Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: I write this commentary with urgency and guarded hope. Educational leadership is not merely evolving. Instead, it is being re-parameterized by forces that exceed inherited categories of school improvement, effective leadership, and evidence-based practice. Looking toward 2030, the field’s most consequential questions concern governance under extreme uncertainty: who decides, what counts as knowledge, and how legitimacy is sustained when technologies, borders, and policy regimes shift faster than institutions can adapt. This discussion highlights three intersecting themes: artificial intelligence (AI)-driven transformation, decolonizing and diversifying research, and activist digital pedagogies. It ends with agenda-setting research questions.
Author: Carol Mullen
Institution: Virginia Tech
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W7166353262