378 Journal of School Leadership Volume 17—July 2007 JEFFREY S. BROOKS GAETANE JEAN-MARIE ANTHONY H. NORMORE DIANE W. HODGINS Distributed Leadership for Social Justice: Exploring How Influence and Equity Are Stretched Over an Urban High School ABSTRACT: Although leadership for social justice and distributed leadership have separately garnered a great deal of interest among educational administration scholars, no studies have explored the possible conceptual and empirical links between these important and promising areas of inquiry. This study draws from extant literature to suggest an exploratory conceptual framework designed to in- vestigate distributed leadership practice for social justice; it then explores the ef- ficacy of the framework using data from an ethnographic study of leadership practice conducted in an urban high school in the Southeastern United States. Findings suggest that the framework has potential for explaining social justice leadership practice as the context-specific and situation-bound work of formal and informal leaders throughout an organization. Over the past two decades, educational leadership scholars have made sig- nificant contributions to our understanding of the ways educators can and do lead for social justice in schools (Marshall & Gerstl-Pepin, 2005; Mar- shall & Oliva, 2006). Conceptual research suggests that a social justice ori- entation toward educational leadership practice and research promises to lead to an understanding of “how institutionalized theories, norms, and practices in schools and society lead to social, economic, and educational inequities” (Dantley & Tillman, 2006, p. 17). Social justice scholars argue Address correspondence to Jeffrey S. Brooks, The Florida State University, Department of Ed- ucational Leadership and Policy Studies, 113 Stone Building, Tallahassee, FL 32306. E-mail: jeffreysbrooks@mac.com. 08_046_3.Brooks.qxd 1/29/08 10:47 AM Page 378