Social Justice Challenges to Educational Administration: Introduction to a Special Issue

TLDR

Educational administration programs and licensure standards inadequately address equity, with few women and minority administrators. This article introduces a special issue that calls for transforming educational administration toward an activist, prosocial justice stance. The authors frame the special issue by highlighting high administrator turnover and existing scholarship in Leadership for Social Justice to motivate this transformation.

Abstract

Challenging the field of educational administration to take an activist and prosocial justice stance, this article introduces the special issue. Some professors and preparation programs are inadequately attuned to equity concerns. Standards and testing for administrator licensure touch only the surface of cultural diversity, equity, and democracy. Disproportionally small percentages of administrators are women and minorities. Still, with the high turnover of administrators and with the work of scholars in Leadership for Social Justice, the time for transforming the field is now.