Abstracts
You will find here the abstracts of the seminar's contributions
Jim Spillane
Educational leadership practice for equitable teaching and learning: theorising and applying a distributed, multi-level perspective to support continuous professional learning
Beyond conceptions of leadership tied to place and person, Spillane advocates conceptualising leadership as a distributed, multi-level practice in order to promote more equitable teaching and learning. A multi-level distributed framework focuses on how actors and artefacts at different levels of an education system interact not only within a single level, but also across levels, to constitute leadership practice in the everyday work of schools. By considering teaching as a socially constructed and situated practice, the lecture explores the essential resources for supporting equitable teaching and its improvement. Moving up from the classroom to the school, Spillane examines the challenges of improving teaching at the school level, with a particular focus on educational leadership. Specifically, in advocating for a distributed perspective to reflect on the practice of improving teaching, Spillane identifies the limitations of thinking confined exclusively to the school level, arguing for a multi-level or systemic approach. To frame this systemic way of thinking about educational leadership for equitable teaching, he does two things. First, he uses a 'communities of practice' framework to reflect on the work and examine its implications for the practice of leading equitable teaching improvement. Second, he advocates for a systems-building mindset, unpacking what systems-building work for equitable teaching improvement entails.
Estela Costa
Expected
Pierre Tulowitzki
Leadership and the use of data to improve teaching and schools: putting things into perspective through international research
In today's schools, data is everywhere, whether it be student results, surveys, observations or digital analyses of learning. In addition, various countries have made efforts to ensure that school leaders and teachers use data to improve schools and education. But more data does not automatically mean better decisions. How can school leaders make sense of data? How can they contribute to the use of data in schools? And how do cultural and systemic contexts influence the way data is used?
Drawing on international research findings, this presentation will explore the relevance and role of educational leadership for effective data use. It will examine how educational leaders use data to guide improvements, meet accountability requirements, and support teachers. It will also explore the tensions that can arise when data-driven expectations conflict with broader educational goals and professional judgement.
Rather than asking whether data is 'good' or 'bad', the lecture will put data use into perspective: what enables leaders to transform information into knowledge? What are the risks of over-reliance on indicators? And how can professional development help school leaders and teachers use data wisely?
Lyne Martel.
School staff management: more support than supervision!
In the broader context of the significant areas of human resource management, which include planning, leadership, organisation, recognition, development and control of an organisation's staff (St-Onge et al., 2021), the educational supervision practices of school principals (SPs) have a significant impact on student success.
While the literature often focuses on the skills of these managers in this area (Bouchamma et al., 2017), our paper focuses instead on the management practices of school administrators: pedagogical supervision is an essential lever for school administrators, with a view to revealing how they actually exercise their pedagogical supervision role on a daily basis.
A qualitative approach was adopted to explore pedagogical supervision practices (Savoie-Zajc, 2018), based on a pedagogical leadership model (Hallinger and Wang, 2015). Semi-structured interviews were conducted with DESs in Quebec, and data analysis revealed trends and nuances in the practices they reported.
The results of our study reveal that although evaluation is standard practice for non-permanent staff, the assessment offered to permanent staff is more focused on recognition and professional development (Jorro, 2009): DESs favour pedagogical support, while resorting to supervision (control) when circumstances require it. They favour collaborative approaches (Martel and Lauzon, 2025), support and development. However, this study also highlights a tension between certain leadership models (pedagogical and transformational, in particular) and the actual practices of school administrators. It calls for the dissemination of pedagogical supervision models that integrate relational and developmental dimensions more fully in order to influence the training of school administrators, but also teachers' perceptions.
Benedicte Gendron
Capacitating Leadership and Welle-Being: Inner Resources in the Service of Transformation and Regenerative Education, Towards Inclusive Excellence
This presentation proposes to examine the paradigms and practices of educational leadership through the lens of capacitating leadership, where its role in supporting and valuing individuals and collectives contributes to well-being and advances regenerative education and inclusive excellence. In a context where schools must combine equity, inclusivity, innovation, and regeneration, it seeks to show how the development of the inner resources, emotional, relational, and reflective, particularly the emotional capital, of educational actors can become the driving force behind profound and collective transformation. This presentation will illustrate how schools can go beyond sustainability by adopting governance style and educational practices that restore and revitalize people, relationships, and the learning environment within a regenerative education framework. It will explore how every member of the school community can contribute to the emergence of an inclusive, regenerative, and authentically humane excellence. After defining the various concepts and paradigms, this intervention will highlight concrete levers to foster well-being in schools: trust, agency, collaborative learning, quality of relationships, openness to diversity, and a shared sense of common destiny. Rooted in the dynamics of encounter and experience sharing, this presentation aims to enrich collective reflection on regenerative and renewed educational leadership capable of addressing current educational challenges and supporting the construction of a more just, inclusive, and humanly sustainable school, striving for zero human waste.
