Reframing Educational Leadership Research in the Twenty-First Century

For the last three decades, reviews on instructional leadership have pointed to studies that predominantly adopted conventional social science research methodologies, specifically analytical tools, such as descriptive, causal factor, correlational and advanced modelling. These methods have constraints and limitations, which include that variable-based linear models measures are treated as ‘rigorously real’ measures of social reality, that individuals use rational deduction (ignoring the value premise of decision-making), and that individuals are treated as independent and individualized. This paper proposes and illustrates how research approaches of complexity science can be applied within the social system to address complex instructional leadership questions. Consequently, reframing instructional leadership research through the lens of complexity science provides the most viable approach to understand the adaptive processes and the dynamic system of schools.