Enacting Social Justice Leadership: Principals’ Modes of Involvement in Urban Secondary Schools in Canada

This qualitative study examines how principals enact social justice through different modes of leadership involvement in urban Canadian secondary schools. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with principals and vice-principals across three Canadian cities and contextual analysis of school-based initiatives, the study develops an empirically grounded typology of leadership enactment. The findings identify three distinct but interrelated modes of involvement: peripheral support and legitimation, community-embedded brokerage, and structural and curricular intervention. Instead of presenting social justice leadership as a singular or idealized practice, the typology demonstrates how principals’ involvement varies in visibility, authority, and risk, shaped by institutional, political, and geographic conditions. By shifting attention from leaders’ commitments or dispositions toward leadership enactment, this study extends scholarship on educational administration and social justice leadership. The typology offers a conceptual framework for examining how equity-oriented initiatives emerge, are sustained, and remain vulnerable within public school systems, with implications for leadership practice, preparation, and future research.