This study advances understanding of leadership for school improvement by reframing collaborative leadership as a relational organisational process rather than as a structural distribution of roles. While prior research has emphasised shared and distributed leadership, limited attention has been given to how leadership is enacted through everyday interaction, particularly within highly centralised educational systems. Adopting a social constructivist perspective, the study employs an interpretivist qualitative multiple-case design across 18 primary schools in Cyprus, drawing on data from 108 participants, including principals, middle leaders, and teachers. Data were generated through semi-structured interviews and document analysis and analysed using thematic analysis. The findings show that collaborative leadership operates through three interrelated relational mechanisms: participatory engagement, relational interaction, and collective sensemaking and problem-solving. These mechanisms enable the mobilisation of professional knowledge, foster trust, and support coordinated action, thereby strengthening organisational capacity for improvement. The study contributes by reconceptualising collaborative leadership as a relational organisational mechanism, providing empirical insight into how leadership is enacted through interaction, and demonstrating how such practices function as a situated response to constrained agency in centralised systems. Overall, it offers a practice-based account of leadership as a relational organisational accomplishment beyond the principal.
Some emotional labour performed by school principals can be described as care work. Drawing on data from a broader study into Australian government principals' emotional labour, this article explores how care is performed by 40 principals who shared their feelings about managing a critical incident via a national qualitative survey. We found that principals' care could be categorised in five ways: caring about, caring for others, self-preservation, being not cared for and working with others to develop collective-know-how. This heuristic, and thus our analysis of principal testimony data, is informed by the feminist theorising of key scholars who explore care as labour in neoliberal contexts. We show that for the principals in our study, individualised and instrumentalist approaches to care continue to dominate over system and/or collective care infrastructures. We interrogate the challenges and possibilities that emerge in the context of this dynamic and argue that while departmental systems and protocols can support principals to perform care work in their schools, these systems do not include sufficient care for principals themselves and are not structured in ways that encourage collective caring practices.
Teacher leadership is vital for school improvement, yet little is known about the varied patterns of engagement or the factors supporting teachers' leadership development. This study used latent profile analysis, a person-centered approach designed to identify unobserved subgroups based on shared profiles of teacher leadership engagement, among 656 Nevada elementary teachers. Five distinct profiles emerged, and random forest classification was used to examine the most influential predictors differentiating profile membership. Equitable access to leadership opportunities most strongly differentiated the lowest and moderate profiles, indicating that school climate operates as a gateway to initial leadership engagement. In contrast, teaching experience and instructional innovation emerged as the most influential factors distinguishing moderate and high profiles, suggesting that advanced leadership requires both accumulated professional expertise and ongoing pedagogical innovation. These results call for differentiated approaches to teacher leadership development, emphasising inclusive structures for emergent leaders and professional development focused on instructional innovation for more experienced teachers.
The ongoing digital transformation is forcing changes both in society and education. This qualitative study identifies the challenges faced by school leaders in Poland in the context of the development of students' digital competences. The research process combined an analysis of strategic national educational policy documents (legal acts and national strategies) regarding digitization and the development of digital competencies with empirical data collected through six focus group interviews with school principals and educational leaders, as well as in-depth interviews with decision-makers, researchers, experts, and representatives of non-governmental organisations. The collected material was analysed using thematic analysis supported by MAXQDA software. The results reveal that education policy documents shaping the Polish education system strongly emphasise the importance of both digital competences and modern technologies in the learning process. However, these policies primary focus on organisational and infrastructural challenges related to the introduction of technology in schools. Key policy priorities include access to technological devices, creating conditions that facilitate the effective use of digital tools, and regulations ensuring student safety. The findings indicate that the practical implementation of these measures extends beyond such elements. School leaders clearly point to a gap between educational policy assumptions and every school management practice in developing students' digital competences. The insights from this study highlight the urgent need for more coherent and context-sensitive policy frameworks, which may also offer guidance for addressing similar challenges in other educational systems.
