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The COVID-19 health emergency and the planetary crisis, which are inextricably linked to the ongoing climate and environmental impacts, have forced us to confront unprecedented contingencies, serving as a reflective stimulus to address some of the most urgent educational issues. Sustainability should be understood as the transformative possibility of “changing the way”, that is, the educational paradigm, which can only be mobilized by pedagogically qualified lifestyles oriented toward integral, environmental, and human ecology. Accepting this conscious and non-rhetorical invitation directly requires pedagogical responsibility in initiating processes of profound reflection for a new culture of human development that reclaims the ontological values of limitation and care as indicators of human and social resilience.

Who is the assistant head of school? Why has this position largely been overlooked as a significant force in educational leadership in Italy? In answering such questions, the main aim of this pilot study is to shed light on the crucial role of the assistant heads, considered as ‘key pedagogical figures’ in the dayto day leadership and management of a school. This paper is exploratory in nature and follows a qualitative design based on in-depth interviews with ten assistant heads. A systematic qualitative data analysis approach grounded on cross-interview synthesis is used. Findings are critically reviewed in light of the few available national studies in the middle leadership field. Conclusions containing research recommendations will follow with the aim of paving the stage to formally recognize this neglected role.

Current education reforms have resulted in enhanced responsibilities and accountabilities for all schools while leadership responsibility is now stretched over a range of different actors. Following with this, the centrality of distributed leadership reinforces the importance of the middle tier to generate improvement and to influence teaching and learning processes in schools. Unfortunately this is not the case of Italy, where any attempt to introduce and recognize intermediate layers of management have been unsuccessful. In this sense, Italy lacks an organizational component that the literature has identified as crucial to improving the quality of education. By reviewing international studies in the field of school leadership, the author will discuss middle management in schools in relation to the current discourse on distributed leadership in the attempt to pave a debate on middle leadership in Italy.

This brief article aims to explore current approaches to teacher leadership in an attempt to advance its practice and energize the collective leadership of teachers. Leadership is not vested in one person who is assigned to a formal position of power or authority, but, rather, is a reciprocal process that enables participants in an educational community to construct meanings for a shared purpose of schooling. First, I acknowledge the teacher’s role in leading improvement at both classroom and school levels. I, then, suggest that applying servant leadership to teacher leadership may serve as an opportunity to improve teaching practices.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the construct of authentic leadershipb from a conceptual analysis involving contributions from the management literature and studies in education. It is our belief that such an approach will help us raise moral and ethical questions leading to a better understanding of the needs facing the world today. The journey towards authenticity and towards the ability to be “true to oneself” is certainly the most fascinating and demanding challenge involving leaders and followers in an infinite way (in the sense of unfinished) leading to change in the direction of a higher and noble moral purpose.