This article investigates how school leaders in England understand and describe social justice in terms of their own lived lives. By this we mean how they understand equity issues by recognizing the ways in which they themselves have experienced inclusion or exclusion in their lives. We then go on to examine how this way of knowing shapes the way school leaders want to operationalize social justice in their schools. The research is based on semi-structured interviews with 14 school leaders. The empirical evidence was read through Cribb and Gewirtz' (2003) conceptual framework of social justice. Theorizing in this way revealed that handling challenging professional issues, such as the national curriculum, enabled school leaders to work for cultural justice, distributive justice, and associational justice in their school communities. It is argued such activity impacts on dimensions of quality and performance in working for change in educational institutions.

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This research generates new knowledge about how 24 educational leaders in the USA and England used their doctoral research to build narrative capital to inform strategies to steer their organizations towards cultural alignment. Cultural alignment prevents forms of segregation rooted in nation-states' wider historiography of education segregation based on low income and/or racial, cultural and linguistic diversity, and those recognized as having special educational needs. The evidence reveals doctoral study enabled the leaders to focus on the inner life and the emotional relational dimension of their narratives, and their alignment with the narrative of the members of their organizations through building networks of organizational participation in processes and practices. The networks enabled values to be shared such as trust, respect, agreeing to disagree and celebrating diversity. Thus doctoral research enabled the leaders to provide chances for members of the organization to evaluate their personal and professional narratives with each other and build narrative capital. Narrative capital is essential to underpin the construction of new life narratives that move beyond old descriptive scripts to scripts that turn dreams into objective realities, social mobility and civic engagement. Further research is recommended to explore how networks of participation in organizational processes and practices for cultural alignment are described and understood by leaders, educational professionals and students.

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The Education Act (1998) is a key policy document in Irish education, emphasising the rights, roles and responsibilities of key stakeholders, including parents, teachers and pupils in schools. Since 1998 the Department of Education and Skills (DES) has stressed the need to introduce an increased role for teachers and pupils in decision-making. It is therefore timely to explore the response of teachers and students to such a collaborative school environment in a rural second-level school of approximately 600 students.Transition Year (TY) students (ages about 15 -16) and their teachers were surveyed by questionnaire and interviewed. It finds that while the school is proactive in involving students and teachers in decision making, a source of social, personal and professional empowerment, experienced teachers, and students in particular, want a more substantial voice. For example, most students want more say. They want class discussions or a vote, not just Student Council (SC) representation, on important and not just trivial issues. They want involvement before decisions are taken, with more feedback. Overall, participation is considered important by all stakeholders.

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