Mireia Tintoré, lecturer at the Faculty of Education, has published an article on the problems and challenges affecting school principals around the world, together with a group of lecturers from the Universidade Católica Portuguesa. The study has been published in the journal Educational Management Administration & Leadership (EMAL), one of the leading international publications on educational leadership.

Under the title “A scoping review of problems and challenges faced by school leaders (2003-2019)”, the researchers conducted a systematic and extensive literature review of 153 documents published over a period of seventeen years. They subsequently structured the main problems into categories related to the complexity of the job of a school principal and the complexity of interactions with educational authorities, teaching and non-teaching staff, families, students and society in general. 

“The most relevant conclusion we reached is that, although the importance given to each category varies from one context to another, problems concerning the complex nature of the job and with educational authorities and educational policy are the most recurrent worldwide”, explains Tintoré. “We can also see a risemin the number and complexity of problems over time, which makes it increasingly necessary to carefully design and implement leadership programmes to help access school leadership.” 

Although studies on the problems and challenges of school management already exist in different geographical contexts, this is the first to address the issue from a global perspective.