Simon Collin
Conditions for using school data for continuous improvement
Stimulated politically by new public management practices since the 1970s, and technically by IT developments such as big data analysis and artificial intelligence since the 2000s, school data and its corollaries (datafication and data infrastructures) are playing an increasingly central role in education. They are used in the steering of education policies, school management and pedagogical intervention. Far from being neutral, school data can serve various purposes and affect the institutional regulation of practices and relationships between school, political and technical actors. Based on critical data studies in education, we wish to explore the conditions under which data can support the continuous improvement of school stakeholders. To anchor our discussion, we will draw on a case study conducted in the Quebec context.
Jaime Retamal Salazar
Educational leaders in Chile's new public education system: the case of Atacama.
The experience of the Atacama Local Public Education Service (SLEP), one of the first to be created under Law No. 21,040, reveals major challenges that highlight both the importance and the current limitations of educational leadership in the region. Assessments conducted during and after the 2023 education crisis highlight four key issues. First, the system requires greater capacity for distributed leadership. Initiatives such as the 'Atacama Plan', developed in collaboration with universities, including USACH, aim to empower teachers and school teams to take on shared educational leadership roles, promoting collaboration within and between schools. Second, management teams face significant gaps in data-driven decision-making, a critical skill for tracking student progress and ensuring continuity in learning pathways. Thirdly, infrastructure deficiencies have emerged as a major obstacle to management, diverting leaders from their educational guidance functions to deal with emergencies and compensate for insufficient technical capacity in school maintenance. Finally, the transition from municipal to state governance created an urgent need for advanced change management skills, particularly in the areas of trust building, participation and systemic improvement. Overall, the case of Atacama demonstrates that the success of the new public education system depends on leaders who combine strong technical expertise with the ability to distribute leadership and manage organisational complexity under difficult conditions.
Medhi Lazar
Distributed leadership and the challenges of evaluating schools
The presentation aims to explore the concept of distributed leadership by linking it to the challenges of evaluating institutions. Mehdi will attempt to answer the following question from a North American perspective: how can we effectively evaluate leadership practices that are no longer concentrated in a single person, but distributed and shared among different educational stakeholders? The need to develop new evaluation practices that are not limited to individual results, but rather measure the collective capacity of the institution to meet the educational needs of students, will be discussed. Emphasis will be placed on the adoption of distributed leadership through a parallel transformation of evaluation tools and objectives, making them more focused on continuous improvement and organisational learning processes.
Barbara Martin
Perspectives of an international secondary school on data use: combining the French Baccalaureate, the Ontario system and the IB in North America
Based on the case of an accredited, private, independent French high school in Toronto, which falls exclusively under the jurisdiction of the French Ministry of National Education but is part of the Ontario ecosystem, this presentation offers a comparative analysis of three "assessment cultures": the French curriculum, the Ontario system, and the International Baccalaureate.
Drawing on documentary research, bilingual transcripts produced by the school and the admission practices of North American universities, I show how these systems construct different student profiles: holistic and focused on the overall "profile" in Ontario and the IB, and more disciplinary, national and selective in the French Baccalauréat.
The presentation then questions the role of distributed leadership in an international school: how to use data (results, scales, admission rates, well-being indicators) to both:
make the rigour of the Baccalaureate clear to universities,
resist certain forms of grade inflation specific to the local context,
and support a more integrated view of the student, beyond academic performance alone.
In doing so, we will discuss the potential but also the limitations of data-driven governance in a hybrid curricular context.
André Villeneuve
Data-driven decision-making in collaborative teams
Data-informed decision-making in education refers to an iterative and systematic process of collecting and analysing data from multiple types and sources to guide decisions made by school administrators and teachers with the aim of improving school performance in terms of teaching and learning (Lai and Schildkamp, 2013).