Educational inequalities have become one of the most urgent challenges in contemporary education in Poland. School leaders are pivotal in addressing these disparities, yet they often face structural and socio-economic barriers that hinder the implementation of inclusive policies. Drawing on Durkheim and Merton's theory, the research identifies two dimensions of anomie: organisational infeasibility and leadership disintegration. Using qualitative methods, including focus groups and individual interviews with educational leaders, the study reveals a disconnect between policy expectations and practical realities. Research results indicate that anomie encompasses two dimensions: a breakdown in organisational feasibility and a breakdown in educational leadership.
The role of the high school principal has evolved significantly over the past few decades, becoming increasingly complex and requiring an orientation towards fostering both student and adult learning. Using learning-oriented leadership model, this qualitative study examined how six urban high school principals conceptualised and implemented adult learning practices. Despite competing demands, we find these principals viewed their role as critical in fostering conditions for teacher learning, including creating collaborative environments and positioned themselves and others as continuous learners. Simultaneously, they faced challenges in facilitating teacher ownership of professional learning. The study suggests that principals can build capacity for adult learning by first implementing core practices aligned with the learning-oriented model and then, gradually, expand their approach towards shifting other cultural norms. Our findings reinforce the need for district leaders, policymakers, and researchers to work together to ensure principals are supported and that the shift towards learning-centred leadership is integrated into broader school improvement strategies. Overall, this study underscores the pivotal role of principals in promoting adult learning and outlines best practices for leading such initiatives in today's schools.
This study investigates how teacher leaders enact leadership within AI-integrated classrooms, highlighting the posthuman entanglements that shape their agency, identity, and authority. While AI's instructional uses have been widely examined, how AI integration reshapes teacher leadership - its practices, identities, and sources of authority - remains underexplored, particularly through posthumanist lenses. Using a multi-country qualitative interview study within an interpretive design, semi-structured interviews with teacher leaders from multiple Arab States were thematically analyzed to uncover five interrelated themes: recalibrated leadership practices, reconfigured professional identity, distributed agency, ethical ambivalence toward AI, and posthuman pedagogical imaginaries. Findings reveal that leadership is increasingly co-constituted through human - machine interactions, requiring new competencies in algorithmic reasoning, ethical discernment, and hybrid pedagogy. Rather than diminishing teachers' authority, AI integration redefines it - positioning teacher leaders as adaptive actors negotiating the boundaries between autonomy and automation. The study contributes to the emerging scholarship on digital transformation in education, offering both conceptual insights and practical implications for preparing teachers to lead responsibly and innovatively in sociotechnical learning environments.
This article examines the dynamic flow of influence from leading to student's learning practices in schools, reconceptualising leadership as a multifaceted complex of interrelated and ecologically integrated practices. Rather than privileging any single leadership role, it conceptualises leading as a coordinated social ensemble in which leaders work interdependently to shape the professional and educational conditions that support teaching and learning. Qualitative analysis of two in-depth ethnographic case studies conducted as part of a national Australian research focused on studying the influence of middle leadership aiming to show how leading practices reach learners in classrooms. It traces how practices travel from policy to principals to middle leaders to teachers, subsequently influencing student ' s practices. Drawing on practice theory, findings illustrate ways leading practices create practice architectures which influence teachers ' and students ' learning. By tracing the 'trail of evidence' concerning specific school development initiatives being implemented in school sites, results reorient debates about the efficacy of leading school-based change towards understanding how a composite of leading practices emerges relationally and temporally through shared language, activity and responsiveness to local contexts. Findings offer an ecological interpretation of educational leadership influence, illuminating how coordinated leading practices contribute to professional learning, teaching, and student learning practices.
Education systems worldwide position equity as a central policy objective, yet its advancement depends heavily on school-level interpretation and enactment. This article examines how school leaders understand and operationalise equity within the constraints and opportunities of their policy environments. Drawing on qualitative interview data collected in Scotland and South Australia, the study finds that despite differing policy architectures, school leaders across both systems conceptualise equity as a dynamic, context-responsive commitment to meeting diverse student needs rather than a fixed or standardised principle. This fluid understanding enables leaders to navigate limited or inconsistently allocated system resources by exercising professional judgement to prioritise support for students' different needs. However, the variability in both conceptions and enactments of equity highlights a misalignment between system-level policy intentions and school-level realities. The study identifies three structural conditions: definitional ambiguity, resource inadequacy, and metric misalignment, that help explain persistent gaps between system-level equity intentions and school-level realities. The article argues that more coherent, shared frameworks for defining, measuring, and monitoring equity across system and school levels that align with the complex realities of school life could strengthen the capacity of education systems to advance equity in more meaningful and sustainable ways.
