Sustainable school leadership and change – thinking globally while acting locally

The French philosopher Edgar Morin describes how our current global crises - ecological, economic, political, social, and civilizational - feed on each other in a sort of ‘polycrisis’. These crises frequently ripple out to impact on schools and the communities they serve. School leaders and their teams are at the sharp end of societal change: seeking to support the growing well-being and inclusion needs of children and families in ways that often stretch beyond their traditional ‘educational’ remit. This wider role has long been a feature of schools in the most challenging contexts, but as the global polycrisis expands it seems that schools everywhere are having to respond. However, educational policy and governance frameworks are struggling to adapt to this new reality, continuing to hold schools accountable for a relatively narrow set of performance metrics. This can create unsustainable pressures and present ethical dilemmas for school leaders. This chapter argues that we need to shift school systems away from centralised hierarchies and competitive market incentives, by adopting place-based ‘local solutions’ approaches which galvanise the local knowledge and expertise (mētis) of leaders while ensuring that systemic coherence remains strong. The environmental catchphrase ‘think global, act local’ offers a simple summary of this argument. The chapter concludes with vignettes of two headteachers in very different contexts in England, using these to illustrate some of the challenges involved but also the potential for forging local coherence by engaging leaders’ values, agency and expertise.