This article examines the academic topography of charismatic leadership research in educational studies using a bibliometric and text-mining approach that combines literature analysis with bibliometrics. The analysis of 2469 peer-reviewed articles published from 2000 to 2024 reveals three predominant research areas: emotional intelligence and motivation, student engagement in digital learning environments, and sociopolitical leadership. Bibliometric results reveal an upward trend in research on charisma and its effects on performance, equity and reform. The article provides conceptual insights and charts new directions for future studies on the culturally different digital mediation of education.
This study aimed to test a moderated mediation model in which the relationship between distributed leadership and middle leaders’ job satisfaction was examined, with trust in principal as the moderator and work engagement as the mediator. Using data from 335 deputy principals working in primary, lower secondary, and upper secondary schools in Ankara, we tested structural relationships among the variables using latent moderated structural equations with maximum likelihood estimation. The findings indicate that distributed leadership is directly and positively associated with both work engagement and job satisfaction, and work engagement is also positively related to job satisfaction. Trust in principal significantly moderated the relationship between distributed leadership and work engagement, such that this relationship became stronger as trust increased. Finally, the indirect effect of distributed leadership on job satisfaction through work engagement was significant under conditions of high trust in principal. These findings suggest that enhancing middle leaders’ job satisfaction depends not only on the distribution of leadership responsibilities but also on the presence of a trust-based relational climate.
This study examines how school principals enact leadership during a (poly)crisis shaped by forced migration and major disasters within a highly centralised education system. Focusing on Hatay, Türkiye, after the 6 February 2023 earthquakes, the study adopts a qualitative case study design using the Biographic Narrative Interpretive Method, supported by critical thematic and contrapuntal analysis. The findings show that leadership in a (poly)crisis extends beyond technical crisis management. Principals navigated bureaucratic constraints, institutional uncertainty and competing forms of knowledge while using locally embedded relationships to sustain educational access and support their communities. At the same time, centralised accountability systems and gendered power relations continued to reproduce structural inequalities during the crisis. Drawing on the concepts of governmentality, institutional liminality and epistemic injustice, the study offers a critical framework for understanding leadership in conditions of prolonged and overlapping crises. It contributes to crisis leadership research by examining leadership in a highly centralised education system experiencing sustained disruption beyond the predominantly Global North and single-crisis contexts that dominate existing literature.
This study examined a moderated mediation model exploring the relationship between principal workload (PWL) and problem-solving competence, with cognitive flexibility as a mediator and principal autonomy (PA) as a moderator. Data were collected from 346 school principals in Türkiye, and latent moderated mediation structural equation modelling with maximum likelihood estimation was employed to test the hypothesised relationships. The results revealed that PWL had significant negative direct effects on both cognitive flexibility and problem-solving competence. Furthermore, PA significantly moderated the relationship between workload and cognitive flexibility, attenuating the negative effect as autonomy increased. PA also significantly moderated the indirect relationship between workload and problem-solving competence through cognitive flexibility. Overall, the findings underscore the joint role of workload and autonomy in shaping school principals’ problem-solving competence. Implications for educational policy and leadership practice are discussed.
,Numerous studies have investigated the influence of leadership on teachers’ proactive work behaviors; however, the mediating roles of psychological empowerment and self-efficacy remain underexplored and warrant further attention. This study aims to analyze how school principals’ empowering leadership behaviors influence teachers’ proactive work behaviors through psychological empowerment and teacher self-efficacy. A structural model was developed and tested using data from 490 Turkish secondary school teachers. The results confirmed that psychological empowerment and teacher self-efficacy each mediated the link between empowering leadership and proactive work behavior, with a sequential mediation effect via both, as well as a remaining direct effect, indicating partial mediation. In schools where principals demonstrate empowering leadership, teachers report higher levels of psychological empowerment and self-efficacy, which, in turn, foster greater proactive behaviors. These findings underscore the vital role of psychological resources in translating empowering leadership into teacher proactivity and contribute to the educational leadership literature.
Elevated teacher turnover poses enduring challenges internationally, yet how school leadership shapes withdrawal decisions – including whether teachers feel heard or find their voice suppressed – remains empirically underexamined. Through semi-structured interviews with 58 teachers in Scotland who had left teaching or substantially reduced their professional commitments before retirement age, this qualitative study explored how participants understood school leadership's role in their withdrawal trajectories. Drawing on Job Demands-Resources theory, unfolding turnover theory and compassionate leadership frameworks, the analysis traced leadership's mediating influence between systemic pressures and individual outcomes across three domains: relational trust, teacher development, and working conditions. Leadership practices shaped the pace, mode and emotional tenor of withdrawal, with relational dimensions of leadership emerging as consequential yet largely invisible to current retention monitoring.
