Principals' perspectives of social justice in public schools

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to focus on social justice issues identified by American principals. A research question that guided this qualitative study was: do educational leaders relate to the concept of leadership for social justice? Design/methodology/approach - The standardized protocol for focus group discussions was based on Krueger and Casey's work on how to conduct effective focus group interviews. Each focus group carefully followed the protocol, which was designed to give voice to the informants and not to be led by the moderator in preconceived directions. This procedure provided a framework to maintain consistency in eliciting and collecting information but not leading participants to discuss social justice issues just to please the researchers. Findings - This paper both confirmed that principals are concerned with social justice and identified that some principals do not explicitly discuss issues that relate to social justice. Principals who raised social justice issues felt that leaders should be courageous enough to make decisions that are best for children, even though they may not be popular. Research limitations/implications - Qualitative research such as this adds to the breadth and depth of human understanding, but findings cannot be generalized to any larger population. Originality/value - The term social justice has become pervasive in US academic discussions, yet there has been little dialogue with practitioners and even less data examined concerning if the term has any relevance to practitioners. This paper explores the voices of practitioners in relation to a pervasive term in US academic discourse.