Witnessing a tremendous influx of refugees in the last years, Turkish schools have turned into a multicultural environment with various ethnic, racial, and religious student populations. Given that there may be cases of marginalization or injustices for the refugee students at Turkish schools, this study seeks to explore to what extent school principals can perform social justice practices within the ecology of social justice leadership (individual, microsystem & mesosystem, exosystem, and macrosystem). The data of this study came from semi-structured interviews conducted with 10 school principals working at refugee-populated public schools in Turkey. The findings revealed that school principals were much dependent on the influential dynamics surrounding them in creating socially just and fair school environment for refugee students. Especially, serious socioeconomic challenges of refugees and naive and unclear government policies about the education of refugee students impact social justice practices of school principals. Conclusions, implications, and recommendations are discussed.

DOI: 10.1080/2005615X.2020.1842656
ISSN: 2005-615X