Teacher educators in higher education are often encouraged to engage with research to enhance their own subject knowledge and professional practice, improve teacher education programmes, and contribute to educating better trainee teachers. However, research shows that there are a number of barriers for teacher educators to engage with research. Drawing on our experiences of working with teacher educators in higher education contexts in England, this article outlines six institutional approaches in supporting research capacity development. These approaches include research training, mentorship, internal funding, writing support, workload recognition, and the cultivation of a research culture to value practitioner research. We argue that sustained institutional commitment to these areas is essential to empower teacher educators to contribute to knowledge production, improve teaching practice, and engage with wider conversations about teacher education reforms. Also, developing research capacity among teacher educators is central to educating a new generation of teaching professionals who improve educational practice through meaningful engagement with research-informed teacher enquiry. In the renewal of a profession, we argue for an inclusive view of research and teaching as conjoined academic practice which acts as a bulwark against unequal, elitist and career-limiting hierarchical perceptions when these activities are disaggregated.
We are living in uncertain times across the globe. From climate disasters, wars, rise in hate, attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), we are witnessing turmoil that has left no space untouched. Histories are being re-written, intolerance is on the rise, there is growing fascism and nationalism, and increasing incidents of state-sanctioned violence against citizens. Gains that were made over the last decades toward greater equity and inclusion in society are being rolled back. This has impacted all levels of education including students, educators, and communities. With DEI initiatives and programs under attack, this article explores if it is worth fighting for, notwithstanding critiques by some scholars who argue that DEI has failed to address systemic inequities and has become a mechanism by which educational institutions can appear to be antiracist or social justice-oriented while avoiding any meaningful engagement with race, racism, or whiteness. In this opinion piece, I argue that it is important to engage with the inherent tensions in DEI and push back against anti-DEI efforts while forging new paths for critical praxis.
Despite growing research interest in digital transformation in education, the mechanisms through which institutional technological change translates into improvements in teachers’ professional quality of life remain insufficiently explored, particularly within Arab educational contexts. This study investigated the mediating role of digital leadership in the relationship between digital transformation and quality of work life among primary school teachers in the Al-Jouf region, Saudi Arabia. A quantitative descriptive-correlational design was employed, with three psychometrically validated scales administered to a stratified random sample of 377 teachers. Pearson correlation and structural equation modeling with bootstrap resampling (5000 iterations) were used to test hypotheses. Results revealed significant positive correlations among all three constructs. Path analysis yielded results consistent with a full-mediation pattern, in which digital leadership accounted for the relationship between digital transformation and quality of work life, and the direct effect of digital transformation became statistically nonsignificant once digital leadership was controlled for . The model accounted for a substantial proportion of variance in quality of work life, representing a large effect size. These findings establish that the professional benefits of digital transformation initiatives in primary schools are contingent upon effective digital leadership as a mediating mechanism, with implications for policy and leadership development.
The rapid integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into education presents profound ethical challenges that demand a new kind of leadership. This conceptual paper argues that traditional technology governance models are insufficient and that leaders must develop an augmented moral compass to navigate algorithmic decision-making, data governance, and equity. Using a theory synthesis and model-building approach, we draw on scholarship from educational leadership, AI ethics, and critical algorithm studies to propose an original Moral Compass Model. The model rests on six principles—safety, fairness, transparency, privacy, equity, and accessibility—and offers a structured heuristic for moving from reactive policymaking to proactive, value-driven strategy. The paper identifies critical leadership competencies, including ethical stewardship, strategic vision, data-informed deliberation, and collaborative governance, and illustrates them through case vignettes on personalization, assessment integrity, and inclusion. It concludes with a research agenda to empirically test the framework and provides actionable guidelines for policymakers, principals, and superintendents seeking to foster human-centered, ethically governed AI integration in schools. The study contributes to theory by bridging leadership ethics with AI governance and offers a structured lens for future empirical research.
