The lives and identities of UK Black and South Asian head teachers: Metaphors of leadership

Lauri Johnson

Boston College, Massachusetts

Lauri Johnson is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Educational Leadership and Higher Education at Boston College, USA where she directs the university’s statewide Ed.D. program for practicing school administrators. She is also the convenor of the WERA (World Educational Research Association) International Research Network on Families, Educators, and Communities as Educational Advocates, which involves 78 researchers across 15 countries. Dr. Johnson’s cross national research interests include culturally responsive and race conscious leadership, historical studies of school-community activism in urban school reform, and successful school leadership in high poverty schools. During 2014 – 2015 she was a Fulbright scholar at the University of Nottingham where she researched the life histories of three generations of Black and South Asian school leaders from across the UK.She has published widely on these topics in national and international journals including the Journal of Teacher Education, Race, Ethnicity, and Education, Teachers College Record, Urban Education, Educational Administration Quarterly, Journal of Educational Administration, the Journal of School Leadership, and Leadership and Policy in Schools. Dr. Johnson has also co-edited three books and six special journal issues. Her book (with Reva Joshee) on Multicultural Policies in Canada and the United States (University of British Columbia Press) won the 2008 AESA Critics Choice Award.