Various researchers recommend using data within collaborative teams, such as data teams and professional learning communities (Schildkamp et al., 2019; Villeneuve and Bouchamma, 2025). These collaborative working methods are promising strategies for addressing the lack of data skills among school team members and promoting student success.
During Research Panel II, we will address the topic of data use in collaborative teams, drawing on five constructs from research on educational leadership and the effectiveness of collaborative teams: 1) establishing a shared vision; 2) individualised support; 3) intellectual stimulation; 4) creating a climate of trust; 5) networking.
Melanie Ehren
School leadership in Europe: the challenges they face and how to overcome them
School leaders across Europe face growing challenges: public dissatisfaction with education, persistent inequalities in educational outcomes, and widespread teacher shortages, particularly in rural and disadvantaged areas. Broader societal changes, including technological advances, migration and increasing diversity, are also influencing the demands on educational leadership.
Research highlights the critical role of educational leadership in improving academic outcomes and teacher retention. Yet OECD data show that school leaders spend much of their time on administrative tasks and often lack the authority to influence teaching, learning or resource allocation.
This presentation explores what it means to be an effective headteacher today, balancing pedagogical priorities, organisational well-being and systemic constraints, and how headteachers can use data and evidence to guide their decisions.
Mélissa Bissonnette
Towards an inclusive and equitable school in a context of ethnocultural diversity: the central role of school management and staff
The growing diversity in schools, marked by a plurality of origins, languages and socio-cultural realities (Beaudoin, 2024), creates major challenges in terms of inclusion and equity. Various incidents of racism and a low level of sensitivity to difference justify the need for sustained intercultural and inclusive practices (Deardorff, 2021; Bissonnette et al., 2022). School administrators therefore play a pivotal role in establishing a common and shared vision in each school, facilitating the implementation of appropriate educational approaches. This presentation is the result of collaborative research aimed at developing inclusive practices throughout a Quebec (Canada) primary school characterised by great ethnocultural diversity. It will present the essential conditions for developing and strengthening intercultural and inclusive practices, as well as the approach and efforts made by the school administration and staff to ensure that the entire school team adheres to these practices.
Christopher Day
30 years of research on headteachers/school leaders: working with complexity
In many countries, school educators face unprecedented challenges in responding to challenges related to academic achievement, engaging students and their parents in learning, and understanding and managing new technologies in complex educational environments and cultures of accountability. In doing so, school leaders strive to fulfil their broad instrumental and humanistic missions while responding to a growing range of educational and social policy directives. In many countries, they also struggle to recruit and retain teachers who remain committed to teaching to the best of their abilities. Drawing on international research on successful headteachers, this presentation will focus on how effective headteachers navigate between the micro, meso, exo, macro, and chrono levels of the system. It will highlight the importance of developing and maintaining effective leadership in action, competence and capacity, productive relationships, understanding, resilience and resilience building, and leadership for change.
France Gravelle & Danielle Boucher
The Académie of school headship: a pillar of professional skills in Quebec
Faced with digital transformations and legislative changes redefining the responsibilities of school administrators, research by the Interregional Research Group on the Organisation of Work in Quebec School Administrations (GRIDE, 2020) has highlighted significant gaps in the support provided to these professionals, limiting the transfer of knowledge into practice. At the same time, challenges related to recruitment, succession planning and continuous skills development remain a concern. To address these issues, the Académie des directions d'établissement scolaire (School Management Academy) was created to serve as a major lever for professional development, based on the values of expertise, innovation, collaboration and self-improvement. Its main mission is to offer accessible support and continuing education, particularly through an online learning platform. The courses offered incorporate various tools—leadership profile tests, systemic coaching, training on legal, budgetary and organisational aspects—developed using an agile approach. This content is validated by strategic committees and tested by pilot groups before being released. In collaboration with partners such as the AQPDE and UQAM, the Academy also offers webinars, conferences and virtual coaching sessions to strengthen the skills and leadership of managers. In this way, it helps to enhance their role and encourage their retention within the education network. This communication aims to present the Academy's range of services and the opportunities offered by its digital learning platform.
