This dissertation examines the multifaceted personal and professional lives of Black women elementary school principals in South Africa at the intersection of institutional and political, cultural and language, economic and social/historical venues as they work to actualize socially just and equitable learning environments for black children and youth. The perspective of the study is rooted in a critical black feminist postmodern theory which frames layers of historical, political, cultural, ethnic, and gender discrimination in a construct that informs an understanding of the fragmented, conflicted and multilayered lives of women. The study asks the Black woman school leader in South Africa to reflect on her formal and informal educational experiences in an effort to discover how these experiences have defined and influenced her work for social justice in school and school community settings. The significance of this study lies in the understanding of leadership through the cultural and contextual lens of Black women elementary principals in current South Africa.

The study uses the biographical narrative and phenomenological methods to collect data from six Black South African female elementary school principals identified by their colleagues and communities as individuals working for social justice. Their stories were collected through a series of three interviews of 1-2 hours, a one-day shadowing session, a group dialogue and document analysis. Data analysis and synthesis were conducted through the narrative-type analysis and coding. It is acknowledged that narrative methods have their own shortcomings regarding subjectivity, internal validity or trustworthiness, and external validity or generalizability as well as ethical issues such as consent from subjects, protecting subjects from harm, and the right to have privacy.

Four major themes emerged from the study: (1) the personal and public struggle to gain a scholarly education; (2) language of oppression versus a language of liberation; (3) power/privilege: the tensions within and across personal, the school institution and the broader society; and (4) the challenges to school transformation due to tensions across leadership styles.