Minority School Leadership during Crises

'In this powerful volume, Mary Gutman and the contributing authors invite readers to grapple with the unique roles school leaders play in crisis-affected contexts. Moving beyond traditional divides between the global North and South, the chapters challenge us to examine how accumulated neglect, manifested through economic, environmental, health, and political crises, converges and settles squarely on the shoulders of school leaders. Attuned to the inherently political nature of education and leadership, the volume draws on rigorous research from hard-to-reach contexts across five continents, revealing insights that event-focused perspectives often overlook. Through this provocative work, readers witness school leaders’ capacities to adapt, advocate, anticipate, improvise, innovate, mediate, organize, and work to undo harm. The volume offers a vital contribution to understanding how schools can be safeguarded as sites of future-making in a world where crisis is no longer the exception.'

- Prof. Diana Rodríguez Gómez, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA

'The volume offers a compelling and urgently needed reconceptualization of school leadership in times of global crisis. It powerfully demonstrates that school leadership extends far beyond instructional management and illuminates the multifaceted roles of school leaders as cultural brokers, community advocates, and moral guides who mediate between states and marginalized communities. By centering minority and minoritized school leaders, the book gives voice to actors whose work is often invisible in mainstream scholarship. Its global perspective underscores how today’s crises are deeply interconnected and how those positioned at the social and geopolitical margins are, in fact, at the center of their impact. This book is an important and timely contribution to a more globally inclusive understanding of educational leadership.'

- Prof. Josef Strasser, RTPU, Kaiserslautern-Landau, Germany

'In an era when crisis has become the norm rather than the exception, this groundbreaking volume reveals how minority educational leaders sustain dignity, continuity, and hope under the most extreme conditions. Through voices from 19 empirical chapters across 14 minority contexts spanning five continents, the book illuminates leadership practices that emerge when institutional supports are fragile or absent. Rather than framing leadership as technical crisis management, the volume reconceptualizes it as moral work- ethical mediation, community resilience, and moral courage enacted from positions of structural vulnerability. This book is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand how education survives when systems fail, and how leadership from the margins offers crucial insights for a world increasingly defined by instability.'

- Prof. Jeffrey Glanz, Michlalah–Jerusalem College, Israel

'This volume offers a timely and compelling contribution to understanding educational leadership amid crisis, vulnerability, and systemic inequity. Through rich case studies from across the globe, it illuminates leadership practices shaped within marginalized communities, where community, culture, and moral responsibility frequently compensate for fragile or absent institutional support. Importantly, the book resonates far beyond regions with clearly institutionalized minority schooling systems, speaking powerfully to seemingly homogeneous contexts such as Japan, South Korea, and parts of East Asia, where minority experiences persist without adequate formal recognition. For educators, researchers, and policymakers in these settings, the volume provides an essential lens for rethinking leadership, resilience, and the often-unspoken dynamics of exclusion.'

- Prof. Naomi Kagawa,Shimane University, Japan

'This book offers a distinctive contribution to the field. First, by focusing on school leadership during crises within a global context and under severe conditions. Second, it emphasizes the perspectives of school leaders working among minorities and marginalized communities—voices that are often overlooked in leadership discourse. By doing so, it broadens our understanding of how leadership operates in diverse and challenging environments. The book illustrates how different global crises, such as war, systemic discrimination, violence, or environmental disasters, necessitate varied leadership capacities. In these situations, school leaders are tasked with maintaining a semblance of normalcy and order, while simultaneously managing conflicting demands and assuming multiple roles. Listening to their voices reveals critical insights into why and how the school leader’s role is expanding, what qualifications are required, and not least the values at risk under such challenging conditions.'

Prof. Aslaug Kristiansen, Professor Emerita, University of Agder, Norway

'Minority School Leadership during Crises: Global and Cross-Continental Perspectives is a powerful and timely contribution to educational leadership scholarship, offering a deeply insightful look at how minority school leaders sustain education amid war, displacement, economic hardship, pandemics, and environmental crises. Through rich international case studies spanning multiple continents, the volume vividly illustrates how leadership becomes a force for resilience, inclusion, and continuity in some of the world’s most challenging educational contexts. By amplifying voices often overlooked in mainstream research, this book redefines educational leadership as an adaptive, ethical, and justice-oriented practice shaped by structural inequality and persistent crisis. Its compelling analyses and global perspectives make it essential reading for scholars, policymakers, and practitioners seeking innovative approaches to leadership, equity, and educational sustainability in an increasingly uncertain world.'

Prof. Bing Xiao, Austin Peay State University, USA

'This book provides an extremely interesting and important contribution to research on the roles of minority and marginalized educators, in this case focusing on educational leaders and their significance in times of crisis. I appreciate the focus of the individual texts on the importance of minority school leaders during ongoing wars, natural disasters, and pandemics, as well as in periods of economic crises and resource shortages.'

- Prof. ZbyněkNěmec, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic

'This book offers valuable insights into reconfiguring and rethinking minority educational leadership, particularly in examining how minority positions are produced and sustained across diverse geopolitical contexts. It provides an informative account of the distinct challenges minority communities face and how their leadership experiences differ from those of mainstream educational leaders. The chapters in this volume also present important implications for leadership preparation and professional development, especially in contexts where educational leaders themselves are minoritized and marginalized.'

- Dr. Xuexue Yang, State University of New York at Oneonta, USA

'This timely volume makes a powerful contribution to the study of educational leadership amid the structural and acute crises that have shaped the world in recent years. Drawing on 19 richly detailed empirical chapters across 14 diverse minority contexts spanning five continents, the book explores how leadership operates at the intersection of marginality, conflict, and resilience. Collectively, the chapters reconceptualize minority educational leadership as a practice of ethical mediation, community engagement, and context-sensitive action. This volume is essential reading for scholars and policymakers committed to equity and social justice in divided societies.'

- Rabbi Dr. Michael Reichel, Michlalah–Jerusalem College, Israel