Page 125 - Educational Leadership in a Changing World

Educational Leadership in Transition

has to be navigated between the policy framework and leadership
and management practices

7. There Is No One-Size-Fits-All Model

What are the Implications?
Building on the findings from the collective chapters of this edited vol-
ume, the following implications for policymakers and future research
are presented.

Policymakers
• Context matters. School leaders can respond to and address the
needs and challenges in their environment. The era of ‘policy bor-
rowing’ only seemingly faded away. Education policies round the
world have been designed on the implicit or explicit, endogenous
or exogenous practices of policy borrowing. We can observe dif-
ferent forms of policy borrowing (Gupta, 2022; Nishimura-Sahi,
2020). Clapham (2023) discusses policy borrowing from contexts
associated with high performance in international league tables.
Globalization has brought about ‘sameness,’ similarity, and inter-
connectedness (Bauman, 1998); notions that are often ascribed
positive connotations and that facilitate international compara-
tive research, such as pisa. However, they also amplify competi-
tion and other policy decisions and marketized practices, such as
league tables (Clapham, 2023).
• School leaders’ professional development on addressing current societal
challenges,crisesandemergenciesmatters. Potter and Chitpin (2020)
discuss professional development in the highly neoliberal context
of the English schools in Ontario and emphasize professional cri-
tique and data analysis methods that are beyond statistics. Policy
makers need and must have data that goes beyond the numbers. In
Chapter 4, Šimkut˙ e-Bukant˙ e and Žydži¯ unait˙ e point out the need
for mixed methods research design. The dominant, quantitative
research has to be accompanied by qualitative and mixed meth-
ods research designs to get better and in-depth understanding of
current phenomena. This is an implication for further research
but also a recommendation to policy makers to incentivize pro-
fessional development through financial incentives and to encour-
age principals and school leaders to make use of their reflective

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