Page 52 - Educational Leadership in a Changing World

Rasa Nedzinskait˙ e-Mači¯ unien˙ e and Antonios Kafa

structional leadership varies across contexts. In systems where instruc-
tional leadership is implemented through formal or top-down mech-
anisms (e.g. frequent lesson observations, performance monitoring),
it may create unintended pressures or fail to address the true learning
needs of students. For example, research has shown that in countries
with strong bureaucratic traditions, principals’ instructional leadership
may still reflect administrative control rather than pedagogical support
(Nedzinskait˙ e-Mači¯ unien˙ e& Jurgil˙ e, 2023).
In contrast, school autonomy was positively related to achievement
and had both direct and indirect effects through escs. This is consis-
tent with previous research (Hanushek et al., 2013) that greater au-
tonomy allows schools to adapt to the needs of their communities,
especially where resources and parental involvement are high. How-
ever, this advantage may be less available in contexts with low escs,
where schools lack the capacity to fully exercise decision-making free-
dom. Moreover, in the absence of compensatory policies, it may even
widen the gap between schools with different levels of social capital
(Schleicher, 2018).
The findings of this study contribute to a deeper understanding of
school leadership and educational equity in the context of interna-
tional student achievement assessments, such as pisa and timss
(Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study). These as-
sessments aim not only to measure student achievement internation-
ally, but also to identify key contextual factors – such as leadership
practices, school autonomy and socioeconomic status – that determine
educational outcomes (Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and
Development, 2020; Mullis et al., 2020). The partial mediation effects
of escs identified in this study are consistent with pisa data, which
consistently show that socioeconomically advantaged students tend to
perform better, regardless of the policies of the school itself (Organisa-
tion for Economic Co-Operation and Development, 2023a). Meanwhile,
the fact that the moderation effect was not statistically significant sug-
gests that the impact of leadership practices on achievement remains
stable across ses strata. This adds new nuances to the debate on educa-
tional equity and highlights the need to analyse the indirect pathways
through which social context influences learning (Schleicher, 2018).
Furthermore, the negative association between instructional leader-
ship and science achievement calls into question the universality of
international indices of leadership. Such indices used in the talis

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