Integrating Social Justice Leadership with Instructional Leadership in Turkish Schools: Does it Make a Difference for the School Culture and Student Achievement?

Purpose: This paper aims to demonstrate how the interaction of social justice leadership and instructional leadership types might influence collective teacher culture and student achievement in the Turkish education context. Methods: This research employs a quantitative approach, utilizing a dataset comprising at least 4,318 students and 313 teachers, nested within 40 schools. We performed a quadrant analysis to determine the interaction between instructional and social justice leadership types across schools. We also applied Bayesian multilevel structural equation modeling and Markov chain Monte Carlo bootstrapping analysis to estimate whether social justice leadership moderates the relationship between instructional leadership and student achievement, with collective teacher culture serving as a mediator across schools. Results: The quadrant analysis of principals’ two-dimensional relationship between instructional and social justice leadership revealed that schools were distributed across four quadrants, labeled as “socializing,” “competitive,” “limiting,” and “integrating.” Additionally, while there was no direct relationship between instructional leadership and student achievement, this relationship became significant when moderated by social justice leadership. Finally, the indirect impact of instructional leadership on student achievement, mediated by collective teacher culture, was larger in schools with stronger social justice leadership. Implications: The impact of instructional leadership on student learning can be enhanced by integrating social justice leadership with instructional leadership practices. This integration can benefit students, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, beyond the individual effect of each leadership type. Therefore, principal preparation, training, and evaluation programs should support aspiring and current principals in simultaneously utilizing and integrating leadership into daily practice.