Transforming Educational Leadership

Dear Colleagues,

The past fifty years have seen massive changes to the educational provision for schools in many countries. The 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s saw radical transformations to school governance and management, headlined by the move towards self-management. Decentralization meant that many of the decisions previously made at a national head office were now being made by individuals at schools. Suddenly, school leaders now needed to oversee the policy, financial, and practical aspects of schooling, with support from school councils or boards comprising parents, teachers and sometimes students. The previous hierarchical approach to system management was initially replaced by hierarchical approaches to school leadership. Instructional leadership was a managerial approach used in many systems and focused on leading teaching to increase student outcomes in basic school skills. Leithwood (1992) argued that, although IL had served a purpose in the 1980s and early 1990s, it “no longer appears to capture the heart of what school administration will have to become” and proposed transformational leadership instead. By the turn of the millennium, efforts to improve teaching were supplemented by a focus on the role of school leaders in improving learning itself across the school and beyond just student outcomes. Leadership for learning became a popular term, albeit one that was interpreted differently by various scholars.

It has since become clear that there were three main shifts in the way leadership was undertaken in schools over the past few decades. The first is that school leadership became a shared activity rather than the sole responsibility of the school leader. The second is that leadership was now seen as activity rather than something associated with a position (principal, director), and it is understood that what people can do is more important than the position they hold. The third change is that we now recognize that leadership is context-specific—a person that is a good leader in one set of circumstances may not be so good when circumstances are different.

This Special Issue brings together a collection of papers from senior international scholars documenting how school leadership has changed in their own country since the turn of the millennium and how this can impact on our understanding of school leadership. Themes to considered include:

• How has decentralization impacted school leadership? What new responsibilities do school leaders have? How has this changed decisions that are made at the school level?
• How have relationships between school leaders, teachers, students, and school families changed?
• How are school leaders prepared, appointed, and supported?
• Have these changes impacted the pool of teachers willing to become school leaders?

The Issue will conclude with a paper that synthesizes what we have learned about school leadership and considers how it might change into the future.

Prof. Dr. Tony Townsend
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Education Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• school leadership
• decentralization
• leadership for learning
• learning sciences
• learning research
• evidence-based teaching
• myths about learning
• technology-enhanced learning
• educational technology
• barriers and facilitators to implementation
• emerging learning research