Principals’ leadership role in shaping effective teaching practices has become increasingly critical. However, empirical evidence on how principals’ instructional leadership influences student academic achievement in Rwandan primary schools, from teachers’ perspectives, remains limited. Therefore, to bridge this gap, a quantitative cross-sectional correlation design was adopted. The study was guided by Instructional Leadership Theory and Social Learning Theory. Data were collected using a structured questionnaire from a sample size of 147 primary school teachers and analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling. The study found that principals’ instructional leadership positively and significantly affects teachers’ instructional practices and motivation. Furthermore, while teachers’ instructional practices significantly mediate the relationship between instructional leadership and perceived academic achievement, teacher motivation did not demonstrate a statistically significant effect at the 5% level. This study highlights the importance of effective instructional leadership in enhancing teaching quality. Finally, it also provides insights for policy initiatives aimed at improving learner outcomes within Rwandan primary schools.
This study examines whether senior teachers’ perceptions of role stressors moderate the relationship between their principals’ boundary activities and senior management team innovation in school. Drawing on Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) theory, we focus on three stressors known to heighten teachers’ tension and burnout: role overload, role ambiguity, and role conflict. To reduce same-source and common-method bias, data were collected from two sources: senior management team members and principals, yielding 359 participants across 89 high schools. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that role overload and role conflict, but not role ambiguity, moderate the relationship between principal boundary activities and senior management team innovation. These findings highlight important implications for both principals and school management teams, particularly regarding resource allocation, work-design decisions, and targeted professional development to foster innovation under conditions of stress.
Universities rapidly scale learning and administrative analytics to support strategic and operational decisions, yet staff acceptance often lags when data use appears opaque, compliance-driven, or misaligned with academic values. Drawing on a sequential explanatory mixed-methods study of 238 academic and administrative leaders in four comprehensive Chinese universities, with follow-up interviews sampled across high, medium, and low levels of trust, literacy, and governance, we find that leadership transparency and dialogue predict institutional trust in analytics, while perceived staff trust remains more limited and constrained by concerns about surveillance, fairness, and participation, with middle leaders improvising data literacy support and ethical safeguards in context. The article proposes an Ethical Analytics Leadership framework in which transparency, dialogue, capacity building, and ethical governance reinforce trustworthy analytics, and explains how leaders navigate tensions between accountability and autonomy in data-intensive, highly centralized systems.
This research examines the nexus between distributed leadership (DL) and professional learning communities (PLCs) in two public secondary schools in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT). The study was co-designed between the researchers, school leaders and teachers, which involved an ongoing collaboration to design and implement the research. The study explores understandings of teachers and school leaders in relation to the functioning and efficacy of DL in PLC groups. Rather than assuming the relationship between DL and PLC groups as natural and synergetic, this article problematises this dynamic by focusing on the nuanced contextual factors in schools that are pivotal in constructing an understanding of the nature, affordances and limitations of DL in PLCs. The method of research was focus group discussions with staff members based on social network (SN) clusters. The research findings revealed that PLC groups can serve as powerful and meaningful vehicles to both engender and enhance DL practices, and collaboration. However, it was also observed that contextual factors such as the school culture, and nature of the PLC compositions and leadership dynamics could also influence and challenge the effectiveness of building and sustaining DL, evidenced in the different perspectives from participants in the two schools.
Studies increasingly emphasize teacher leadership and job satisfaction as vital elements. As well, scholars have primarily conceptualized teacher self-efficacy through variable-centered approaches, potentially overlooking its heterogeneity. In response to current calls for person-centered approaches, this study aimed to identify latent profiles of teacher self-efficacy and examine how these profiles operate within the association between teacher leadership and job satisfaction. Data from the Teaching and Learning International Survey 2024 were analyzed, including responses from 4976 Turkish high school teachers. The findings revealed three latent profiles of teacher self-efficacy: low, moderate, and high. Moreover, teacher leadership significantly predicted job satisfaction and was positively related to teachers’ likelihood of belonging to self-efficacy profiles. In turn, job satisfaction differed systematically across these profiles, with teachers in the high self-efficacy profile reporting higher job satisfaction. Taken together, the findings suggest that latent self-efficacy profiles may help explain how teacher leadership is associated with differences in teacher job satisfaction. Overall, the results underline the importance of teachers’ self-efficacy profiles for exploring teacher leadership and job satisfaction. Implications and future research are discussed.
