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Systems
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Navigating Educational Leadership Through Systems Approaches
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Navigating Educational Leadership Through Systems Approaches

A special issue of Systems (ISSN 2079-8954). This special issue belongs to the section "Systems Practice in Social Science".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 July 2026 | Viewed by 2299

Editors

Dr. Liat Biberman-Shalev

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Education, Levinsky-Wingate Academic College, Tel-Aviv 69378808, Israel
Interests: teacher education; educational justice; sociology of education; global education; curriculum planning; reflective blogs
Dr. Nurit Chamo

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Education, Levinsky-Wingate Academic College, Tel Aviv 6937808, Israel
Interests: teacher professional identity (TPI); educational leadership; teacher education; curriculum planning

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In today’s rapidly shifting educational landscape, leadership must be understood and practiced within the context of interconnected, evolving systems. Educational settings operate across multiple levels—micro (individuals and classrooms), meso (schools and communities), and macro (global and national policies and sociocultural structures)—requiring leaders to think systemically and act adaptively.

This Special Issue invites contributions that explore educational leadership through diverse systems-oriented theoretical perspectives from sociological, psychological, and philosophical views. These include the functionalist paradigm, which emphasizes structure and organizational efficiency; interpretive and symbolic paradigms focusing on phenomena, culture, meaning-making, relationships, and organizational learning; and critical paradigms that interrogate power, inequality, and systemic transformation.

Perspectives from complexity theory (Edgar Morin), ecological systems theory (Urie Bronfenbrenner), and the concept of the learning organization (Peter Senge) may also inform this Special Issue. These frameworks recognize education as a dynamic, adaptive ecosystem shaped by feedback loops, emergence, and interdependence, calling for leadership that fosters collaboration, resilience, and ethical responsiveness.

By integrating these varied lenses, this Special Issue seeks to illuminate how educational leadership (reflected in practice-based or theoretical-based techniques) can move beyond linear, top-down models toward more holistic, participatory, and context-sensitive practices. Submissions may be theoretical, empirical, pedagogical, and practical, and should aim to expand our collective understanding of what it means to lead wisely, justly, and systemically in complex educational environments.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • Global and local illustrations and models of educational leadership across a variety of educational systems;
  • Parental and family leadership within educational systems;
  • Conflict management in complex educational environments;
  • Integration of initiatives, inspiration, and creativity in a variety of educational systems;
  • Professional development of educational leaders in dynamic systems;
  • The impact of organizational culture on leadership styles;
  • Leadership in multicultural educational systems;
  • The classroom, school, and community as a learning system;
  • The role of technology in educational systems;
  • School–community partnerships and collaborative leadership;
  • Educational leadership in a global context;
  • Navigating uncertainty in leadership decision-making;
  • Understanding culture and relationships in schools;
  • Ecological approaches to educational leadership;
  • Tools for mapping and managing educational systems;
  • Case studies of systemic change in education.

Dr. Liat Biberman-Shalev
Dr. Nurit Chamo
Guest Editors

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 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

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 single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Systems 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 2400 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.

Keywords

  • creativity
  • educational culture
  • educational leadership
  • interdependence and collaboration
  • multicultural educational systems
  • systemic leadership
  • systems thinking

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Further information on MDPI's Special Issue policies can be found here.

