Educational Challenges and the Exercise of Leadership in the Italian School Context: Addressing Emergencies and Enhancing Middle Management. Findings from Empirical Research

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-599-7_10How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Distributed Educational Leadership; School Leadership; Middle Management; School Autonomy; Emergency Management; VUCA Contexts; Resilient Educational Ecosystems; Italian Schools; Qualitative Research; Case Study Method

Abstract

This paper examines how distributed educational leadership is enacted within the Italian school context in response to two major contemporary challenges: managing emergency situations in volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous learning environments, and enhancing middle management as a lever for collaborative and resilient school governance. The study is grounded in the framework of the Second-Level Master’s programme in “Leadership and Management in Education” at Roma Tre University and adopts a qualitative, exploratory, and descriptive research design. Empirical data were collected between 2020 and 2024 through 152 case studies conducted in Italian schools of different levels and geographical areas, complemented by semi-structured interviews with school principals. From this wider corpus, 20 cases were selected for in-depth analysis: 10 focused on emergency situations, particularly those related to the COVID-19 pandemic, and 10 focused on the development of middle management roles. The findings show that Italian schools responded to emergencies not merely through compliance with formal directives, but by activating reflective, participatory, and adaptive decision-making processes involving school leaders, teachers, students, families, local authorities, and third-sector organizations. The study also highlights the strategic role of middle management in supporting organizational continuity, professional collaboration, shared responsibility, and workplace well-being. However, persistent challenges remain, including the limited formal recognition of middle management functions, work overload, and the need for clearer role definition and targeted training. Overall, the research suggests that distributed educational leadership, when supported by school autonomy, reflexive practices, and strong relational networks, can contribute to the development of integrated and resilient educational ecosystems capable of addressing uncertainty and sustaining organizational learning.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this license to share adapted material derived from this chapter or parts of it.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Giovanni Moretti
AU  - Arianna Morini
AU  - Francesca Gabrielli
AU  - Piervito Giovane
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/07/31
TI  - Educational Challenges and the Exercise of Leadership in the Italian School Context: Addressing Emergencies and Enhancing Middle Management. Findings from Empirical Research
BT  - Proceedings of the International Conference on Management and Entrepreneurial Leadership for K-12 Education Excellence (LEADK12 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 148
EP  - 164
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-599-7_10
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-599-7_10
ID  - Moretti2026
ER  -