1: Introduction to Trauma-informed Educational Leadership

There is a pressing need for schools and their leadership teams to adapt to rapidly changing community contexts. These contexts are represented by increasing social complexity and compressing economic uncertainty for many. A growing body of research brings attention to the effects of compounding stressors in Australian schools, such as community-wide natural disasters (Berger et al., 2018), systemic racism (Schimke et al., 2022), and exclusionary practices (Miller & Berger, 2020). This research comes in direct response to recent local and global events that have brought a heightened awareness of the impacts of environmental devastation hastened by climate change, structural disempowerment of First Nations peoples, intergenerational poverty affecting marginalised communities, and the resurgent threat of punitive and authoritarian values escalating human rights violations and violent conflict in Australia and across the world.