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This paper draws from a review of the global literature on school leadership during the first 30 months of the pandemic (2020-2022), when educational leaders were faced with complexity on an unprecedented scale. COVID-19 challenged school leadership, providing opportunities to reflect on: leadership practice within and beyond school contexts; building relationships with wider communities and external stakeholders; established bureaucratic systems and ways of working (Author et al. under review). School leaders' reliance on organisational stability, hierarchy and standardised practice was also challenged: reflective practice was needed, whilst responding to complex and demanding situations. Increased teacher autonomy and agency was encouraged and embraced, with 'profound collaboration borne out of necessity and urgency' (p. 393), highlighting the fluid practice of leadership rather than the role specificities of a leader. As school systems return to the business of in-person schooling and further away from the shock of the pandemic, the article renews calls to learn from experience and innovation. Three aspects are discussed, for supporting the development of school leadership/leaders capable of navigating complexity: school leadership; informal professional learning; formal professional learning. Our analysis provides insights into advancing professional learning approaches: accounting for complexity; enhancing teaching and learning; strengthening educator empowerment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As part of the current Review of Education Governance in Scotland, the Headteachers' Charter is perceived as a central policy solution. The Charter changes the responsibilities of the headteacher by altering the relationship between headteacher and local authority, and thereby bringing about changes to the governance of education. If these changes are perceived as the solution, what is the perceived policy problem? This article examines policy documents to explore the policy problem using Bacchi's (2012a) 'what's the problem represented to be' (WPR) approach, which uses a framework of six questions to analyse policy texts. The article begins with a brief overview of the policy programme, the 'Empowerment Agenda'. The article discusses Bacchi's WPR analysis framework and then presents the findings, using this framework. The article ends with a discussion of the impact of the reform of educational governance including the Headteachers' Charter on the role of the headteacher. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how headteachers/principals engage in social justice leadership practice using data gathered from the Scottish and American contributions to the International School Leadership Development Network's (ISLDN) research on social justice leadership. While the literature focuses on high-level strategies to address issues of equity there is limited discussion of the day-to-day practice of social justice leadership. In fostering inclusive cultures, the day-to-day practice of headteachers/principals is critical in challenging low-level forms of discrimination, micro-aggressions, which create hostile environments for diverse groups of learners. The article considers the concept of 'leadership practice' by examining the notion of relational leadership to highlight the social processes of 'organising activities' of leadership. In this, we focus on caring practices and explore these through four case studies of headteachers/principals recognised for their social justice leadership. A framework of Noddings' caring practices of modelling, dialogue and confirmation as relational organising activities, is used to begin to capture the day-to-day practice of social justice leadership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The International School Leadership Development Network (ISLDN) is a large international research project focused on principal leadership for social justice and in high needs settings. With increasing research interest in the role of middle leaders for school success, it is timely for the ISLDN to expand to explore the work of middle leaders. In this paper, we expand upon our Scottish principal leadership research in the ISLDN, to propose a new research focus on middle leaders. Specifically, this paper sets out a proposed case study and research methods, outlining the role of middle leadership in Scottish secondary schools and detailing the middle leadership structures of the case study school. The paper first discusses key findings from a review of the international literature on the role of middle leadership, with a focus on its contribution to social justice leadership. The second element explores the adaptation of the ISLDN protocol, for the investigation of middle leadership within social justice leadership practices. The paper proposes the use of the Delphi method to gather data on the purpose, lived experiences and practices of many middle leaders within individual schools. During the design of this research several critical issues emerged which are considered including: sampling, corresponding to the definition of middle leadership selected; balancing individual and collective perspectives; methodological ethical issues; the tension between consensus building and mapping out the diversity of opinion. The paper ends with an outline of the case study design with a discussion around the locating of this study in a participatory action research process, as an extension to the ISLDN's research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An editorial is presented on School Leadership and Management reviewing educational leadership across the four diverse nations of Great Britain. Topics include understanding the systems of educational leadership within and beyond the Great Britain meeting the needs of young people and communities; and exploring the concepts, theories, and ideas illuminating the contemporary challenges of school leadership facing in many education systems.

