Exploring the leadership knowledge base: evidence, implications, and challenges for educational leadership in Wales

ABSTRACT

This article draws upon the educational leadership knowledge base to explore central concepts, questions, and issues of relevance to the contemporary policy context in Wales. The article is not a review of the leadership literature, but rather it explores the empirical evidence to address three key questions that are critical to school and system improvement. The aim of this article is to present evidence, implications and challenges concerning leadership preparation, leadership development and leadership learning.

KEYWORDS:

• School leadership
• distributed leadership
• organisational change system leadership
• system reform

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 http://gov.wales/topics/educationandskills/schoolshome/curriculuminwales/curriculum-for-wales-curriculum-for-life/schools-in-wales-as-learning-organisations/?lang=en

2 The idea of professional learning communities, as teams within a school, was part of Welsh Government policy from 2010 to 2012 (Harris and Jones 2010; OECD 2014; Harris and Jones 2017).

3 https://innovateed.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Districts-on-the-Move-Getting-Serious-about-Capacity-Building-1.pdf