Beyond Administrative Asphyxiation: Distributed Leadership, Guidance Integration, and the Ethics of Care in a Social Justice-Oriented School

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

As global policy agendas shift from performance-based accountability toward context-responsive leadership, social justice has emerged as a key framework for school improvement. This qualitative case study, conducted within the International Successful School Principalship Project (ISSPP), examines the enactment of social justice leadership in a public secondary school in Spain. Data were collected through interviews and focus groups with teachers, school leaders, students, and families. Findings show that social justice leadership is not a collection of individual attributes but a distributed and institutionalized practice. Central to this model is the integration of the Guidance Department into core decision-making processes, operationalizing an ethics of care and fostering a humanized school climate. This leadership configuration supports collective agency, enabling the school to navigate challenges such as staff turnover and administrative bureaucracy. However, a significant paradox emerges: while the school succeeds in fostering belonging and social cohesion, these achievements rely on intensive staff effort, exposing tensions between local agency and limited systemic support. The article concludes by advocating greater school autonomy and the structural integration of socio-educational services to promote sustainable, system-wide equity.