Conference Agenda

Educational leadership continues to be recognised as a central factor in school and system improvement, yet the work of leading is increasingly shaped by intensifying accountability pressures, shifting reform cycles, and complex socio‑cultural expectations (Harris & Jones, 2023). These dynamics are strongly visible in Hong Kong, where reforms associated with school-based management have devolved responsibilities to schools while simultaneously producing dense administrative and compliance demands, with implications for how leaders understand, prioritise, and sustain their work (Campbell & Kam, 2026; Wong & Liu, 2018). Comparable pressures are evident across European systems, where concerns about leadership recruitment, retention, and sustainability have grown as governance structures become more multilayered, more performative, and more demanding (UNESCO, 2024). This paper uses Hong Kong as a theoretically generative case through which to consider how educators make sense of leadership preparation, transitions, and sustainability in ways that illuminate challenges faced internationally.

The central research question asks: How do educators conceptualise and experience leadership across their career trajectories, and what are the implications for leadership preparation, transitions, and sustainability in schools? This question is especially salient for middle leaders and vice principals (and equivalent roles), who form a crucial part of leadership pipelines and whose sensemaking about organisational expectations, identity shifts, and future aspirations shapes whether systems maintain a viable supply of committed leaders (Bryant, 2019; Szeto, 2022).

Sensemaking theory forms the conceptual and analytic core of the study. Drawing on Spillane, Reiser and Reimer (2002) and Datnow and Park (2009), sensemaking is understood as the process through which educators interpret policy messages, organisational routines, and professional experiences through the lens of prior knowledge, interaction, and school culture. This perspective positions leadership as an interpretive practice in which individuals negotiate meanings, define problems, and determine action under conditions of uncertainty or overload. In addition, the study recognises that sensemaking is consequential for how educators understand their capacity and willingness to act: interpretations of leadership purpose, feasibility, and demands shape subsequent choices about whether to pursue leadership roles, how to transition between them, and how to sustain oneself within them (Shaked & Schechter, 2017; Lee & Ip, 2021).

The international contribution of this paper is two-fold. First, it addresses longstanding calls to diversify educational leadership scholarship beyond dominant Anglo‑American contexts by providing an empirically grounded account of how leadership is understood and navigated in a Confucian-heritage, high-accountability system (Mertkan et al., 2017). Second, the Hong Kong case offers insights that resonate with international contexts experiencing similar tensions between decentralisation and accountability, growing expectations of school leaders, and concerns about the sustainability of leadership careers. By foregrounding how leaders interpret, negotiate, and make meaning of leadership demands, the study offers a lens through which researchers and policymakers can better understand why reforms succeed differently across contexts and how leadership development systems might better support leaders’ interpretive and relational capacities.

Objective

The objective of this study was to examine whether and how the type of principal succession (internal versus external hires) and schools’ prior performance are associated with principal turnover among secondary principals in Chile. High principal turnover disrupts school processes, often increasing teacher attrition and negatively affecting student performance (Tonido et al., 2024; Winters et al., 2023). A principal’s departure can also generate opportunities, as new leaders may introduce fresh perspectives (Grissom & Bartanen, 2019). This innovation potential is more relevant for low-performing schools, which are more likely to require organizational changes (Buckman et al., 2017; Lee, 2015).

Much of the research on principal turnover and succession has been conducted in Europe and North America. Few studies have addressed these issues in Latin American countries, and most have focused on turnover rates among primary school principals (Author, 2024, 2026). To our knowledge, this is the first study in Latin America to examine how internal and external promotions relate to principal turnover in secondary schools with varying prior performance levels

Conceptual framework

The conceptual framework informing this study bridges two major research areas: career pathways into and out of the principalship and principal succession practices.

Principal turnover

Research has identified several individual and school-level characteristics associated with principal turnover (Snodgrass Rangel, 2018). For instance, older principals are less likely to transition between schools but more likely to retire or leave the system (Tekleselassie & Choi, 2021). In the US, high-performing principals are often promoted to central office positions, whereas those perceived as less effective are more likely to leave the school system (Grissom & Bartanen, 2019). Principals working in schools serving more disadvantaged students are more likely to transfer to other schools or to different roles within the education system (Loeb et al., 2010). Working conditions (e.g., administrative autonomy, salary levels, and job stress) also play a crucial role in retention (Authors, 2026).