Digital transformation has intensified expectations for teacher innovation, yet less is known about leadership conditions that support innovation. This study examines relationships among learning-centered leadership, teacher digital competencies, and teacher innovation, focusing on the mediating role of digital competencies and the contextual influence of school location. Teacher-level survey data were collected from 752 primary school teachers in urban, suburban, and nonurban schools in Wenzhou. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling, bootstrapped mediation analysis, supplementary dimensional diagnostics, multigroup invariance testing, and latent mean comparison. Learning-centered leadership was positively associated with teacher innovation, and the composite mediation model showed a statistically significant positive indirect association through teacher digital competencies. When digital competencies were disaggregated, the total indirect effect in the simultaneous dimensional model was not statistically significant; separate single-mediator models nevertheless showed positive indirect effects for each dimension. Teachers in urban schools reported higher levels than those in nonurban schools on all three variables, while the structural relationships remained invariant across location groups. These findings indicate the relevance of learning-centered leadership to teacher innovation and identify digital competencies as an integrated professional capacity that partly accounts for this relationship.
Teacher leadership is widely recognised as important for school improvement, yet the processes through which distributed leadership as leadership practice translates into enacted teacher leadership remain under-explored. Situated within a leadership-as-practice perspective, this study examined whether reflective practice mediates the relationship between distributed leadership and teacher leadership. Survey data were collected from 391 in-service K-12 teachers across six Arab countries. Distributed leadership, reflective practice and teacher leadership were measured using standardised self-report survey instruments. Reflective practice was modelled through inter-personal, intra-personal and strategic reflection, while teacher leadership was represented by instructional leadership and school community and advocacy. Confirmatory factor analysis supported the measurement model, and structural equation modelling tested the hypothesised pathways. Distributed leadership was positively associated with all three reflective dimensions. Reflective practice, however, mediated this relationship in differentiated ways. Inter-personal reflection emerged as the strongest pathway to both teacher leadership outcomes; strategic reflection contributed primarily to school community and advocacy, and intra-personal reflection showed no significant association with either outcome. The study identifies reflective practice as a key mechanism through which distributed leadership may be converted into enacted teacher leadership.
Schools are increasingly confronted with complex and evolving demands, requiring continuous organizational and instructional improvement. School leaders are in a pivotal position to design and initiate school improvement initiatives. Effective school improvement depends on change processes at both the organizational and individual teacher levels, yet few studies have addressed this interplay—especially from a longitudinal perspective. Drawing on theoretical frameworks at both levels, this study examines how principals involve teachers in school-level decision-making and how this is associated with teachers’ perceptions of organizational readiness for change and collective teacher efficacy. Based on panel data from three measurement points over 2.5 years ( T 1 : 619; T 2 : 674; T 3 : 263) collected from teachers in Germany, we find that while teachers report generally high levels of participation, relatively few are involved in concrete aspects of school improvement. Higher levels of participation are associated with increases in teachers’ perceptions of organizational readiness for change and collective teacher efficacy over time. These findings underscore the importance of leadership practices that meaningfully engage teachers in school improvement and suggest that principals need the skills to involve teachers appropriately, while school administration must ensure the structural conditions that allow teachers to act on their motivation.
Dominant models of school leadership conceptualize effectiveness in terms of improvement, development, and organizational growth, typically assuming institutional stability and sufficient capacity. However, many schools operate under conditions of sustained institutional fragility, characterized by cumulative policy demands, constrained resources, and limited buffering capacity. In such contexts, the central challenge of leadership shifts from enabling improvement to preventing organizational erosion and sustaining coordinated functioning. This study introduces organizational repair as a theoretical lens to examine the relational and emotional work through which leaders stabilize organizational coherence, professional commitment, and coordinated action under continuous strain. A qualitative-dominant mixed-methods multiple-case study was conducted in five public primary schools in Cyprus (n = 124), combining whole-network social network analysis with interviews, observations, and document analysis. The findings demonstrate that leadership under sustained fragility is enacted through three interrelated mechanisms: trust stabilization, emotional containment, and the redistribution of relational labor. These processes sustain capacity maintenance, the preservation of minimal relational coherence and professional commitment necessary for organizational functioning, with distributed leadership emerging as a compensatory response concentrating maintenance work among middle leaders and informal actors. The study re-specifies leadership effectiveness by identifying the boundary conditions under which improvement-oriented frameworks become analytically insufficient, advancing a theoretically distinct and context-sensitive account of leadership under continuous structural strain.
