Description
The Sage Handbook of Critical Educational Leadership brings together educational leaders and scholars from across English-speaking scholars to rethink what leadership means when it is criticalized. Rejecting narrow managerialist models and traditional hierarchies of schooling, this handbook embraces a broad, socially engaged conceptualisation of leadership rooted in critical theory, ethical praxis, and transformative pedagogies.
Rather than offering a "how-to" guide, the handbook foregrounds leadership as an embodied, relational, and deeply political practice. Contributors draw on diverse positionalities, cultural traditions, and theoretical frameworks to explore how critical educational leadership is enacted in classrooms, communities, institutions, and public life. They illuminate the tensions educators face amid rising authoritarianism, surveillance, and assaults on academic freedom, arguing for leadership that resists reductive accountability regimes and instead fosters justice, solidarity, and democratic renewal.
Structured into thematic sections, the Handbook begins by establishing robust philosophical foundations which challenge neoliberal governance and reimagine leadership as emancipatory and ethical. Following are advances of research-based strategies for equity, anti-racism, sustainability, and culturally responsive practices. Offering cultural and ideological critiques of teacher education, the following chapters shed light on how whiteness, patriarchy, colonialism, and capitalist norms shape leadership discourses. The volume concludes by envisioning alternative futures for critical educational leadership, calling for structural, pedagogical, and policy shifts that centre human dignity, radical hope, and collective flourishing.
The Sage Handbook of Critical Educational Leadership is a rigorous, imaginative, and urgently needed rethinking of educational leadership as a site of justice, inclusion, and possibility in difficult times.
Section 1: Philosophy
Section 2: Critically Sustaining Leadership: Doing EDI in a Time of White Oligarchy
Section 3: Putting Hope back into Messy Leadership in Challenging Times
Section 4: Critical Research and Cultural Studies of Leadership
Table of Contents
Introduction to the Sage Handbook of Critical Educational Leadership - Renee Desmarchelier
Section 1: Philosophy - R. Michael Fisher
Chapter 1: Learning from the Canvas of a Contentious History: A Critical Philosophical Approach to Addressing Systemic Discrimination in Education - Carolyn M. Shields
Chapter 2: The First Nations Threshold - Cally Jetta and Emerson Payne
Chapter 3: Philosophical Foundation and Practical Strategies for Navigating Autonomy and Solidarity in Critical Educational Leadership - Robert M. White
Chapter 4: Theorizing Space in Critical Educational Administration and Leadership - Augustos Riveros
Chapter 5: 50 Years of Decolonizing and Indigenizing in Hegemonic Education Systems - Wahinkpe Topa (Four Arrows), aka Don Trent Jacobs
Section 2: Critically Sustaining Leadership: Doing EDI in a Time of White Oligarchy - Awad Ibrahim
Chapter 6: Exploring the Role of Transdisciplinarity in Cultivating Critical Pedagogy within Colonized Educational Systems - Ikechukwu (Ike) Ikerionwu
Chapter 7: Decolonizing Higher Education Leadership through Indigenous Knowledges - Cally Jetta
Chapter 8: Regenerative Learning through Indigenous Sustainment: Leadership through Principles of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Perspectives in Learning and Teaching - Gabrielle Murray and Ann Standish
Chapter 9: Critical Leadership in Education: Lessons from Critical Pedagogy - Christine Morley and Alyssa Venning
Chapter 10: Leadership for Self-Determination: Exploring Emerging Indigenous Australian Frameworks for Higher Education Governance - Susan Page and Michelle Trudgett
Chapter 11: A “Counterstory” to Expose the (Colour)Blind-Spots of Leadership in Higher Education - Jerome Cranston
Chapter 12: AI in Higher Education: A Leadership Challenge for Equity - Alexander M. Sidorkin
Chapter 13: Social Change Declarations and Actions in Canadian Universities: Implications of and for Leadership and Governance Epistemologies - Arig al Shaibah
Chapter 14: The Neoliberal University: Investigating the Experiences of Faculty Members in the Era of Neoliberal Accountability and Performativity in Ontario Universities - Melanie Lawrence and Goli M. Rezai-Rashti
Chapter 15: Disrupting Systemic Inequity through Intersectionality-Informed Leadership in Higher Education: Reempowering Myself as a First Nations Disabled Female Academic - Sheelagh Daniels-Mayes
Chapter 16: Developing Cultural Competence in Leadership for a Globalised World - Slaven Drinovac
Chapter 17: Signs of the Times: Globalizing Change and British Cultural Tradition in Postcolonial Elite Schools - Cameron McCarthy
Chapter 18: Emergent Leadership for More Expansive Institutions - Carrie Smith
Section 3: Putting Hope back into Messy Leadership in Challenging Times - Lisa Cary
Chapter 19: Niceness as a Barrier to Critical Leadership in Education: Exploring the Role of Diplomacy, Courage, and Relationality in Contentious Times - Angelina E. Castagno and Donna W. Lewis
Chapter 20: Emergent Leadership Approach as a Positive By-Product of Merging Digital Technology with Indigenous Pedagogy - Katrina Cutcliffe and Cally Jetta
Chapter 21: Ethical Imperatives for International Students: Leading Amidst Neoliberal Pressures - Mohit Dudeja and Gerald Walton
Chapter 22: Notes Toward an Improvisational Leadership: Moving Beyond the Score by Making It Up Together - Andrew Hickey, Stewart Riddle, and Robert Hattam
Chapter 23: Creative Imperative: A Care-Based Aesthetic Response to Stress Contagion in Schools - Misty Paterson
Chapter 24: Leading from the Middle: Adaptive Leadership Strategies for Mid-Level Managers in Higher Education - Harriet Thurber Rasmussenm and Mohammed Raei
Chapter 25: Epistemology and the Frayed Edges of Science, Democracy and Education - Stephen C. Fleury and Michael L. Bentley
Section 4: Critical Research and Cultural Studies of Leadership - Teresa Anne Fowler
Chapter 26: Racial Belonging and Teacher Agency: Troubling Anti-Critical Education Leadership - Kylee Coney, Nahid Husain-Habib, and Phillip Boda
Chapter 27: How to Build Effective Educational Leadership? The Role of Irony and the Practice of Dialogue in the Classroom - Chiara Carletti
Chapter 28: Navigating Transition and Moving Forward: Leadership Journeys in the Academy - Barbara Brown, Colleen Kawalilak, Sylvie Roy, and Frederique Covington Corbett
Chapter 29: Transformative Leadership through Critical Pedagogy: Navigating Educational Constraints with Reflective Practice and Resilience - Brian A. Benoit
Chapter 30: Expanding Critical Pedagogy in Educational Leadership With the Pink Chickens Reflexivity Framework - Neisha Terry
Chapter 31: Critical Language Pedagogy of ‘Comm.Unity’ for Leadership in Anti-Racism Education - Andrew W. Habana Hafner
Chapter 32: Re-Imagining Educational Leadership: A Critical Praxis Grounded in Hope and Love - Jaime Alvaro Paredes Paez
Chapter 33: Remember to Dream: Reconsidering Educational Leadership Frameworks in Relation to the Leadership of Paulo Freire - Nadine Sanchez and Tricia M. Kress
Chapter 34: Culturally Responsive Caring PreK-12 School Principals: A Call for Anti-Carceral Leadership - Antonio L. Ellis, Aimeé Cepeda, and William N. Thomas IV
Chapter 35: Afterword to Riffs on Leadership: Who Died and Made You Boss? - Shirley R. Steinberg
