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Abstract

Principals and vice principals in British Columbia’s public schools work to ensure that schools are socially just places of learning. They must abide by provincial and school district laws and policies including those that protect the human rights of students and staff. Their work often entails complex situations when tensions related to race, ability, sexual orientation, gender identity, poverty, and colonization arise, for example. As well, they work to create the conditions in which all students and their families have equitable resources, opportunities, representation, recognition, and respect. This research sought to answer these questions: How do BC principals and vice principals understand social justice and what actions do they take to address conditions that marginalize and oppress different groups of students? What sustains them in their work? This research was conducted as a narrative inquiry with six principals and vice principals from around the province, recommended to the researcher by third parties who know the suggested participants to be effective leaders for social justice in their schools, who are committed to equitable recognition, representation, and respect, as well as the equitable distribution of resources and opportunities. Once the participants had agreed to be interviewed, they were asked about their understanding of social justice and invited to share stories about the actions that they have taken. In doing so, they described some of the challenges that they face and the strategies they employ to overcome those challenges. The participants share, despite their different contexts, leadership qualities of adamance, generosity, attentiveness, creativity, and reverence. Further analysis and discussion of the interview data and the relevant literature resulted in the proposal of an integrated leadership framework in which theory and practice, professional and personal development, work, and life do not exist in isolation. This framework integrates the ethics of care, critique, justice, and community, with four categories of practice or ways of being —curiosity, continual critique, relationality, and play and rest. The framework supports the social justice work of principals and vice principals as a humanizing practice.