The pivotal role of leaders in promoting and sustaining inclusive educational practices, cultures and values has been identified by many scholars (Temple & Ylitalo, 2009; Ainscow & Sandill, 2010; Lindqvist & Nilholm, 2013; Toson, Burrello, & Knollman, 2013). Given the role’s significance, researchers have attempted to produce a ‘model’ of inclusive management (Rayner, 2009), a ‘framework’ for inclusive leaders (Brown 2004; Ryan, 2006), and even a ‘toolkit’ to guide inclusive managerial practice (Delay & Dyment, 2003). By way of problematising such attempts to delimit inclusive educational leadership, we connect Stanley Cavell’s (2004, p. 316) concerns with the ways in which ‘moral reasoning runs the danger of moralism, of … encouraging acting for the sake of conformity’, to the ways in which management can become mere managerialism in education. We attempt to counter what we will argue is the too common reduction of educational leadership to managerialism, to a technical role that inspires nothing more than conformity, by way of drawing on the ethical philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas (1969; 2011), and, in particular, his (1995; 1999) instance that justice and democracy are indebted to ethics. This leads us to argue that the practice of educational leaders is just and inclusive only in so much as it is informed by the primacy of responsibility to the other person. In particular, we critique the idea that educational leadership should be perpetually proactive. In so doing, we point to the essentially responsive character of inclusive leadership in education, its inseparability from responsibility. 

Ainscow, M. & Sandill, A. 2010. Developing inclusive education systems: the role of organisational cultures and leadership, International Journal of Inclusive Education, 14(4), 401-416. Brown, K. 2004. Leadership for social justice and equity: Weaving a transformative framework and pedagogy. Educational Administration Quarterly, 40(1), 77–108. Cavell, S. 2004. Cities of words: Pedagogical letters on a register of the moral life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Delay, R.H. & Dyment J.E. 2003, A Toolkit for Gender-Inclusive Wilderness Leadership. Journal of Physical Education, Recreation & Dance, 74(7),28-32. Garza Jr., E. 2008. Autoethnography of a First-Time Superintendent: Challenges to Leadership for Social Justice, Journal of Latinos and Education, 7(2), 163-176. Levinas, E. 1969. Totality and infinity: An essay on exteriority. (A. Lingis, Trans.). Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press. Levinas, E. 1995. Ethics and infinity: Conversations with Philippe Nemo. (R. A. Cohen, Trans.). Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press. Levinas, E. 1999. Alterity and transcendence. (M. B. Smith, Trans.). London: The Athlone Press. Levinas, E. 2011. Otherwise than being, or, beyond essence. (A. Lingis, Trans.). Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press. Lindqvist, G. & Nilholm, C. 2013. Making schools inclusive? Educational leaders' views on how to work with children in need of special support. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 171, 95-110. McClellan, P. 2012. Race, gender, and leadership identity: an autoethnography of reconciliation. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 25:1, 89-100. Pennington, J.L. & Brock, C.H. 2012. Constructing critical autoethnographic self-studies with white educators. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 25(3), 225-250. Rayner, S. 2009. Educational diversity and learning leadership: a proposition, some principles and a model of inclusive leadership? Educational Review, 61(4), 433-447. Ryan, J. 2006. Inclusive Leadership and Social Justice for Schools, Leadership and Policy in Schools, 5(1), 3-17. Temple, J.B. & Ylitalo, J. 2009. Promoting Inclusive (and Dialogic) Leadership in Higher Education Institutions. Tertiary Education and Management, 15:3, 277-289. Toson , A. L.-M. , Burrello, L.C. & Knollman, G. 2013. Educational justice for all: the capability approach and inclusive education leadership. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 17(5), 490-506.