This article offers a comparative analysis and interpretation of leadership in the four UK education jurisdictions (Scotland, Wales, England and Northern Ireland), informed by the articles in this special issue and by a project report, all outcomes of an initiative, 'Educational Leadership, Management and Administration in the United Kingdom: A Comparative Review', funded by the British Educational Leadership Management and Administration Society. The article explores the constructions of leadership in the school systems of the four jurisdictions and the purposes those constructions are fulfilling concerning the governance of education. The comparative analysis identifies four purposes – relational, institutional-reform focused, masking and space-making. This typology of purposes is used to illuminate the different emphases across the jurisdictions. A relational purpose may be discerned more strongly in Wales and Scotland, a neo-liberal institutional-focused purpose more so in England, and relational and neo-liberal threads are intertwined in Northern Ireland in the context of legacies of community divisions. At the same time in all four jurisdictions, each of the purposes is given expression alongside, intermingling with or challenging neo-liberal threads of change and the dynamic between them helps shape the context in which leaders in the school systems create and practise leadership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the policy construction of leadership at all levels in Scottish education. In the current reforms 'leadership at all levels' is being used to mobilise support around changes to the role of the headteacher and of the local authorities (LAs) to bring about greater system alignment. From a critical policy analysis six themes are reported on: (1) Social Justice Ideology and the Equity Agenda – Perception Versus Reality?; (2) Mobilising Support for Reform – Managing Perceptions of the Public?; (3) Mobilising Support for New Governance – Managing Perceptions of the Teaching Profession?; (4) Mobilising Support for Restructuring – Managing the Middle Tier?; (5) Mobilising Support for Empowerment and Collaboration – Leadership at all Levels?; (6) Policy Rhetoric Versus Practice Realities – System Alignment through Empowerment? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented which discusses several reports within the issue on topics including professional growth and professional learning in education; social justice and equity in education; and building social justice praxis across schools.

Despite growing interest in social justice leadership and awareness of the need to include this focus in leadership preparation and development, little is understood of practices used to support such commitment. In this article, Bacchi's (2012a) Foucaldian approach is drawn from, to provide a specific means of critically analysing what problem(s) social justice leadership preparation/development is intended to address. Through critical reflexivity, the political dimensions of policy and practice are surfaced. Through this process, key influences of regimes of power are identified, within which leadership development programmes are situated. Considerations for leadership development and school practices foreground the identification of next steps for research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scottish policy developments in initial teacher education, professional standards and careerlong professional learning reflect a growing understanding of the leadership role teachers can play, particularly in curriculum and pedagogy, in improving the experiences and outcomes of pupils. In the policy rhetoric of re-professionalisation, unpromoted teachers liberate their professional creativity, leading 'bottom-up' approaches to school improvement. However, there are policy and conceptual tensions in the construction of 'teacher leadership', the related term 'teacher leader' and the practice realities experienced by teachers seeking to play this leadership role in their professional settings. This article explores these tensions in a small-scale mixed methods study of teachers participating in Masters-level 'leadership development' programmes. The study considers the policy and practice environments, motivations, supports and barriers that faced these Scottish teachers seeking to develop their leadership practices and capacities. A lack of clarity at national level for framing the practice of teacher leadership is identified. School staff require to develop for themselves understandings of the complex interplay between bottom-up and top-down leadership, local understandings of 'what teacher leadership means and how it works in our school', within a supportive culture. This was not found to be the norm. The article concludes by outlining implications for policy and practice, including the need to address a national 'policy fudge' around teacher leadership that adversely affects practice realities. As part of that, there is a need for further discussion around who is responsible and accountable within a distributed leadership perspective, for what and to whom? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The revised professional standards for the teaching profession in Scotland are underpinned by a set of values which includes a detailed articulation of social justice for education covering rights, diversity and sustainability. There is a future orientation in these standards that privileges the contribution of teachers and leaders to realizing a wider social aspiration for social justice. This expectation on leaders to contribute to this wider aspiration for social justice raises questions about the practice of leaders and their development. This article considers the implications of the articulation of social justice in the professional standards for career-long leadership development. The article explores some of the issues related to social justice and the role of leadership in school. The article then focuses on the context of Scottish education, looking firstly at the professional standards and secondly at the issues related to social justice leadership. From this discussion the implications for career-long leadership development are considered. The article concludes with a framework for social justice leadership development identifying key aspects of values, knowledge and understanding, inclusive practice, policy, issues of equity and equality that can be developed progressively across a leadership development continuum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article connects with an international debate around the place of professional standards in educational policy targeted at enhancing teacher quality, with associated implications for continuing teacher education. Scotland provides a fertile context for discussion, having developed sets of professional standards in response to a recent national review of career-long teacher education. That review called for a reprofessionalisation of the teaching profession and the revision of the standards was an element of this process. Scotland is utilised as a lens through which one country’s response to international trends is viewed, with a focus on ‘teacher leadership’ and ‘practitioner enquiry’ as policy endorsed sets of practices. The analysis demonstrates the complex and contested nature of these terms and the tensions posed between the need to meet professional standards as part of teacher education and aspirational dimensions of the current policy project of reprofessionalisation. The article concludes by considering the implications for continuing teacher education. