Robinson Crusoe and the Island of Despair: heroic metaphors and contradiction in leading for social justice

Educational leadership research has a long history of the use of metaphor as a descriptive and analytical tool. In this paper, I explore the value of metaphorical analysis using tropes from the story of Robinson Crusoe as a way to think with and through the data generated in a case study examining how social justice may be understood and acted upon by principals in socially disadvantaged Australian primary schools. A key aspect of the study was the use of autobiography to prompt principals to reflect on how their early lives, family and career may have contributed to their beliefs and understandings about education and educational leadership. In this article, I examine data generated by one of the key participants, ‘Bill’, a self-described leader for social justice with a track record of school improvement. However Bill’s leadership does not conform to key elements of social justice leadership as noted in the literature. Thinking with and through some of the significant tropes in Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719), such as the individual heroic leader, leadership as a mission, and cultural imperialism, this article troubles Bill’s avowal of his social justice leadership.