Exploring the lived experiences of two scholars researching social (in)justice in educational leadership across Maltese and Australian contexts

This chapter highlights aspects of researching educational leadership for social justice as it unfolds at the triage of theory, policy, and practice (Mifsud, Triaging research, policy and practice. Leadership Unwrapped Podcast, Episode 14, 13 March 2023). We explore the lived experiences of two scholars as they reflect upon their histories, education, and research within the Maltese and Australian education contexts. Through our diverse cultural and social experiences, we critically examine issues related to experiencing, practicing, and researching leadership for social (in)justice in education. Few studies reflect on the experiences of the researchers themselves in terms of what drives them to undertake social justice research from the perspective of their backgrounds, as well as personal and professional experiences.

Our lived experiences are explored through the different trajectories in both local education systems: from our student days in compulsory education through to university experience at under- and postgraduate levels, our teaching/school leadership careers, and the eventual move into academia as educational leadership scholars. Through incidents/accounts, we reflexively discuss how typical leadership practices inadvertently lead to social (in)justice, subverting the original policy intentions. This is presented via autoethnographic narratives, combining methodologies previously adopted by Wilkinson and Eacott (Int J Leadership Educ 16:191–204, 2013) and Mifsud and Orucu (Eur Educ Res J, 2025), that are interwoven with Foucault’s trident (Gillies D, Educational leadership and Michel Foucault. Routledge, London, 2013) of skepticism, critique, and problematization to demonstrate the dissonance between policy intentions and translations at school and classroom level.