MA.ELSJ - MA Education: Leadership for Social Justice Specialization

This Master of Arts in Educational Leadership with a focus on Social Justice (MSJ) is a gathering place of intellectual inquiry, critical theories, and community building. Each course is an intentional step towards a larger arc of justice-centered scholarship:

·       Spring: When the flowers are blooming, we will begin the MSJ.  We start with the Self—narrating our stories, locating equity in autobiography and autoethnography, and understanding how identity shapes leadership. The first course demands that we practice inward, racial vulnerability, and from there we build outward.

·       Summer: We move in and through Systems—testing our analysis, honing our ability to execute, and building tools of research, law, ethics, and pedagogy.

·       Fall: We arrive at Solutions—identifying barriers that we need to dismantle, disintegrate, and let go of. The focus will be on problems and pathways forward. Each student will complete a capstone project, conducting action research that has a public impact.

This arc of justice carries forward. For some, it will culminate strictly in the “community report out” rooted in public scholarship. For others, it will extend into doctoral study, deepening each student’s role as scholar-practitioners, movement builders, and architects of liberatory futures.

This unique program is for the cultural keepers and movement makers, hip-hop scholars, social justice teachers, school and district-level equity warriors, and hope dealers. As a collective of faculty, we believe that a focus on educational justice is sacred. This is a learning environment inspired by abolition work and freedom dreaming. In a time of despair, our joy and justice go hand-in-hand and heart-to-heart as we strive to practice what we teach and learn to transform ourselves and the systems that impact our lives.