LIU Min
Artificial intelligence enhances educational leadership: policy and practice exploration in China
Against a backdrop of rapid advances in artificial intelligence (AI) in China, this study examines how AI is strengthening educational leadership by analysing policy development and practical implementation at multiple levels. Focusing on the Digital Education Conference and the Digital Education White Paper published by the Ministry of Education, as well as the *General Guide for Teaching Artificial Intelligence in Primary and Secondary Schools (2025)* and the *Guidelines for the Use of Generative AI in Primary and Secondary Education (2025)*, this research examines the transposition of national policies into local practices. Taking Beijing as a case study, the article examines policy adaptations at the municipal level and a pilot initiative in a secondary school in Chaoyang District, which illustrates how AI is being integrated into teaching and school management.
While these initiatives demonstrate China's progress in using AI to improve the quality and efficiency of education, this article also highlights persistent challenges. These include risks such as cognitive outsourcing, increased teacher workload, and issues related to educational equity. Through a qualitative analysis of policy documents and school practices, this study aims to provide insights into the opportunities and complexities of integrating AI into education. It concludes by emphasising the need for balanced approaches that align technological innovation with core educational values.
Olivier Perrenoud
Beyond steering: school leadership architects of a professional learning culture
In an educational context characterised by uncertainty and growing challenges related to equity, innovation and sustainable development, schools are being called upon to undergo profound change. In this dynamic, the role of school management is crucial, not only in guiding teams towards more innovative teaching practices, but also in reinventing their own management methods. This paper is based on a field survey conducted in several schools engaged in pedagogical, organisational or managerial transformation projects. It shows that leadership for innovation involves the art of bringing out possibilities, as close as possible to the realities on the ground. The results shed light on the levers available to management to support collective innovation aligned with strong educational values. They contribute to redefining the role of managers as architects of a professional learning culture.
Mickaël Gosset
Training management teams in leadership in French-speaking Belgium
This paper offers a diachronic analysis of the evolution of the profession of school headteacher in French-speaking Belgium, from the role of 'school principal' to the emergence of a truly professionalised management function. Through the prism of successive reforms – notably the Pacte pour un Enseignement d'excellence (Pact for Excellence in Education) – it examines the changes in school management, the rise of pedagogical leadership (Leithwood and Louis, 2012; Gather Thurler et al., 2014) and the identity transformations they induce. Drawing on recent empirical data collected from nursery and primary school headteachers, this paper analyses how these actors interpret, negotiate and embody the logic of accountability and contractualisation (Spillane et al., 2002; Buisson-Fenet & Dutercq, 2015). It highlights a role that now lies at the intersection of school governance, the construction of collective meaning and support for educational change. Finally, it questions the training and professionalisation mechanisms for school principals in this context.
Anne-Michèle Delobbe & Olivier Lemieux
Crisis management in schools: first steps in training for school leaders
The paper explores crisis management strategies used by school administrators through semi-structured interviews conducted with approximately 20 administrators from Quebec's public school system who were recruited in collaboration with the main professional associations. The interviews, conducted on Zoom, follow the critical incident method (Flanagan, 1954) to gather detailed accounts.
The data is analysed inductively using NVivo software to identify the crises experienced and key management practices. Once saturation is reached, crisis scenarios and a repertoire of actions will be developed. These will be validated by 10 to 15 crisis management experts, allowing the scenarios to be adjusted and refined for deployment to school administrators in a training context. The presentation will present preliminary results related to the nature of the various crises experienced and management practices, as well as an example of a crisis scenario that can be used to support school administrators in developing their crisis management skills.
Jocelyne Chevrier
Supporting school leadership: a lever for student success
While professional support for teachers after their training is well established, support for school administrators remains largely unstructured. However, in a context marked by numerous changes and the constant goal of promoting student success, this issue becomes essential. To address it, some Quebec school service centres have invited experienced administrators to support their colleagues. At the request of these first mentors, Professor Chevrier brought these actors together in a collaborative community for the exchange of practices. With three fellow professor-researchers, she then conducted action research, based on the theoretical framework of Guay and Gagnon (2021), in order to define this new function.
Caroline Letor
Leadership for resonant environments: a comparative analysis of three school environments
In addition to being a sustainable development goal, schools are considered a key vehicle for addressing sustainable development challenges (UNESCO, 2014). Our observations show that schools are not so much a vehicle for sustainable development as a place where these issues arise on a daily basis. According to Éloi's analysis (2024), it is possible to understand the link between the climate crisis and the social crises experienced as a result. Although school management and teachers deal with these situations, it seems to us that the management of school organisations for a sustainable society remains unconsidered. Based on essays on resonance (Rosa, 2018), we have produced a theoretical framework of leadership for resonant environments (Letor, 2024; 2025; Letor and Gamelin, forthcoming). In our presentation, we compare this framework with data from three action research projects (2021-2025) in Quebec school service centres.