Educational leaders face increasing pressure to innovate while maintaining coherence and equity, yet existing leadership traditions require more practice-supported accounts of innovation under constraint. This qualitative study examines how accomplished leaders address these challenges through semi-structured interviews with 10 nationally recognised U.S. PK-12 school leaders, including principals, superintendents and a state commissioner of education. Four interconnected themes emerged: Systems Design and Alignment, Stakeholder Engagement and Collective Ownership, Capacity Building and Distributed Leadership, and Relational Trust and Organisational Culture. Grounded in Freire's concept of praxis, these themes constitute the Four Leadership Innovation Praxes (FLIP), a practice-grounded heuristic, not a prescriptive framework or validated tool, but an interpretive lens organising four interrelated praxes through which accomplished leaders navigate innovation under constraint. FLIP offers a way of engaging the knowing–doing gap in educational leadership by linking conceptual coherence with situated, reflective practice. The implications include reorienting leadership preparation toward experiential learning and fostering policy contexts that enable rather than constrain innovation.
This study develops and validates a contextually grounded model of teacher leadership in Chinese higher education, addressing a gap in the literature dominated by school-based and Western-centric frameworks. Drawing on mixed methods, including grounded theory and confirmatory factor analysis, data were collected from 352 university faculty members across multiple Chinese provinces. This study employed an exploratory sequential mixed-methods design: (1) a qualitative phase (in-depth interviews) to generate context-specific dimensions and indicators of teacher leadership; and (2) a quantitative phase (survey) to test the emergent model via exploratory factor analysis/confirmatory factor analysis. The qualitative phase was conducted in October-November 2023; the quantitative survey took place from November 2023 to February 2024. The resulting four-dimensional model encompasses moral leadership, teaching leadership, research leadership, and team leadership. Findings reveal that moral and teaching leadership dominate faculty perceptions, reflecting the cultural importance of ethical conduct and pedagogical engagement in the Chinese academic tradition. Conversely, research and team leadership are less emphasized, suggesting structural constraints and potential tensions within performance-based evaluation systems. This study contributes both theoretically and methodologically by offering a replicable framework for analyzing teacher leadership in higher education and by highlighting the need for culturally responsive leadership development. Implications for faculty evaluation policies, institutional culture, and global academic leadership reform are discussed.
Various leadership models have been increasingly used in educational research over the last few decades. While there have been ample systematic reviews of individual leadership models in the past decade, a review of multiple leadership models to identify comparable trends and variations has been lacking. This study aims to fill this gap by reviewing a comprehensive body of literature on a broad range of leadership models in education, using a hybrid review approach that combines scoping and bibliometric methods. Relying on 1047 peer-reviewed journal articles, the review provides several important insights. First, teacher leadership, instructional leadership, distributed leadership, and transformational leadership have been identified as the four most-studied leadership models in the field. Second, social justice leadership, pedagogical leadership, authentic leadership, system leadership, digital leadership, inclusive leadership, and culturally responsive leadership have emerged or gained greater attention over the last decade. Third, integrated leadership studies have also shown an increasing trend across various forms, including shared instructional leadership, transformational teacher leadership, and digital instructional leadership. Finally, the geographical, methodological, and conceptual variations among the most prominent models are presented in detail, and the potential drivers of these variations and trends, along with their implications for future research, are discussed.
Effective leadership by school principals is reported to involve shaping school cultures, fostering collaboration, allocating resources, and motivating teachers’ attitudes which results in (in-)directly impacting student learning. While the literature recommends a move toward collective and distributed processes of sense-making, the role of the school principal and their respective leadership practices in the context of curriculum reform is still largely underrepresented. Using an integrated framework of policy enactment, sense-making and instructional leadership, this article explores how school principals interpreted curriculum reform at lower secondary level in the Republic of Ireland and how these interpretations translated into leadership practices. This qualitative study, part of a larger national 4-year longitudinal study, interviewed 65 secondary school principals approximately a decade after implementation regarding their experiences of leading Junior Cycle reforms. Our findings reveal that in contested reform contexts, instructional leadership dimensions of programme management and climate-building functionally collapse into reciprocal practices shaped by principals’ diagnostic assessment of organisational readiness. Additionally, time operates as both a manageable resource and a healing mechanism through which resistance dissipates over time. We conclude that the principal's role as policy enabler requires antecedent relational work in creating cultural conditions through which collective sense-making and significant change can proceed.
