Critical Approaches to Educational Leadership: Emerging Trends and New Futurities

Dear Colleagues,

We invite paper proposals for a Special Issue in Education Sciences, titled ‘Critical Approaches to Educational Leadership: Emerging Trends and New Futurities’.

This Special Issue comes at a critical juncture not only in education but society at large where leadership in all contexts is coming under scrutiny. Across the globe, human rights are being violated at alarming rates and policies and practices aimed at more equitable outcomes for students are being rolled back. These violations are spurred by envigored political and social resistance to equity, diversity, and inclusion (DEI) policies and practices, as well as decolonial and other anti-oppressive policies, rhetorics, and advocacy; in some cases, they are backed by punitive, regime-sanctioned consequences for institutions and individuals engaged in critical social justice work.

Many of these human rights violations have colonial and/or Western derivates, which hints at grave implications but also hopeful possibilities. In this context, those who research and practice educational leadership are called on to respond to the moment. They must not only decide what is important but how these factors are fundamentally reshaping education (Gurr & Drysdale, 2020). Stone-Johnson et al. (2023) suggest that, in times of crisis, responsible leadership focuses on enhancing, developing, and sustaining educational communities through stewardship. 

This Special Issue reflects an urgency to strengthen, deepen, and expand actions that disrupt, decenter, and counter Eurocentric/Western dominance. More specifically, we situate the field of school/educational leadership and the work of school/educational leaders, practitioners, and consumers at center stage within a critical, antiracist, socially just, decolonizing agenda. Along these lines, contributions are sought that interrogate and offer alternatives to Eurocentrism and Western dominance in understandings and enactments of school/educational leadership. We are keenly interested in critical work in school/educational leadership as it unfolds across diverse contexts, and thus welcome papers from both Canadian and international scholars.

Among other related themes and emphases, we are seeking conceptual, theoretical, and/or empirical contributions that

1. Disrupt ongoing colonial harms in school/educational leadership;
2. Deepen our understanding of what it means and looks like to decolonize school/educational leadership;
3. Offer practical insights on how to advance and/or undertake a decolonizing or otherwise critical agenda in school/educational leadership;
4. Depict new and/or reimagined scenarios/realities of school/educational leadership in critical times;
5. Describe decolonizing and/or other critical models of disruption, including relative to theory, community practices, curricula, pedagogies, policy, etc.;
6. Present examples of success in using decolonizing and other critical frameworks to disrupt and decenter coloniality in school/educational leadership;
7. Highlight the strengths, challenges, possibilities, and complexities of decolonizing and other critical work in the field of school/educational leadership; and
8. Affirm Indigenous and other non-Western understandings and approaches to school/educational leadership.

We also welcome contributors to respond to us with any ideas for a contribution that falls outside of the broad scope we have articulated here but that may be of value in advancing the overall topic of the Special Issue.

Contributors are invited to situate the basis of their knowledge, especially and particularly around including a self-reflective paragraph locating/positioning themselves in relation to their proposed contribution.

Timelines:

• Abstracts of approximately 500 words are due by October 20, 2025.
• Co-Guest Editors will convey acceptance of proposals by November 24, 2025.
• Final papers are due by February 28, 2026.
• Special issue publication date: Spring 2026..

We look forward to receiving your submissions.

• Ann Lopez, Ontario Institute for the Study of Education, University of Toronto. ann.lopez@utoronto.ca
• Donna Swapp, Faculty of Education, University of Regina. donna.swapp@uregina.ca

References

Gurr, D., & Drysdale, L (2020). Leadership for challenging times. International Studies in Educational Administration, 48(1) 24-30.

Stone-Johnson, C., Hubbard, L., Resultan, B., & Steilen, K. (2023). Responsible school leadership: Exploring role expansion in crisis and beyond. Journal of School Leadership, 33(5), 472–490.

Prof. Dr. Ann Lopez
Dr. Donna Swapp
Guest Editors

Stephen Francis
Guest Editor Assistant

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Education Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• education
• educational leadership
• critical leadership
• school leadership
• decolonizing educational leadership
• coloniality in educational leadership
• leadership frameworks
• leadership praxis
• diversity, equity, inclusion