Rick Mintrop
Ten effective problem-solving practices for school leaders
Expected
Ann Elisabeth Gunnufulsen
Comparative analysis of leadership practices in Northern Europe
The presentation examines the prospects for school leadership practices and working conditions in Northern Europe, with a particular focus on the Nordic education system. The Nordic education system emerged after the Second World War, and researchers often refer to the period from 1945 to around 1970 as the golden age of social democracy. The system is based on the principles of a market economy regulated by public authorities, universal solidarity, equality and trust. The cornerstones were equal rights for citizens and a welfare state covering a wide range of social services for all citizens. However, this system has certain shortcomings, as the cultural rights of ethnic minorities, such as the Sami people, were not included in the model from the outset. New public management reforms have gradually shifted attention away from issues of solidarity, and school leaders in Northern European countries are experiencing a trend towards a culture of performativity and overwork. The presentation contributes to discussions on public policy and how school leaders interpret and implement policies at the local level in a globalised economy and a changing world. Concepts such as school governance, power, autonomy, pedagogical leadership and the creation of micropolitical meaning serve as analytical prisms. The aim is to deepen the analysis of the links between context, expectations, role and the work of the headteacher.
Monica Mincu
How School Leaders Decide When School Autonomy is Low: Interactive Leadership to Navigate System Governance
In low-autonomy environments, principals often occupy dual roles, functioning as administrative enforcers of centrally determined regulations and limitedly as instructional leaders, striving to influence teaching and learning processes. Various governance features, such as low decisional power at the school level, high teachers’ autonomy and reduced functioning budgets, impose tight restrictions on principals’ actions. This study uses qualitative data from the Global Education Monitoring Report (2024) while being informed by a larger qualitative data set. The method draws on a comparison of structures to highlight convergent governance modes. Despite challenges that are typical when the school autonomy is low, school leaders adopt interactive tactics, including informal negotiations with teachers’ and school boards, to reconcile top-down mandates with local school needs. The analysis reveals that fostering collaboration and coherence among staff is often contingent on persuasion and consensus-building. Indeed, formal authority and low principalship powers is insufficient in hierarchical and loosely coupled systems. Ultimately, this study highlights that understanding leadership in low-autonomy school systems requires acknowledging the structural conditions that enable or constrain principals’ effective powers to influence teaching, organisational culture, and decision-making.
Stephan Huber
Strategic leadership for equity, innovation and sustainable development in an uncertain world: the BIO+ approach
In his presentation, Stephan Huber will address the topic "All BIO, or what? – Concerted and consistent action in educational and school development: joint implementation of school-specific strategies between innovation, sustainability and optimisation (BIO)". Based on science while being very practice-oriented and pragmatic, this presentation provides insights into how school-specific strategies can be developed and implemented, and how to act according to the objectives and resources available.
He advocates for a reduction in "folklore" and recommends focusing more on effectiveness and what has an educational impact. In some cases, based on the BIO strategic model (boost, innovate, optimise), he also advises adopting an approach in line with the slogan 'do the right things right' and examining where costly or less beneficial elements can be temporarily or even permanently removed or omitted.
Lejf Moos
Review and discussion of trends in the international seminar on school leadership
The seminar sets out to investigate and discus ‘the major challenges of school leadership in the 21st century.’ It argues that to some degree the conditions for school leadership are the same in most educational systems as they construct a context of accountability and results-based management. A challenge is always finding out how similar the governance of education systems is in reality and what that means to practitioners of school leadership.
The seminar discussed a vision of the development of schools and school leadership in autonomous schools and thus in collaboration and stakeholder engagement. Which would include teachers, parents, and students in the decision-making process. Result of scientific work on a number of key-concepts like transformational leadership, distributed leadership, systemic leadership, and those more focused on organisational or professional learning have been discussed and so were relations between those concepts and leadership practice. The impact of relatively contemporary technologies and AI were discussed in relation to school leadership activities and thinking on education and learning.
Mika Risku
Expected