Owing to historical legacy, the Catholic church is the largest provider of primary education in the Republic of Ireland. Governance of primary schools, including responsibility for upholding school ethos, falls under the legal remit of the largely volunteer school Board of Management (Board of Governors/School Board). This article examines Board of Management oversight of ethos responsibilities and practices within Catholic primary schools in Ireland. Drawing on findings from the GRACE (Ireland) research project entitled Identity and Ethos in Catholic Primary and Secondary Schools in Ireland, Exploring the Attitudes and Behaviours of Stakeholders, it investigates the effectiveness of existing Board of Management structures in upholding the Catholic ethos. The analysis reveals significant challenges in the communication and training of Board of Management members, and accountability systems. Furthermore, a noticeable disconnect exists between the stated vision for Catholic education and its lived reality in many schools as illustrated by the provision for Religious Education. The article concludes by highlighting the need for increased investment in systemic supports for Boards of Management, more robust engagement between patrons and the Department of Education, and a re-evaluation of current oversight mechanisms to ensure the enduring vitality of Catholic education in a changing societal landscape.
This theory-building article explores how governance structures shape school leadership practices in contexts with limited autonomy. In low-autonomy environments, principals often occupy dual roles, functioning as administrative enforcers of centrally determined regulations and limitedly as instructional leaders, striving to influence teaching and learning processes. Various governance features, such as low decisional power at the school level, high teachers' autonomy and reduced functioning budgets, impose tight restrictions on principals' actions. The method draws mainly on a comparison of structures to highlight convergent governance modes. Qualitative data from the Global Education Monitoring Report (2024) collected in France, Italy, Ivory Coast and Romania solely exemplifies salient aspects. Despite challenges that are typical when school autonomy is low, school leaders adopt interactive tactics, including informal negotiations with teachers and school boards, to reconcile top-down mandates with local school needs. The analysis reveals that fostering collaboration and coherence among staff is often contingent on persuasion and consensus-building. Indeed, formal authority and low principalship powers are insufficient in hierarchical and loosely coupled systems. Ultimately, this study highlights that understanding leadership in low-autonomy school systems requires acknowledging the structural conditions that enable or constrain principals' effective powers to influence teaching, organisational culture, and decision-making.
This paper investigates the leadership dynamics of a large-scale amalgamation between two Catholic schools in Australia, using Kotter's Eight-Step Change Model as the primary evaluative framework. Drawing on a mixed-methods case study, which includes stakeholder surveys, principal journals, and meeting minutes, the research explores how school leaders navigated structural reform, cultural integration, and stakeholder resistance within a faith-based context. Findings reveal that while external perceptions of the amalgamation were largely positive, internal challenges such as change fatigue, inconsistent policy enforcement, and unclear role expectations persisted. The study highlights the need to complement Kotter's structured approach with adaptive, distributed leadership models and symbolic strategies that reflect the theological and cultural dimensions of Catholic schooling. The paper critiques the limitations of linear change models through the lens of, Spillane, Lewin, and Bolman & Deal. It underscores the importance of iterative planning, stakeholder empowerment, and professional development in sustaining reform. Recommendations include enhancing communication consistency, aligning structural and cultural goals, and embedding student and teacher voices in change processes. The paper offers practical insights for educational leaders managing faith-based amalgamations, contributing to the broader discourse on organisational change and school leadership within complex, values-driven environments.
This qualitative research project seeks to answer how BIPOC educators experience their role as followers when conceptualizing educational innovation. 10 BIPOC educators took part in semi-structured interviews that revealed how they make meaning of followership, leader-follower dynamics, follower identity formation, and actions of followers during a heightened time period of educational innovation. This study heavily draws from both the fundamental principles found in followership scholarship and the chosen theoretical framework of this study, critical race theory (CRT). The thematic findings include the ways in which BIPOC educators perceived their role as followers, how BIPOC educators felt they were perceived by their leaders, and how leader-follower dynamics influenced educational innovations. This research showcases how considering a socially constructed identity can alter the contours and dynamics of followership and thus, educational innovation. Implications include recommendations for educational institutions, the future study of followership scholarship, and both researchers and practitioners in the field of school leadership and management.