Given the demanding nature of their managerial positions and life demands, women leaders frequently struggle with work–life balance (WLB). This phenomenological study explores the experiences and organisational strategies for multitasking among 10 female heads in Tanzanian secondary schools. The study revealed that female leaders are experiencing gender-based stereotypes, socio-cultural expectations and structural expectations affecting WLB. Guided by Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory, the study demonstrated how microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, and macrosystem forces interact to shape women's work–life negotiations. The findings further revealed that the organisational strategies promoting WLB include a supportive organisational culture, recognition and appreciation, and flexible work arrangements. The study's findings provide novel insights into gender-sensitive leadership in the Tanzanian school context. The study contributes to a broader understanding of the value of flexible arrangements and supportive organisational structures that enable female leaders to balance their personal and professional lives. It provides context-specific insights that may inform future discussions among policymakers and school leaders on institutional practices in Tanzanian secondary schools.
Artificial intelligence (AI) leadership scholarship positions principals as the architects of reform, while reducing teacher leadership to implementation. This study inverted that gaze by examining how AI-active teacher leaders conceptualized the principalship required for AI-saturated schooling without surrendering pedagogy, ethics, or agency. The study used an interpretive design and drew on interviews with 23 teacher leaders from six Arab States. Data were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis, generating five themes. Participants construed AI as a third actor that reordered credibility, accelerated decision cycles, and intensified vulnerability around data, care, and professional judgment. They described principalship as leading under epistemic uncertainty, buffering pedagogical experimentation from turbulence and blame, publicly legitimating AI expertise through decision rights, ethically firewalling the school through boundary governance, and re-engineering principalship as socio-technical governance rather than task distribution. The study reframed AI-saturated principalship as an architecture of permissions, protections, and legitimations that amplifies teacher leadership and safeguards educational purpose.
This article examines how dominant global discourses on inclusive education responsibilise the professional practices of two school leaders in Germany and Romania. Drawing on data from a larger European Union-funded comparative research project on disability inclusion in education, our discourse analysis is theoretically informed by Foucault's concepts of discourse and power. The findings suggest that inclusion operates in two distinct ways: first, as a normative, moral and idealistic goal; and second, as a policy technology that governs leadership practices through logics of cost-effectiveness, accountability and administrative control. Viewed from this perspective, it can be argued that the discourse of inclusion responsibilises school leaders to enact inclusive ideals, while structural and economic constraints render the realisation of these ideals practically unattainable. Our study thus highlights the need for systemic public investment if the global inclusion agenda is to be meaningfully translated by school leaders into whole-school practices that support inclusive education.
The present study aimed to explore the implementation of health promotion (HP) in schools in Malaysia and Switzerland, investigate how school leaders’ attitudes are related to such efforts, and identify contextual factors that contribute to HP implementation. School leaders from both countries (Malaysia and Switzerland) completed an online survey including the School Promotion of Social and Emotional Health, and a comparative analysis (hierarchical regression analysis) was conducted to investigate the levels of HP implementation in both countries and the possible effects of school leaders’ attitudes. Although both countries had comparable results on overall HP implementation levels, Malaysia had higher levels for certain subscales, such as fostering a positive school community. In Switzerland, HP implementation was closely linked to school leaders’ attitudes. Possible explanations for these findings can be found in the distinct governing systems of the two countries. This study offers a unique comparative perspective on HP in two countries with distinctly different governing structures. It also contributes to educational policy by highlighting the need for context-sensitive approaches to HP implementation.
This paper argues that educational leadership plays a pivotal role in harmonizing technological innovation with ecological, authentic, and human-centered learning processes. The integration of technology into the field of sustainable education is strongly related to the authenticity of its content. School leaders help to integrate technology as an important pillar for understanding learning and turning students into an active effort to contribute to the learning process, because through this effort the achievement of the desired goals can occur. Through the Ecological-Authentic Leadership for Technology Integration Model, technology becomes a tool that strengthens ecological connections, authentic learning and justice-oriented leadership, and educational leaders become architects of sustainable communities in which human, economic, and technological forces reinforce one another.
