Who counts as an educational leader?
Educational leadership is often discussed in terms of formal roles: principals, superintendents, university administrators, and other people with recognized authority. Those roles matter, but they do not capture every way change occurs within educational institutions.
My recent scholarship explores leadership beyond conventional titles and positions. It asks how people working in and around educational institutions challenge inequitable practices, mobilize relationships and resources, and expand opportunity for others.
In Transforming Educational Leadership: Non-Traditional Narratives to Promote Equity in Uncertain Times (Oxford University Press, 2025), I examine forms of leadership that can be overlooked when we focus only on administrative hierarchy.
What nontraditional leaders actually do
My research draws on narrative interviews with people who lead in and around education, including scholars, educators, advocates, and community actors. Their experiences reveal how equity-oriented leadership often takes place beyond formal administrative hierarchies. Rather than treating schools' challenges as management problems alone, these leaders identify structural barriers and work with others to change the conditions producing unequal opportunities.
Mobilizing social and cultural capital
In a study published in Educational Studies, my coauthors and I analyzed interviews with 26 educational leaders working across schools, nonprofits, research institutions, and advocacy organizations. We found that participants used social connections, cultural knowledge, and community-rooted practices to confront exclusionary policies, elevate marginalized voices, and build more inclusive systems.
Importantly, these leaders did not simply draw upon fixed stocks of social and cultural capital. They adapted these resources to their particular contexts and challenges. The study therefore broadens how we understand both capital and who counts as an educational leader.
Political capital and the work of disrupting inequity
In Educational Management Administration & Leadership, I examined interviews with 12 leading U.S. education scholars. The article argues that educational leadership requires more than managing existing systems: leaders must recognize structural problems and develop strategies to challenge them. I explore the potential of non-dominant political capital—forms of influence that may work around established channels of authority and compliance—to support equity-oriented change.
Three practices of equity-oriented leadership
Another study, published in the Journal of Research on Leadership Education, draws on interviews with 36 nontraditional educational leaders and identifies three recurring practices:
- Think structurally: Diagnose and address systemic barriers rather than attributing unequal outcomes solely to individuals.
- Increase representation: Use influence to bring more stakeholders and perspectives into consequential decisions.
- Prepare for pushback: Anticipate resistance when efforts to promote equity challenge established practices and interests.
Why this matters for scholarship and practice
Together, these studies invite scholars to examine educational leadership as a social and political process shaped by relationships, institutions, and unequal access to resources. They connect leadership research with the sociology of education, social and cultural capital, structural inequality, and organizational change.
For practitioners, the implication is practical: improving educational opportunity requires listening to leaders beyond conventional job titles, using relationships and knowledge strategically, and building the collective capacity to challenge inequitable arrangements. These ideas also animate my book, Transforming Educational Leadership, which draws on diverse narratives to expand the possibilities for leading change in and around education.