counts advocating educational leaders to engage in a Social Reconstructionist movement (Counts, 1978). While this early work did not use the language of social justice, it reflected the intentions and actions of social justice as addressed in the creation of Lugg and Shoho (2006). Since then, others have advocated for emphasizing social justice leadership (Gooden & Dantley, 2012; Marshall & Oliva, 2010; Santamaria, 2014; Theoharis, 2007). O’Malley and Capper (2015) found that the literature for leadership preparation for social justice could be categorized into: “(a) general essays on leadership preparation for social justice, (b) articles that propose frameworks for leadership preparation for social justice, (c) research on related programs in the social sciences that focus on social justice and their implications for educational leadership programs, (d) research that focuses on the efforts of particular university programs in preparing leaders for social justice, profiling the programs and discussing the strengths and areas for growth (e) evaluations of particular leadership preparation programs oriented toward social justice that are internal and autoethnographic (f) articles that address curriculum or pedagogical frameworks for preparing leaders for social justice and (g) research that addresses the lack of, or proposals for, integrating a specific identity into leadership preparation such as gender, ability, social class or race (p. 295)”. This overview suggests that while much has been done to suggest that social justice and leadership complement one another, there is still a need to understand better what can facilitate this becoming essential to leading public schools. One conclusion that we put forward is that faculty must do more in educational leadership programs to make explicit the connection to leadership and social justice so that future educational leaders are positioned from a framework that supports social justice in schools and communities.