Partnerships between schools and universities for the leadership development of school leaders has long been a feature in many contexts and has a substantial history that can be traced at least back to the time surrounding the formation of the University Council for Educational Administration (UCEA) in 1959. The formation of the council began a global interest in the preparation and support for school leaders by universities and led to the formation of many important professional educational leadership service groups like the British Educational Leadership, Management and Administration Society (BELMAS; https://www.belmas.org.uk), the Commonwealth Council for Educational Administration and Management (CCEAM; https://cceam.info/about-cceam/) and the Australian Council for Educational Leaders (ACEL; https://www.acel.org.au). In 2026 there are journals devoted to the topic (e.g. School University Partnerships), special interest groups in major research networks (e.g. AERA School-University Partnership Research SIG 79) and dedicated books (e.g. Acquaro and Bradbury, 2023; Gomez et al., 2023). Nevertheless, the role of universities in leadership preparation and development, and in partnering with schools and systems to do this work, is not necessarily common across the world (UNESCO, 2024). Where it is evident, it is sometimes under threat through government policy changes prioritizing diversification of suppliers of professional learning and/or the rise of many other organizations wanting to do this work (Greany and Kamp, 2022; UNESCO, 2024; Greany et al., 2025). This special issue is then a timely piece to consider the work that universities, schools and systems can do to support school leaders.
Partnerships broadly are a known feature of successful schools (e.g. Gurr et al., 2022), school professional learning communities (e.g. Bolam et al., 2005), and school improvement initiatives (e.g. Hopkins et al., 2011), and feature in contemporary views of educational leadership (e.g. UNESCO, 2024). In terms of leadership development partnerships, much is known about these partnerships, and within this special issue there are papers with excellent reviews of the knowledge base that build on what is known. Effective school-university partnerships for leadership development tend to be: research-based; use targeted recruitment; have curricular coherence with strong emphasis on the cutting-edge educational leadership theories; provide experience in authentic contexts with close ties with schools in the community and on-the-ground training under the wing of expert principals; use cohort groupings and mentors; and enable collaborative activity between the program and area schools (Davis et al., 2005; Davis and Darling-Hammond, 2012; Young, 2015; Darling-Hammond et al., 2022; Gomez et al., 2023).
A nine-paper special issue is notable and especially at a time when many journals receive far more papers than they can accommodate in regular issues. This special issue has a foundation in the International School Leadership Development Network (ISLDN), which is an academic and professional network group associated with the international arms of UCEA and BELMAS, and has a collection of academics and some practitioners from more than a dozen countries across the world (see https://www.isldn.com). Originally conceived as a special issue of the work from ISLDN scholars, the issue has four papers involving five members of this group: Angelle, Ärlestig, Barnett, Klar and Okilwa. Perhaps responding to the criticism of journals for promoting academic cronyism through limiting special issue scope (Macfarlane et al., 2026), this issue was made an open call and has five papers beyond scholars from the ISLDN collective. To better understand the scope of the special issue, Table 1 provides the paper title and author(s), country location, research focus and methods used, and reproductions of the stated findings from each paper.
The issue is dominated by research focused within the USA, with five papers exploring USA leadership development programs, and one involving virtual exchange between students in the USA and Bosnia and Herzegovina, but with only the USA students involved in leadership preparation. The other country contexts were the Middle East, New Zealand and Sweden. The dominance of studies from the USA is perhaps not surprising given the prevalence of these types of programs in the USA.
The special issue is partially about school-university partnerships for leadership development, with the first six papers having this focus. The last three papers explored school-community partnerships with Indigenous groups in New Zealand (Angelle et al., 2026), learning exchanges between graduate school leadership students in the USA and graduate religious pedagogy and theology students in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Shiffman and Sijamhodžić-Nadarević, 2026), and school improvement partnerships in the Middle East (Hayes et al., 2026). This provides a rich special issue about partnerships broadly, but with an emphasis on leadership development partnerships.
Research methods were mostly of small to medium-scale qualitative studies relying on individual and/or group interviews for primary data collection (six papers), with the other papers relying on program materials and student work artifacts produced by participants (Shiffman and Sijamhodžić-Nadarević, 2026; Paufler et al., 2026 also used participant artifacts), written participant reflections (Benerdal and Ärlestig, 2026) and surveys and network analysis (Awaludin and Halverson, 2026). Six of the papers were reporting on part of a larger study or reanalyzing data from a larger study (see Table 1), and sometimes a paper was used to providing an explanatory or descriptive case study as an exemplar from a larger study (Paufler et al., 2026). These types of papers can generate reader interest in pursuing other papers about these projects. The smaller scale of these papers does however mean that trustworthiness, transferability and veracity may be more limited.
The quality of the papers is high, as to be expected from papers published in The Journal of Educational Administration. The findings are all of interest and make important contributions to knowledge. Though the contributions often confirm understandings we already have, the articles in the special issue add to understanding partnerships for professional learning through exploration of under-researched contexts such as rural areas (Paufler et al., 2026) and working with Indigenous communities (Angelle et al.); special leadership development programs such as those preparing equity-focused school leaders (Jackson), or engaging in research partnerships (Benerdal and Ärlestig, 2026; Paufler et al., 2026); different program roles like mentor principals (De La Garza et al., 2026). The reporting about long standing programs and impact over time are also noteworthy contributions as these papers engage with long term impact and/or sustainability issues (Awaludin and Halverson, 2026; Benerdal and Ärlestig, 2026; De La Garza et al., 2026; Okilwa and Barnett, 2026). Novel findings come from the paper by Awaludin and Halverson (2026) which explored the application of social network analysis to a complex leadership preparation program, the paper from Hayes et al. in their description of a school improvement network across several Middle East countries, and the paper by Shiffman and Sijamhodžić-Nadarević (2026) on a virtual graduate exchange program.
This brief commentary has hopefully created reader interest to explore the special issue in detail and provided something of map for the reader to delve into papers of particular interest. The six papers focused on leadership preparation provide rich detail and more examples to extend our knowledge, whilst the other three papers provide diverse examples of other university partnerships.
