This qualitative study examines the characteristics of ethical leadership and diversity in the Greek educational system. Despite the growing international interest in these concepts, there is limited research on how senior educational directors understand and implement ethical leadership and diversity management to support vulnerable groups. Addressing this research gap, the study explored Regional Education Directors’ perspectives on ethical leadership and diversity management and investigated the practices they develop to promote inclusion within a bureaucratic and centralized educational context. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 10 Regional Education Directors and analyzed using thematic analysis. This is the first study to include high-level directors in educational research in Greece. The findings revealed educational inequalities, discriminatory attitudes toward students from diverse backgrounds by some parents, and limited opportunities for the development of ethical leadership practices due to the strict legal framework governing education. However, participants described initiatives aimed at fostering inclusive practices and supporting diversity in response to the increasing educational challenges associated with migration across Europe. The study provides practical implications for educational leadership and management by highlighting the need for greater institutional support, enhanced leadership preparation, and more flexible policy frameworks to enable school leaders to promote equity and inclusion effectively.
This article presents a conceptually informed qualitative study situated at the intersection of educational leadership, educide, scholasticide, and epistemic erasure. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with ten Palestinian school leaders and informed by decolonial, transformative, and crisis leadership scholarship, the study examines how educational leaders sustain learning, care, continuity, and hope under conditions of systemic educational destruction. Situated within the ongoing devastation of Palestinian education, the study explores how school leaders navigate displacement, loss, insecurity, and the collapse of educational infrastructure. Through thematic analysis, participants described leadership practices centered on sustaining learning, providing psychosocial support, mobilizing community resources, preserving educational purpose, and nurturing collective resilience despite conditions of extreme uncertainty. The findings suggest that educational leadership in such contexts extends beyond conventional administrative functions and becomes a practice of educational survival, cultural continuity, and epistemic resistance. In response, the article advances the concept of anti-scholasticide leadership praxis to explain how educational leaders protect educational continuity, preserve conditions for future knowledge production, and resist the erasure of collective memory and identity. By bringing together empirical testimony and conceptual development, the study extends understandings of educational leadership in contexts of war, violence, and educational destruction and argues that leadership under educide must be understood as a practice of care, continuity, and educational justice.
As political opposition to equity-centered education intensifies, PK-12 school and district leaders committed to social justice face mounting pressure to conceal or compromise their efforts. This qualitative study examines how school leaders navigate hostile political environments while advancing equity and improvement for minoritized students. Drawing on discreet activism and improvement science as theoretical frameworks, the study catalogs the strategies leaders employ to promote social justice amidst resistance from policymakers, community members, and institutional structures. Our analysis reveals a “resistance playbook” characterized by strategic reframing of language, relationship-building, data-driven advocacy, and targeted coalition formation. The study also documents the profound emotional and professional toll this work exacts, including burnout, moral distress, and departure from the field. Implications are offered for leadership preparation programs and policymakers committed to sustaining equity-focused leadership in contested educational landscapes.
Educational leadership research has traditionally examined top-down, middle-out and bottom-up leadership as distinct approaches within education systems. Less attention has been paid to the forms of leadership that emerge as educational actors respond to prolonged crises, particularly in rural and peripheral communities. Drawing on a place-based perspective, this study explores how educational actors navigate prolonged uncertainty and disruption, and the forms of leadership that emerge in sustaining educational continuity and community well-being. Using a qualitative research design, the study draws on 72 interviews with heads of local authorities, directors of education, school principals, teachers, lead youth educators working in non-formal education settings (hereafter, lead educators), and community activists in rural communities in northern Israel during the Iron Swords War. The findings suggest that, despite occupying distinct formal roles within the educational ecosystem, participants demonstrated remarkably similar leadership practices. Leadership during a protracted crisis was not confined to formal positions or hierarchical structures. Rather, it emerged through relationships among municipal leaders, education officials, educators and community actors, who frequently moved beyond their formal responsibilities to broker partnerships, mobilise resources, devise adaptive solutions, and respond to evolving local needs. The study contributes to the educational leadership literature by demonstrating how leadership is enacted beyond formal hierarchies during prolonged uncertainty. It advances a place-based understanding of leadership as a collective and relational process that sustains educational continuity, strengthens community resilience, and supports community well-being in rural communities experiencing prolonged disruption.
This qualitative study of 17 educational leader candidates interrogates how future administrators negotiate generative artificial intelligence's (GenAI) disruptive insertion into P-12 school activity systems. Framed by the integrated lenses of Professional Capital theory and Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), the research traces systemic contradictions between rapid algorithmic capabilities and lagging institutional rules, professional norms, and layered, entrenched divisions of labor. Data were generated via open-ended pre and postcourse surveys during a graduate leadership preparation course in summer 2025, intersecting with an acute macrohistorical shock: the public popularization of an MIT Media Lab preprint warning of GenAI causing student “cognitive debt.” Baseline findings reveal severe primary and secondary contradictions characterized by an acute fear of automated deprofessionalization, curriculum deskilling, and the depletion of teacher decisional capital under rigid district policies. However, post-intervention reflections indicate microlevel movements along an expansive learning cycle. When leadership preparation intentionally mobilizes social capital through collaborative theoretical reflection, candidates shift from defensive, rule-bound policy enforcement toward critical AI literacy. Ultimately, this article offers a conceptual framework for leadership preparation programs to buffer school ecosystems against external narrative panics, resolve institutional friction, and sustain human professional capital against automated erosion.
