Page 123 - Educational Leadership in a Changing World

Educational Leadership in Transition

thy and care become indispensable to building trust, motivating staff,
and fostering equitable learning environments. The challenge to dom-
inant neoliberal logics that reduce leadership to metrics and account-
ability makes this framing particularly important. By centring on rela-
tionships, emotional well-being, and cultural responsiveness, Fuentes
and Camas Garrido push for a leadership paradigm that is relational
rather than transactional, and transformative rather than managerial.
Following and building on the first chapter, this need for contextually
responsive leadership is taken further in Chapter 2 by Nedzinskait˙ e-
Mači¯ unien˙ e and Kafa, who explore how economic, social, and cultural
status (escs) moderates and mediates the relationship between lead-
ership practices and student science achievement using oecd pisa
data. Their findings show that instructional leadership alone cannot over-
come the structural disadvantages faced by students in low-escs settings.
This chapter critically reveals the limitations of generic leadership pre-
scriptions, especially in centralized or stratified systems. Rather than
treating leadership as a universal toolkit, the authors argue for adaptive
leadership strategies that account for local inequalities and systemic
constraints. Their analysis strengthens the volume’s core argument:
leadership must be situated within its specific policy, institutional, and so-
cial context.
In Chapter 3, Luna Pérez and Domínguez Rodríguez offer a compar-
ative lens to understand leadership practices across Chile, Canada, Sin-
gapore, and Australia. Their comparative analysis of national leadership
frameworks shows how different systems prioritize pedagogical leader-
ship, community engagement, and resource management, often in re-
sponse to both international standards and local demands. Despite con-
textual differences, several converging themes emerge. Effective leader-
ship is increasingly linked to professional development, distributed au-
thority, and stakeholder collaboration. These global cases suggest that
policy frameworks that support leadership development, particularly
those that promote reflection, autonomy, and ethical action, can en-
hance educational quality and reduce inequality. Therefore, we can ar-
gue that educational leadership is shaped by a variety of aspects, includ-
ing historical moments, political systems, national values, etc.
The discussion in Chapter 4 focuses on a critical and modern aspect
of educational leadership, referring to teachers’ well-being. Through a
systematic literature review, Šimkut˙ e-Bukant˙ e and Žydži¯ unait˙ edemon-
strate that leadership styles such as transformational, distributed, au-

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