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In Scottish education, school leadership is regarded as central in realising the policy ambitions to raise attainment. This article examines critically the policy expectations and demands made on headteachers. These expectations are set out in successive sets of a professional standard - the Standard for Headship - particularly the codification of the key purpose of headship. These expectations are interrogated first through a textual analysis to identify codes of meaning, and second through interview data relating to the lived experiences of headteachers. These data were collected as part of a larger study and the issues explored included the range of tasks the headteachers undertake routinely, their motivations and experiences of the role and the means of coping with demands. The discussion highlights some of the tensions experienced by headteachers as they work to meet expectations. From this investigation, it is clear that the codified expectations placed on headteachers relating to learning and to leading people chimes with the headteachers' aspirations for their role. However, operational matters and administrative demands dominate the day-to-day work of headteachers. The article concludes by identifying some critical issues for the preparation of headteachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing emphasis has been placed on leadership within educational theory, policy and practice. Drawing on a wide range of academic literature and policy documents, this paper explores how the discourse of leadership has shifted and for what purposes. The authors are critical of the lack of conceptual underpinning for that discourse, evident both nationally and internationally, and they identify key issues that the teaching profession has been left to try to understand and make sense of. They caution that, despite attempts to align contemporary policy developments to position leadership as inherent in the role of every teacher, flaws in the conceptualisation of leadership, and particularly in favoured forms such as ‘distributed leadership’ and ‘teacher leadership’, pose significant challenges to a serious attempt to ‘reprofessionalise’ teachers. Contemporary developments in Scottish education are referred to, exemplifying key tensions inherent in translating international trends into practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws from a small-scale study of headteachers motivated to positively impact on the quality of pupil experience by involving all staff in a distributed perspective on leadership. Each headteacher perceived leadership as involving learned processes requiring support and experience, expending considerable effort in providing a fertile environment for learning about its practice. This perspective developed from their personal experience of challenging established leadership orthodoxies prior to and since appointment to headship. The article explores the impact of formal work-based postgraduate leadership preparation and experiential professional learning on each headteacher’s understandings of distributed leadership and its practice. It then explores the ways in which they supported the professional learning of staff. The article concludes by suggesting that headteachers and staff encounter a range of challenges in developing school practices inherent in distributed leadership and can benefit from ongoing support with informed reflection on practice beyond initial preparation for headship. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The COVID-19 pandemic has had dramatic implications for education systems across the globe, mainly due to the fact that it induced school closures worldwide as a drastic measure to curb this health crisis. School leaders had to operate in crisis mode, whilst ensuring that measures and policy directives issued by the government were effectively implemented. This article provides a review of the literature on school leadership in the pandemic through a methodical collection, documentation, scrutiny, and critical analysis of the research publications. The review seeks to map trends in what has been published in a relatively short time span, in addition to identifying gaps and silences within this new field in terms of empirical scholarship and methodological diversity, as well as geographical location via a narrative synthesis approach. The findings point to a spread of publications over a wide geographical and cultural spectrum, with the distinct focus of empirical studies being qualitative and focusing on school leaders. The three emergent themes centre around school leadership within the school context, relationships with the wider community, and engagement with policy. This literature review is significant for educational practice, policy, and scholarship in terms of identifying gaps, with implications for future research [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports on a study exploring a distributed perspective on school leadership through three head teacher case studies conducted in Scottish primary schools. Drawing from a sequence of in-depth, semi-structured and narrative style interviews conducted with each head teacher, as well as from a semi-structured questionnaire and sociometric analysis conducted with staff, the article analyses the experiences and the perceptions of head teachers. The paper finds that in practice, distributed leadership is more complex and challenging than often represented, challenging five generally held assumptions in the theoretical, policy and practice frames. Implications are drawn for educational leadership at both school and system levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study of teacher leaders in Scottish schools done in 2007 to determine their experience with and attitude toward the Scottish Qualification for Headship (SQH) program. In particular, the study wanted to know what tensions and factors are at play in implementing a distributed leadership and if this program is the best way to manage a school. The author believes that aspiring school heads must be identified, encouraged and prepared for the job through leadership training programmes.

Focuses on bullying in special schools in Great Britain. Factors that influence the extent of bullying in schools; Importance of qualitative research in understanding bullying; Discussion on the effects of bullying within a special school for pupils with social, emotional and behavioral difficulties.