Unsettling Colonial Roots of School Leadership in Canada: Decolonizing School Leadership

From its inception, public schooling in Canada operated with the ideology of cultural imperialism and reproduction (Battiste, Decolonizing education: Nourishing the learning spirit. Purich Publishing, 2013). As a result of colonization, public schooling is wrought with racism (James et al., Race & wellbeing: The lives, hopes, and activism of African Canadians. Fernwood, 2010). Racism is embedded within policy and practices that continue to oppress non-White students. Educators have gone through a colonized school system and without interrupting that thinking, they are bound to repeat practices they have experienced (Khalifa, 2021). The consequence of colonization for Black and Indigenous students is a system of oppression built upon racist practices. The greatest influence on school improvement for Black and other non-White children is leadership (Dantley, African American educational leadership. In L. Foster & L. C. Tillman (Eds.), African American perspectives on leadership in schools: Building a culture of empowerment (pp. 39–56). R&L Education, 2009). The only way to interrupt systemic racism entrenched in school cultures is decolonizing educational leadership. This chapter will first describe the traditional educational leadership model to allow the reader to understand how it leads to promoting hegemonic dominance and the participatory practice in the deletion of histories and epistemologies of Black and Indigenous people (Blount, Educational leadership through equity, diversity, and social justice and educational leadership for the privilege imperative: The historical dialectic. In L. C. Tillman & J. J. Scheurich (Eds.), Handbook of research on educational leadership for equity and diversity (pp. 7–21). Routledge, 2013; Dantley, African American educational leadership. In L. Foster & L. C. Tillman (Eds.), African American perspectives on leadership in schools: Building a culture of empowerment (pp. 39–56). R&L Education, 2009). Next, this chapter will outline how to decolonize school leadership to promote equitable and anti-racist learning environments. Decolonizing school leadership is a necessity to create schools that value, validate, and recognize brilliance in Black and Indigenous students.