Current Issues in Educational Leadership: What is the Literature Saying?

This article identifies several significant and emerging themes in the educational leadership literature, a literature that has grown rapidly across the last couple of decades. One of these themes deals with some of the paradoxes or tensions school leaders encounter on a daily basis, higlighting the complex and challenging contexts within which school leadership is practised. The background to the ideas presented here was based on a critical analysis of a leadership framework used by one large government education system.* The themes were derived from an examination of 12 educational leadership frameworks from various Australian and overseas education systems, 23 books and/or relevant book chapters, and 12 journal articles/conference papers.2 From this material, the review distilled nine significant leadership themes on educational leadership..