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

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20 pages, 607 KB  
Article
Navigating the Organizational Boundary: Novice Teachers’ Perceptions of Parent–Teacher Relations in Complex Educational Systems
by Yehudit Chassida, Vered Elimelech and Sarit Schussheim
Systems 2026, 14(5), 509; https://doi.org/10.3390/systems14050509 - 5 May 2026
Viewed by 319
Abstract
Educational systems increasingly function as complex social environments in which schools, families, and communities interact across institutional boundaries. Within these interconnected systems, teachers frequently operate at the boundary between schools and parents, negotiating expectations regarding trust, authority, and parental participation. Although parental involvement [...] Read more.
Educational systems increasingly function as complex social environments in which schools, families, and communities interact across institutional boundaries. Within these interconnected systems, teachers frequently operate at the boundary between schools and parents, negotiating expectations regarding trust, authority, and parental participation. Although parental involvement has been widely studied, relatively little attention has been given to how teachers themselves perceive and navigate these relationships within everyday school practice. This study examines novice teachers’ perceptions of parent–teacher relations through a multi-level systemic perspective. Based on a quantitative survey of approximately 200 novice ultra-Orthodox teachers, the research explores teachers’ perceptions of parental trust and active parental involvement across three interconnected levels: micro-level teacher–parent interactions, meso-level school organizational contexts, and macro-level systemic transformations in educational governance. The findings reveal that teachers’ perceptions of parental trust and involvement are shaped by both organizational conditions and broader systemic changes in school–family relations. Conceptualizing teacher–parent relations through a multi-level lens, the study contributes an empirical application of this perspective to the examination of parent–teacher relations. It demonstrates how teachers interpret and navigate these relationships across different levels of the educational system within a distinct socio-cultural context. Focusing on teachers’ perceptions, the study further extends existing conceptualizations of teachers as boundary actors. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Navigating Educational Leadership Through Systems Approaches)
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24 pages, 3442 KB  
Article
Leadership Readiness as Multidimensional Concept: Exploring Distinct Logics of System-Level Change Toward PBL Through Q Methodology
by Xiangyun Du, Zhiying Nian, Juebei Chen and Aida Guerra
Systems 2026, 14(4), 448; https://doi.org/10.3390/systems14040448 - 20 Apr 2026
Viewed by 379
Abstract
Sustainable pedagogical reform requires more than teacher preparedness; it depends on how school leaders interpret and coordinate the conditions that enable change. This focus is particularly critical in contexts where Problem-Based Learning (PBL) is introduced within predominantly traditional, exam-oriented pedagogical environments, requiring careful [...] Read more.
Sustainable pedagogical reform requires more than teacher preparedness; it depends on how school leaders interpret and coordinate the conditions that enable change. This focus is particularly critical in contexts where Problem-Based Learning (PBL) is introduced within predominantly traditional, exam-oriented pedagogical environments, requiring careful consideration of leadership’s perception of system-level readiness to support such shifts. This study investigates how Chinese K–12 school leaders conceptualize readiness for institution-wide implementation of PBL. Using Q methodology with 42 school leaders, four distinct leadership logics were identified: leadership-mediated cultural readiness through recognition, belief-driven pedagogical practice, externally anchored system-level readiness, and experientially grounded cultural readiness. These viewpoints reveal different ways leaders prioritize cultural alignment, belief formation, structural coordination, and experiential learning when organizing reform conditions. Despite these differences, participants showed several areas of shared positioning, particularly around coordination, expertise-based responsibility distribution, evaluation alignment, and adaptive responses to reform conditions. The findings extend change readiness research beyond teacher-focused perspectives by demonstrating how leaders interpret readiness as a multidimensional and system-level phenomenon. By illuminating distinct leadership logics for coordinating reform within centralized governance contexts, this study highlights the importance of aligning beliefs, professional relationships, institutional structures, and student learning improvement goals to support sustainable pedagogical transformation. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Navigating Educational Leadership Through Systems Approaches)
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19 pages, 332 KB  
Article
Developing Students’ Systems Thinking Capabilities with Case-Based Learning and Concept Mapping: A Quasi-Experimental Study on Ecosystems and Feeding Relationships
by Naji Kortam
Systems 2026, 14(4), 362; https://doi.org/10.3390/systems14040362 - 30 Mar 2026
Viewed by 863
Abstract
Developing students’ systems thinking is important but challenging in middle-school ecology. This quasi-experimental study examined whether an instructional package combining case-based learning and concept mapping, as implemented under routine classroom conditions, was associated with different patterns of growth across levels of the Systems [...] Read more.
Developing students’ systems thinking is important but challenging in middle-school ecology. This quasi-experimental study examined whether an instructional package combining case-based learning and concept mapping, as implemented under routine classroom conditions, was associated with different patterns of growth across levels of the Systems Thinking Hierarchy. A total of 177 eighth-grade students from six intact classes completed parallel pre- and post-assessments during an ecosystems unit. Student-level repeated-measures analyses showed no clear differential pattern at the level of identifying components and processes. Larger observed gains appeared in understanding relationships, organization, and matter-energy cycles, and a smaller pattern in the same direction appeared in generalization, temporal reasoning, and hidden dimensions. However, because students were nested within only six classes, each condition was taught by a different teacher, and the experimental teacher received targeted preparation, the findings should be interpreted cautiously as associations linked to an instructional package rather than as teacher-independent causal effects. The results suggest that classroom enactments combining cases and concept mapping may help students move beyond isolated ecological facts toward more relational explanations, while higher-order systems thinking remains difficult and likely requires longer-term scaffolding in routine middle-school biology lessons over a short instructional unit. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Navigating Educational Leadership Through Systems Approaches)

Review

Jump to: Research

17 pages, 305 KB  
Review
Implemented as Intended? Teachers’ Policy Modification Informing Refinements in Ecosystem Theory and Comparative Theoretical Positioning
by Einav Argaman
Systems 2026, 14(7), 726; https://doi.org/10.3390/systems14070726 (registering DOI) - 23 Jun 2026
Abstract
This theoretical article considers a case where a chief subject-area superintendent within the Ministry of Education issued a policy, and teachers implemented it more radically than intended—extending it in a way that eliminated core elements of the original mandate. Applying ecosystem theory to [...] Read more.
This theoretical article considers a case where a chief subject-area superintendent within the Ministry of Education issued a policy, and teachers implemented it more radically than intended—extending it in a way that eliminated core elements of the original mandate. Applying ecosystem theory to the case, the article advances the conceptual theorization of ecosystem theory principles—with respect to teachers’ leadership acts—by refining key components (proximity between actors and interconnectedness, roles in ecosystems, and democratization), adding nuances that the case highlights but existing theory leaves underdeveloped. It further engages with Weberian bureaucracy, street-level bureaucracy, and Weick’s loose-coupling theory as alternative frameworks, establishing ecosystem theory’s distinctive explanatory power for the leadership appropriation dynamics the case reveals. The Discussion delineates the article’s conceptual contributions and outlines research directions that further elaborate the refinements and theoretical differentiation (ecosystem theory vis-à-vis related theories) into areas beyond the scope of this article. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Navigating Educational Leadership Through Systems Approaches)
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