Hiring practices

Pendola and Fuller (2020) explored the benefits and drawbacks of promoting internal candidates for principal succession in the United States. Advantages include minimized disruption during transitions and a comprehensive understanding of organizational practices. Familiarity with past performance enables better assessment of candidates, while awareness of job expectations enhances their effectiveness. Conversely, internal recruitment can hinder organizational progress due to potential deficits in administrative support, which are crucial for job satisfaction. There is a tendency to assume that internal candidates are adequately prepared, which results in insufficient mentorship. Additionally, competition among internal candidates can create micropolitical conflicts.

Principal turnover and hiring practices in Chile

In 2011, the Quality and Equity in Education Law established a structured system for the recruitment and selection of public-school principals via the High Public Administration (Alta Dirección Pública, ADP). This reform encourages a competitive mobility model, enabling the recruitment of both internal and external candidates based on their qualifications and professional experience. Although external organizations manage recruitment, the central office retains final authority over hiring decisions. Studies indicate that principals chosen through the ADP system have positively influenced standardized test outcomes and improved school climates (Muñoz y Prem, 2024). Galdames and González (2019) identified advantages of internal promotions through the ADP system, including candidates’ familiarity with their institutions’ dynamics and diminishing uncertainty regarding the new principal’s vision. Hiring practices in private schools are predominantly informal, with approximately 60% of principals appointed through direct invitations from administrators rather than competitive selection processes (Weinstein & Muñoz, 2014).

This study addressed the following research question: Does turnover among internally versus externally promoted principals differ by schools’ prior performance?

This paper presents a study of how emerging research literature conceptualises educational leadership autonomy, compared to how education leaders in three different European country contexts describe their autonomy when asked openly. The motivation for the study stems from the well‑established observation that “experts may use the same term for different concepts, use different terms for the same concept, use the same term for the same concept, or use different terms and have different concepts” by Shaw & Gaines (1989). Such conceptual ambiguity is typical in newer research fields, where a shared conceptual language has yet to stabilise. Inspired by theories on conceptual consensus and correspondence, this study explores the understandings of autonomy in the growing but still relatively scarce literature on leadership autonomy, and compares these understandings with how education leaders describe autonomy in practice. The aim is to raise the issue of conceptual correspondence between how autonomy is discussed in education research literature and how it is understood by school leaders.

The literature on school leaders’ perceptions and understandings of autonomy is limited, but existing studies show considerable variation (Niesche et al., 2023; Heffernan & Pierpoint, 2020; Woods et al., 2020). School leaders tend to express support for autonomy, yet they differ in what they believe autonomy entails: for some, it relates to greater flexibility and empowerment; for others, it concerns resources, staffing, or direction‑setting. Several studies also note that the concept itself can be experienced as ambiguous and vague (cf. Niesche et al., 2023). In comparison, the research literature defines educational leadership autonomy in ways that range from ethical interpretations such as “the capability to adopt for oneself the principles, rules or values that guide one’s action” (Woods et al., 2020), to multidimensional models describing autonomy as a combination of functional, structural, and cultural components (Cheng et al., 2016).

Understanding how autonomy is conceptualised in both practice and research is increasingly relevant as decentralised governance reforms have positioned leadership at school and local authority levels as key factors for educational change and development (cf. Rorrer et al. 2008; Nordholm et al. 2025). Today’s education systems expect leaders to handle high degrees of interrelatedness, multiple governing layers, and diverse stakeholder influences (author et al., 2025). Research has also shown that education leaders autonomously and purposefully shape their institutions in distinct ways that earlier studies have paid limited attention to (author et al., 2017, 2019, 2025).

Although leadership has been widely discussed as distributed (Spillane et al., 2015), and studies have discussed various issues of leadership autonomy (e.g., Moos et al., 2018, Nihlfors et al. 2013) autonomy is often still conceptualised in the literature as an individual trait, exercised through self‑governance and individual agency (Woods et al., 2022). Recent studies, however, highlight relational and multidimensional aspects of autonomy (Wildy, 2004; Cheng et al., 2015), suggesting that autonomy is embedded in interactions, organisational conditions, governing styles, knowledge regimes, stakeholder positions, and leaders’ professional competencies (Wilches, 2007; Parker, 2014). How such relational forms of autonomy are experienced by school leaders in everyday practice is a central empirical question in this study.

By comparing research‑based definitions of autonomy with leaders’ self‑reported understandings, the study identifies areas of correspondence as well as conceptual gaps. This provides a basis for renewed discussion about educational leadership autonomy as an emerging and still developing concept within education research.