The Leadership Demands on Early-Career Teachers
Management in Education (MiE) invites submissions for a special issue, ‘The Leadership demands on Early-Career Teachers’ to be edited by Dr Bernardita Moreno, The University of Melbourne, Dr Helen Goode, The University of Melbourne and Prof. David Gurr, The University of Melbourne.
As schools become more complex institutions, there is an expectation that more staff become involved in leadership work. Leadership from principals remains very important to school success, but so too does leadership from those in other senior and middle leadership roles, and, increasingly from teachers (Bryant et al., 2020; Grissom et al., 2021; Gurr et al., 2025; Harris & Jones, 2022; Lipscombe et al., 2023; Pan et al., 2023; Tian et al., 2016; UNESCO, 2024). Consequently, early-career teachers (ECTs), those within their first five years of practice, are increasingly being expected to not only teach electively, but also contribute to school leadership and improvement (Gurr et al., 2025). Whilst there is increasing exposure to leadership ideas in initial teacher education (ITE) programs to help prepare ECTs for these leadership demands (Acquaro, 2019; Acquaro & Gurr, 2022), many ECTs develop their leadership knowledge and practice through formal and informal pathways while establishing themselves as teachers (Antonsen et al., 2024; Gurr et al., 2025). They must balance these expectations to contribute beyond their classrooms while building credibility within their school communities, acquiring job security, and developing professional identities as teachers and future leaders (Beauchamp & Thomas, 2009; Furner & McCulla, 2019).
However, ECT leadership remains more assumed than systematically examined, with limited empirical evidence on the leadership demands they experience and the leadership work they do. Little is also known about how ECTs are identified as having leadership potential, how schools and systems foster that potential, whether leadership development opportunities are equitably available, or the extent of leadership work by ECTs. As schools increasingly rely on distributed leadership, these gaps highlight the need for research on the leadership demands ECTs experience, the leadership work they do, and the processes through which their leadership potential is recognised and developed.
This special issue seeks high-quality, completed empirical articles that explore the leadership demands on ECTs. The articles must be focused on the leadership work of ECTs and should explore one or more of these questions:
Proposals should not exceed 400 words (excluding references) and should be emailed to:
Please include the following information in your proposal:
Following abstract review and approval by the special issue editors, authors will be invited to submit a full manuscript. Full papers should follow the Management in Education (MiE) author guidelines.
Full manuscripts should be between 4,000 and 8,000 words in length, including abstract (100-150 words), main text, tables, figures and references and need to be submitted via the MiE online submission system.
For further inquiries or to discuss your proposal, you are welcome to contact the special issue editors, Bernardita (Berni) Moreno (b.moreno@unimelb.edu.au), Helen Goode (hmgoode@unimelb.edu.au) and David Gurr (d.gurr@unimelb.edu.au).
Thank you for considering this invitation. We look forward to your contribution.
Best wishes,
Berni Moreno, Helen Goode and David Gurr Special Issue Editors
Acquaro, D. (2019). Preparing the next generation of educational leaders: Initiating a leadership discourse in initial teacher education. International Studies in Educational Administration, 47(2), 107-124.
Acquaro, D., & Gurr, D. (2022). Leadership Development in Initial Teacher Education. In M. Peters (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Teacher Education. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1179-6_489-1
Antonsen, Y., Aspfors, J., & Maxwell, G. (2024) Early career teachers’ role in school development and professional learning. Professional Development in Education 50(3), 460-473.
Beauchamp, C., & Thomas, L. (2009). Understanding teacher identity: An overview of issues in the literature and implications for teacher education. Cambridge Journal of Education, 39(2), 175–189. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057640902902252
Bryant, D. A., Wong, Y. L., & Adames, A. (2020). How middle leaders support in-service teachers’ on-site professional learning. International Journal of Educational Research, 100, 101530. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijer.2019.101530
Furner, C. & McCulla, N. (2019). An exploration of the influence of school context, ethos and culture on teacher career-stage professional learning. Professional Development in Education, 45(3), 505-519. https://doi.org/10.1080/19415257.2018.1427134
Grissom, J. A., Egalite, A. J., & Lindsay, C. A. (2021). How Principals Affect Students and Schools. A Systematic Synthesis of Two Decades of Research. The Wallace Foundation.
Gurr, D., Gurr, A., Gurr, Z., Jarni, B., & Major, E. (2025). Developing Teacher Leaders: Leadership demands on four early career teachers. In P. Liu & L. M. Thien (Eds), Understanding Teacher Leadership in Education Change: An International Perspective (pp. 27-46). Routledge.
Harris, A., & Jones, M. (2022). Leading during a pandemic: What the evidence tells us. School Leadership and Management, 42(2), 105-109. https://doi.org/10.1080/13632434.2022.2064626
Lipscombe, K., Tindall-Ford, S., & Lamanna, J. (2023). School middle leadership: A systematic review. Educational Management, Administration and Leadership, 51(2), 270–288. https://doi.org/10.1177/1741143220983328
Pan, H.-L. W., Wiens, P. D., & Moyal, A. (2023). A bibliometric analysis of the teacher leadership scholarship. Teaching and Teacher Education, 121, Article 103936. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2022.103936
Tian, M., Risku, M., & Collin, K. (2016). A meta-analysis of distributed leadership from 2002 to 2013: Theory development, empirical evidence and future research focus. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 44(1), 146–164. https://doi.org/10.1177/1741143214558576
UNESCO. (2024). Global Education Monitoring Report 2024/25: Leadership in education – Lead for Learning. https://doi.org/10.54676/EFLH5184
