Decolonizing and Indigenizing Visions of Educational Leadership

Finally, a truly international and substantial collection on indigenous beliefs and their application to educational leadership. The beliefs and practices in various areas identified in this collection should seriously challenge the mainstream discourse on educational leadership which, while making reference to social justice and inclusion, has not sufficiently questioned the colonial legacy in education and social movements. In many ways educational leadership in practice continues to reproduce a colonial psyche and habitus by supporting testing like PISA and others that continue to control formerly colonized populations. This collection offers a meaningful theoretical basis and examples of how to challenge and substantively reconstruct systemic problems in educational leadership.

-- Professor Emeritus John P. Portelli * OISE, University of Toronto *

This exciting collection of articles reveals the inadequacy of academic and policy approaches that consider ‘leadership’ and ‘education’ as simply detached spheres of professional practice. Scholars from Africa, Europe, Asia and the Americas with broad knowledge of and respect for Indigenous worldviews and western wisdom traditions offer careful analyses of colonialism as well as leadership and education. Their critical and visionary articles on current issues in education and beyond, draw on personal, communal, historical, philosophical, practical and empirical knowledge. With these diverse cases from across the globe Decolonizing and Indigenizing Visions of Educational Leadership makes an important and convincing claim that: “Educational leadership at its deepest core, needs to center relationalities that transform and reconnect us to each other, the Earth, and our ancestors who have taught and guided us to the present”.

-- Angela Miles * Ontario Institute for Studies in Educati