School principals are vital to schools, yet many countries struggle to attract school leaders. As a result, leadership succession planning has become increasingly important. As official job descriptions shed light on role expectations, this study uses official job descriptions from 98 job advertisements to provide an overview of pathways to principalship in Sweden. Five types of qualifications leading to principalship were identified. The main pathway involves a broad set of criteria, including a relevant university degree and prior experience as a (school) leader. Through the lens of legitimate peripheral participation, assistant principalship is seen as an inbound trajectory to becoming a full insider, while a role as teacher leader (i.e., ‘first teacher’) is considered a boundary practice. A specially qualified principal type is on an outbound trajectory towards other roles. By mapping these pathways, this study provides material that can inform policy and structural discussions.
Leadership in pre-service teacher education has gained increasing scholarly attention, yet the field remains conceptually fragmented and unevenly synthesized across contexts and methodologies. This systematic literature review aims to consolidate and critically analyze recent research on leadership in pre-service teacher education, with particular attention to conceptual foundations, institutional practices, and developmental outcomes. Guided by the PRISMA framework, a comprehensive search was conducted across two major databases, Scopus ( n = 1,176) and Web of Science ( n = 303), covering peer-reviewed publications published between 2022 and 2026. After applying rigorous inclusion and exclusion criteria, the final corpus comprised studies that explicitly addressed leadership within initial or pre-service teacher education contexts. The synthesis identifies three overarching themes: (1) Conceptualisations and Models of Leadership in Pre-Service Teacher Education, which reveal a shift from positional and hierarchical views towards relational, distributed, and practice-oriented leadership models; (2) Leadership Practices and Institutional Conditions Supporting Pre-Service Teacher Development, highlighting the role of mentoring, institutional climate, curriculum design, and leadership distribution in shaping professional learning experiences; and (3) Leadership for Capacity Building, Agency, and Future-Ready Pre-Service Teachers, which emphasizes leadership as a mechanism for fostering professional identity, adaptability, innovation, and readiness for complex educational demands. The findings reveal a shift from leadership as a formal or positional role towards leadership as a relational, pedagogical, and institutional process embedded within curriculum design, mentoring structures, and organizational cultures. However, leadership development remains unevenly institutionalized and inconsistently operationalized across contexts. This review contributes by reconceptualizing leadership as a mediating institutional condition rather than an individual role, offering strategic implications for teacher education policy, programmed design, and sustainable leadership development in initial teacher education.
This article reports research that explores headteacher attrition in England through a theological-anthropological lens, and I argue that contemporary educational systems replicate ancient sacrificial logics in their treatment of leaders. Using a case study approach, informed by an interpretivist epistemological orientation and qualitative interview data, focused on a retired headteacher, it reveals how headteachers are positioned as ritual scapegoats, figures whose removal serves to maintain systemic stability while obscuring deeper dysfunctions. Drawing on ritual theory and anthropological accounts of sacrifice in ancient Greek and Mesopotamian societies, the article conceptualises headship as a ‘sacred office’ burdened with symbolic and moral responsibility beyond its practical remit. It contends that the expendability of school leaders is not simply a managerial issue but a cultural phenomenon rooted in long-standing patterns of communal purification through sacrifice. This reframing opens new avenues for leadership scholarship by highlighting the cultural and existential dimensions of leadership attrition, thereby challenging the technocratic narratives that currently dominate the discourse.
Scholars have presented compelling arguments suggesting that a lack of artificial intelligence (AI) literacy (i.e. understanding the nature and capabilities of large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT) is a primary driver of inappropriate use of LLMs (e.g. academic misconduct) by students. In contrast, I argue that more emphasis should be placed on the incentives for the misuse of LLMs. Specifically, the misalignments between the goals of key stakeholders (i.e. students/employers vs college faculty/administration) incentivize students to use LLMs in a manner that undermines the purpose of a college education, thereby demonstrating that AI literacy skills insufficiently prevent inappropriate LLM use. I describe the scope and implications of the misalignments prior to presenting pedagogical considerations for faculty and administrators. This presentation includes a recommendation that faculty and administrators utilize goal orientation to understand and mitigate the academic misconduct associated with incorporating LLMs into their respective pedagogies.
