Educational leadership
An Emerald mission in support of the UN Sustainable Development Goals
Educational leadership with vision is critical to academic success for all students; done well, it positively affects staff and student morale, performance and outcomes.
What are the problems affecting leaders? How can you structure your decision-making and be a better leader? How can you help your institution to be intrinsically inclusive and support the leaders of tomorrow?
Together with some of our partners and authors, we’ve been exploring this subject.
We’re searching for more authors to publish with us in the field of education, we’d love to hear from you.
This mission supports our Quality education for all goal
Educational leadership
Educational leadership involves working with teachers and instructors in order to improve educational outcomes at all levels. It is critical to academic success for all students; done well, it positively affects staff and student morale, performance, and outcomes.
It starts with setting a vision and mission for the institution and then marshalling the resources, policies, strategies, and processes needed to achieve that vision and mission. But what are the main challenges affecting school leaders? How can they structure decision-making to be more effective? How can leaders create an organizational culture that aligns with their vision and mission? And how can they create an inclusive and supportive culture for other leaders in schools?
Featured journals
Here we have highlighted our key journals that publish articles on the topic of educational leadership. You can also search for a specific journal by subject area on our find a journal page.
If you want to speak to us about publishing an article in one of our journals, please get in touch.
Journal of Educational Administration
Editors-in-Chief: Professor Chen Schechter and Professor Jayson W. Richardson
On the Horizon
Editor-in-Chief: John Moravec
Journal of Professional Capital and Community
Editor-in-Chief: Martin Scanlan
Author thoughts
Some of our authors have been sharing their research in different ways; check out our chatty podcasts below.
Universities have a responsibility to the communities and the environment they are a part of. Author Debbie Haski-Leventhal discusses the ways a university can find its purpose.
Diversity & equity in school leadership
Schools are based on a fundamental principle: to provide access to education and safe and supportive learning environments for all students.
Related books
Some of our authors have been investigating how to teach through disruption in the modern world.
You are invited to see some of their research.
Leading under Pressure: Educational Leadership in Neoliberal Times
Stephanie Chitpin and Robert E. White
Degendering Leadership in Higher Education
Barret Katuna
Decolonizing and Indigenizing Visions of Educational Leadership: Global Perspectives in Charting the Course
Njoki N. Wane, Kimberly L. Todd, Coly Chau, and Heather Watts
Leadership in Turbulent Times: Cultivating Diversity and Inclusion in the P-12 Education Workplace
Henry Tran and Gaëtane Jean-Marie
Leading Educational Systems and Schools in Times of Disruption and Exponential Change: A Call for Courage, Commitment and Collaboration
Patrick Duignan
Leading Education Systems
Stephen Brown and Patrick Duignan
Book chapters
Academic Leaders Under Stress: Sources and Strategies
Walter Gmelch, Chioma Ezeh
International Perspectives on Leadership in Higher Education
Centering Relationality in Decolonizing and Indigenizing Visions of Educational Leadership
Njoki N. Wane, Kimberly L. Todd, Coly Chau, and Heather Watts
Decolonizing and Indigenizing Visions of Educational Leadership
Leadership Styles in Higher Educational Institutions in India – "A Need for Paradigm Shift!"
Vinod Sharma, Jeanne Poulose, and Chandan Maheshkar
Role of Leaders in Managing Higher Education
Feminist@ Leaders: Testimonios of Aspiring Superintendents in Texas
Dessynie Edwards, Tina Garcia, Monica M. Muñoz, Teresa Silva, and Juan Manuel Niño
Leadership in Turbulent Times
Related journal articles
Creating equitable access: using OER for socially just educational leaders
Sydney Richardson and Jacqueline Roebuck Sakho
Journal for Multicultural Education
A new validated model of leadership development in higher education; empirical assessment using universal attributes of spiritual intelligence
Chetan Prabhu and Mita Mehta
Higher Education, Skills and Work-Based Learning
The effects of leader expectation and coworker pressure on research engagement in higher education: the moderating role of achievement value
Ngoc Lan Nguyen
Journal of Applied Research in Higher Education
Successful health-promoting leadership – A question of synchronisation
Pia Skott
Health Education
Culture and education with Alice Rigney (1942–2017), Australia's first Aboriginal woman school principal
Belinda MacGill, Kay Whitehead and Lester Rigney
History of Education Review
Distributed leadership and teachers' emotional labour: the mediating role of teacher autonomy
Murat Özdemir, Hilal Buyukgoze, Yener Akman, Hakan Topaloğlu, and Kenan Çiftçi
Journal of Educational Administration
Psychometric properties of the successful school leadership survey
Kenneth Leithwood, Jingping Sun, Randall Schumacker, and Cheng Hua
Journal of Educational Administration
Smart collaborative ecosystem: leading complex school systems
Pascale Benoliel and Chen Schechter
Journal of Educational Administration
Which leadership processes encourage sustainable transitions within universities?
Leyla Azizi
International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education
Recognizing leadership styles through the use of a serious game
Fernando Almeida and Zoltan Buzady
Journal of Applied Research in Higher Education
Calls for papers
We’re looking for submissions to upcoming special issues. Click through to find out how to get an article published in one of our peer reviewed journals.
Making an Impact – UN Sustainable Development Goals and university performance
International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education
Reimagining the future of higher education: collaboration and compassion
Journal of Applied Research in Higher Education
How educational leadership promotes equity in student learning outcomes: international evidence
International Journal of Educational Management
Sustaining School Improvement through School-University Partnerships during the Post-Pandemic Era
Journal of Educational Administration
Active and transformative learning in higher education in times of Artificial Intelligence and ChatGPT
Interactive Technology and Smart Education
Special issues
Leadership in school health promotion
Health Education
Guest Editors: Kevin Dadaczynski, Monica Carlsson, and Qing Gu
The Future of Universities: View from the Top
On the Horizon
Guest Editor: David Atkinson
Organizing Schools for the Future: Innovative Conceptualizations of Schools as Organizations
Journal of Educational Administration
Guest Editors: Sharon Kruse, Karen Edge, and Chen Schechter
Talk to us about your work
We love hearing from researchers and practitioners about their work.
If you would like to contribute to this page please let us know by filling in this form.
Mission-led research – our goals
Our core area of focus is interdisciplinary research aligned with the UN SDGs, with these key goals in mind, all of which are about creating real world impact, at a time when it's needed most.
Fairer society
We are passionate about working with researchers globally to deliver a fairer, more inclusive society. This perhaps has never been more important in today’s divided world...
Healthier lives
We understand the value of a world that recognises and protects the most vulnerable and acknowledges the importance of a healthy mind as well as a healthy body...
Responsible management
We aim to champion researchers, practitioners, policymakers and organisations who share our goals of a more ethical, responsible and sustainable way of working...
Quality education for all
We believe in quality education for everyone, everywhere and by highlighting the issue and working with experts in the field, we can find ways we can all be part of the solution...
Sustainable structures and infrastructures
We recognise the transformative power of sustainable engineering, design and building practices in creating a world where our planet and its inhabitants can thrive.