The issue of social justice (SJ) leadership has become one of the central topics in educational leadership and management research in recent years. Despite increasing attention to the topic among policymakers and researchers during the last two decades, no comprehensive review of SJ leadership research has been conducted. By using bibliographic data from the Scopus database and employing various bibliometric analysis tools, this paper presents a systematic review of SJ leadership research, tracing its development and characteristics within a broad perspective. Results identify the key scholars, sources, and documents in the field of SJ leadership, as well as the most used concepts and their interconnections. A serious imbalance in the SJ leadership literature is also identified, with few studies from non-Western societies. Possible avenues for future research and review studies are suggested.

Ethical dilemmas are an inevitable element in decision making. For school organizations, the emergence of an ethical dilemma in decision making is almost a daily occurrence. The purpose of this research is to reveal the impact of ethical leadership on leaders’ decision making by comparing two samples of school administrators in the Israeli education system using the Ethical Leadership Questionnaire. The research questions were about the factors that influence ethical decision making. They were used to investigate whether or not personal characteristics have any influential role on ethical decision making and whether there are any differences between the two cultures that affect ethical decision making and the dimensions of ethical leadership. The results of this study revealed that ethical leadership and the moral behavior of school members have only positive effects on the evaluation and interpretation of social values, the better treatment of moral dilemmas and the enhancement of ethical decision making. Moreover, in both cases, high positive correlations were found with the variables ethic critique, sensitivity and culture, and the ethic of care. The dimensions of ethical leadership, and hence the ways ethical dilemmas are handled, present similarities between the two cultures.

The research investigated how principals in Israel's Jewish and Arab school systems perceive and practice their role in promoting equitable education to bridge socio-economic and pedagogic gaps. It asked how Jewish and Arab principals understand the concept of social justice and what they do in order to promote social justice reality in their schools. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 10 Arab and Jewish principals. Analysis of interviews indicated that Israeli education policy perpetuates ethnic and social gaps. The principals reported different personal trajectories that shaped their perceptions of social and described strategies used to promote social justice.

The aim of the present article was to systematically review international evidence about Islamic-based (a new term we suggest) educational leadership models published in peer-reviewed journals between 1990 and 2021. We conducted a systematic review of the literature by following the steps identified by Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA). These steps were data source identification, search, data collection, eligibility criteria selection, data selection, and data analysis. They were aimed at enabling us to answer the following research inquiries: (1) What are the existing developments in research on Islamic-based educational leadership and policy? and (2) What are the main themes presented in these studies? Here, the results are presented first in a macro-outlook elucidating the main trends of this research (topical areas, geographical areas, approaches, and methods). The main themes that emerge from the analysis are: (a) policy, reforms, and stakeholders; second, educational leadership models and styles; and third, gender, feminism, and social justice. We share theoretical and methodological conclusions and outlines of some possible future research directions to contribute to inter-faith, equity, and diversity.

The research compares principals in Israel (Jewish and Arab) and Turkey and how they perceive and practice their role in promoting social justice (SJ) in their schools in order to bridge socioeconomic and pedagogic gaps. It poses three questions: (1) How do Turkish and Israeli SJ leaders make sense of SJ? (2) What do SJ leaders do in both countries similarly and differently? (3) What factors facilitate or hinder the work of SJ in both countries? The qualitative study employed in-depth semi-structured interviews to collect the narratives of 11 school principals in Turkey and Israel. A comparative, holistic analysis was employed to identify the principals’ perceptions and daily practice of SJ in their schools. The principals reported different sociocultural, national and personal trajectories that shaped their perceptions of SJ, and described strategies used to promote SJ in their daily scholastic policies, processes and practices that meet the school stakeholders’ backgrounds and needs.

This article presents two rich case studies of schools catering for Syrian refugee students in the Turkish city of Ankara. The article attempts to identify the challenges facing the two schools in this complex reality and the strategies developed by the two principals and their teaching staff to cope with academic, pedagogic and administrative functioning difficulties. Qualitative data collection and analysis were chosen for this investigation. Interpretation followed the four dimensions suggested by Horsford, Grosland and Gunn (2011) in their Framework for Culturally Relevant Leadership: political contexts, pedagogical approaches, personal journeys and professional duties. Findings indicate that although the schools cope with difficult circumstances in the field, the government’s policies are naive and unclear. The principals are motivated by a pedagogy of compassion, containment and humanistic-universal commitment. Conflicting discourses are found among the staff who feel ‘trapped’ in this difficult reality. The principals employ a style that encourages synergistic collective commitment and social cohesion. Conclusions and recommendations are discussed.