Despite growing global emphasis on educational leadership for school and system improvement, a disconnect persists between aspirational policy frameworks promoted by international organisations and the lived realities of leadership at local levels. Given that the most recent Global Education Monitoring (GEM) 2024 report focuses on educational leadership, in this paper, we use interpretive policy analysis and a conceptual lens of leadership for learning to explore how the GEM2024 report frames accountability expectations for school leadership at national levels, and investigate the implications of policy levers for the development and sustainability of leadership practices locally. Findings highlight the need for contextually responsive leadership policies and accountability mechanisms that move beyond standardised and generalised global ideals. In doing so, the paper advances understanding of how supranational discourses shape leadership practice and identifies pathways for aligning global frameworks with the realities of diverse and complex education systems.
Teacher leadership is framed as participatory governance, yet teacher leaders (TLs) may remain implementers rather than authorized co-deciders. This qualitative study examines TLs’ participation in school-level policy making through three governance dimensions: access, influence, and boundary crossing. Findings from semi-structured interviews with 20 classroom TLs suggest that access is managed through selective invitation, service-based entry, and informal corridor decision circuits, shaping where TLs can exert influence. Consequently, influence concentrates in low-stakes pedagogical domains and is often diluted or reversed during formal approval as issues become more sensitive and consequential. Under such conditions, boundary regulation tightens, producing performative participation and self-silencing.
This study examines how middle leaders in Qatari government schools interpret and enact their roles within a persistently centralised policy environment. Using Q methodology, 26 subject coordinators from seven schools sorted 41 statements designed to capture intrapersonal, relational and contextual influences on middle leadership. By-person factor analysis produced four shared viewpoints: (F-1) the pragmatic professional sustained confidence through self-directed learning while navigating compliance demands, (F-2) the constrained professional described administrative overload and limited authority that reduced time for core leadership work, (F-3) the autonomous professional emphasised judgements based on student needs and localised discretion, with less reliance on wider networks and (F-4) the collaborative professional relied on peer cooperation and collective routines as the basis of their influence. Across the viewpoints, an instructional leadership role remained visible, yet participants differed in how they constructed professional agency, mobilised relationships and experienced centralisation in curriculum and evaluation. The findings suggest that reforms relying on tighter mandates risk narrowing middle leadership into compliance routines. They also indicate that middle leaders’ improvement capacity can be strengthened by participatory decision structures, institutionalised collaboration and preparation for curriculum leadership that is matched with formal authorisation to contribute.
The discussion around Education 4.0 focuses on technological innovation, artificial intelligence, and digital transformation, creating the impression that technology alone can transform schools. However, simply introducing digital tools does not guarantee meaningful pedagogical change, especially when organizational structures and mindsets remain unchanged. This article argues that the success of Education 4.0 requires a parallel transformation of leadership. Leadership 4.0 is not limited to technological infrastructure, but constitutes a framework that combines digital, transformative, distributed, flexible, and ethical leadership. Leaders are called upon to shape a culture of learning, manage uncertainty, ensure participation, and set ethical limits on the use of technology. Critical challenges emerge, such as resistance to change, digital inequalities, and teacher burnout. The article concludes that Education 4.0 is not a technological initiative but an organizational, cultural, and ethical transformation. Without a coherent strategy, effective training, and people-centered leadership, any reform risks remaining superficial.
This study investigated how teacher leaders enact AI leadership identities in K–12 schools. Drawing on an interpretive qualitative design, 21 semi-structured interviews were conducted with AI-advocate teacher leaders. Data were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis supported by NVivo 15, with the analysis organised around four theoretically derived lenses: enacting AI leadership through relational influence, crafting AI leadership as professional identity, brokering and buffering AI in school ecologies and reasoning about AI through competing rationalities. Findings show that teacher leaders lead AI ‘from the classroom’, using visible experimentation, informal interactions and accumulated trust to shape colleagues’ practice, while simultaneously filtering the AI toolscape, slowing or reshaping initiatives they perceive as harmful, and protecting students’ data, dignity and agency. AI leadership identities emerge as co-authored by colleagues and students, experienced as both empowering and exposing and sustained through continual calibration between accountability demands and educational purpose. The study contributes to teacher leadership scholarship and AI-in-education research by foregrounding teacher leaders as pivotal human actors who, in practice, structure the architectures through which AI is woven into schooling, and by underscoring that teacher leadership itself must be conceptualised as fluid and non-static in the face of AI's rapidly reconfiguring educational landscape.
