Enacting Social Justice Leadership in the Division of Student Affairs

Heads of Student Affairs in the Ontario College sector are leaders who hold responsibility for services and programs designed to serve diverse student populations, outside of the classroom. In the College of Applied Arts and Technology system, these administrators are typically VPs of Student Affairs and Services, Deans of Students or Executive Directors of Student Services. Given their location in the institutional hierarchy these leaders can play a significant role in challenging and disrupting policies and procedures that reproduce dominance and oppression yet how they express and enact social justice leadership is significantly understudied in the higher education and student affairs literature. Grounded in two large bodies of literature in higher education, and informed by critical theory, eleven student affairs leaders were asked to reflect on ways their work related to social justice and then to discuss when and how their work reflected social justice; the central research question was: How do Heads of Student Affairs enact social justice in their leadership practice? The findings from this study reveal how student affairs leaders, who self-identified as leading from a social justice perspective, enacted social justice in their leadership practice as they attempted to transform student operations, policies and structures of power, by calling into account, seemingly unproblematic practices in efforts to reveal problems, strengths, and possibilities for sustainable change. The data also highlights that those leaders who were able to articulate a deeper understanding of how their identity impacts and informs their leadership practice tended to be more critical in their approach and, as a result, were more likely to face barriers and consequences to enacting social justice leadership. As a result, this study has the potential to provide timely insights for current and emerging leaders to develop robust policies and programs that advocate, and transform educational spaces, for our increasingly diverse student populations from a social justice perspective.