This study examined the relationships between change leadership and teachers' teaching innovation, considering the mediating roles of innovative school climate and teachers' AI self-efficacy. Grounded in the transformational leadership and social cognitive theories, the study employed a cross-sectional quantitative design using data collected from public school teachers in Oman. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to estimate the structural relationships among change leadership, innovative school climate, AI self-efficacy, and teaching innovation. The results indicated that change leadership had a significant direct effect on teachers' teaching innovation and positively influenced innovative school climate and AI self-efficacy. Both mediators significantly predicted teaching innovation, with bootstrapping confirming their parallel indirect effects. However, neither the sequential mediation pathway nor the direct relationship between innovative school climate and AI self-efficacy was statistically significant. These findings have important implications for policymakers, school leaders, and teacher professional development programs, emphasising the need to foster both organisational conditions for innovation and teachers' individual competencies related to AI integration.
Although innovation is widely promoted as essential to educational transformation, definitional ambiguity and a persistent disconnect between policy rhetoric and implementation realities leave educational leaders without the conceptual clarity or systemic support necessary to enact meaningful change. This article presents findings from a global environmental scan that explores how innovation in education is defined, enacted, and constrained through educational leadership. Guided by systematic screening standards, the scan initially identified 147 grey literature sources, of which 94 met the inclusion criteria. Using comparative and thematic analysis, the study examines how educational leadership mediates innovation across diverse governance, policy, and cultural contexts. Three key themes emerged: (1) the enabling and constraining conditions for innovation; (2) the persistent tensions leaders face between top-down mandates and grassroots responsiveness; and (3) the global variation in leadership strategies shaped by sociopolitical and economic conditions. These findings highlight a significant disconnect between policy rhetoric and leadership realities, as well as a lack of definitional clarity and systemic support for innovation. This study calls for more context-responsive, relational, and adaptive leadership frameworks that align local needs with broader reform goals.
School leadership is increasingly recognised as a critical lever for driving innovation in education, yet the concept of innovation itself remains conceptually ambiguous and inconsistently enacted across contexts. This scoping review examines how innovation is conceptualised in the school leadership literature and explores its relationship to leadership and change. Drawing on 63 peer-reviewed studies published between 2014 and 2025, the review follows the PRISMA framework and employs thematic synthesis to identify key patterns and tensions. Five themes emerged: innovation as a situated and relational process; leadership as enabler, mediator, or constraint; tensions between policy and practice; conditions and cultures that support innovation; and equity, inclusion, and the politics of innovation. The findings highlight the centrality of leadership, particularly distributed and transformational models, in shaping innovation, while also revealing persistent gaps in addressing issues of equity and inclusion. The review proposes a conceptual framework that integrates these themes and underscores the need for context-sensitive, equity-focused approaches to innovation. It concludes by identifying implications for leadership development, policy coherence, and future research, particularly in underrepresented and transitional contexts. This work contributes to a more nuanced understanding of innovation as a dynamic, relational, and contested process within school leadership and educational change.
This study explores how school leaders engage with Improvement Science as a Continuous Improvement (CI) method to build leadership capacity and drive educational change in Scotland. Drawing on 11 in-depth interviews with both primary and secondary principals, the research employs a case study approach to explore how leaders interpret, adapt, and apply CI strategies, while also considering their local context and the broader policy landscape. Sensemaking theory provides a conceptual lens to examine how these educators build knowledge and develop confidence in implementing CI practices aimed at addressing the poverty-related attainment gap, particularly literacy and numeracy. The findings indicate that inquiry-driven approaches are shaped by the intersection of personal values, contextual conditions, and systemic pressures, revealing a dynamic tension between practice-based innovation and wider policy mandates. While principals demonstrated a commitment to evidence-informed, iterative change, challenges with coherent measurement and policy alignment limited the depth and consistency of implementation. The findings offer a nuanced understanding of leadership as both a catalyst and agent for educational innovation, highlighting how principals navigate complexity to foster sustained educational improvement within the multi-tiered governance structure of Scottish education.
