School leadership today is increasingly shaped by conditions of complexity, constraint, and contradiction. Across diverse educational contexts, leaders are expected to respond to expanding policy demands, heightened accountability pressures, shifting sociopolitical dynamics, and persistent resource limitations. These conditions rarely align neatly with one another or with leaders’ professional values and commitments to students and communities. As a result, leadership practice is not simply a matter of implementing policy or managing organizations, but of navigating competing expectations while exercising informed and responsible judgment.
This special issue centers that work. Rather than focusing on discrete policies or reform initiatives, it examines how school leaders interpret, negotiate, and respond to competing demands in their day-to-day practice. Leaders are not passive recipients of policy; they actively make sense of it, prioritize among multiple and sometimes conflicting expectations, and shape how policy is enacted within their local contexts. In doing so, they balance pressures for compliance with commitments to care, equity, and the broader purposes of schooling. This issue brings attention to that often-invisible work of interpretation and decision-making.
While existing scholarship has documented the increasing regulation of schooling through accountability systems, curriculum mandates, and data-driven governance, less attention has been given to how leaders navigate multiple, overlapping pressures simultaneously, particularly in contexts where demands may be contradictory or politically contested. This special issue addresses that gap by foregrounding leadership practice across a range of domains and international contexts.
The contributions to this issue examine leadership in settings shaped by diverse pressures, including curriculum regulation, accountability systems, technology governance, crisis response, and resource constraints. Across these domains, authors explore how leaders interpret policy, make decisions under conditions of uncertainty, and respond to the needs of their students and communities. Collectively, these studies highlight the consequential agency of school leaders, not only in how policy is implemented, but in how it is adapted, mediated, and at times resisted in practice.
By bringing together empirical work across contexts and domains, this special issue offers a more integrated understanding of leadership under conditions of contradiction and complexity. It contributes to theory by highlighting the central role of judgment and sensemaking in leadership practice, and to practice by illuminating how leaders navigate competing demands in real-world settings. In doing so, it underscores the importance of preparing and supporting leaders who can respond thoughtfully and ethically to the challenges of contemporary schooling.
Authors interested in contributing should submit a proposed abstract (no more than 500 words) to Dr. Sonya Hayes by June 5, 2026. Authors will be notified of proposal decisions by June 30, 2026.
List of Topic Areas
- Leadership sensemaking and professional judgment in interpreting and responding to overlapping local, national, and global policy pressures
- Ethical decision-making and professional responsibility when formal mandates conflict with values, equity commitments, or community needs
- Balancing compliance, discretion, and care in contested or ambiguous leadership contexts
- Leadership practice across policy domains, including accountability, curriculum regulation, digital governance (e.g., AI, data privacy), crisis response, and resource allocation
- Implications for leadership preparation and development, particularly in building leaders’ capacity to navigate complexity and contradiction
Submissions Information
Submissions are made using ScholarOne Manuscripts. Registration and access are available here: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jnlea
Author guidelines must be strictly followed. Please see here: https://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/journal/jea
Authors should select (from the drop-down menu) the special issue title at the appropriate step in the submission process, i.e. in response to ““Please select the issue you are submitting to”.
Submitted articles must not have been previously published, nor should they be under consideration for publication anywhere else, while under review for this journal.
Journal Information: Scopus Journal Q1, H-Index 80
Key Deadlines
Closing date for abstract submission: 05/06/2026
Email for abstract submissions: shayes22@utk.edu
Opening date for manuscripts submissions: 04/05/2026
Closing date for manuscripts submission: 01/10/2026
For more details refer here
