Middle level leadership in schools: a scoping review of literature informed by a complex system perspective

Abstract

ABSTRACT Research focusing on schools are often permeated by the assumption that leadership plays an important role when it comes to school development and success. This article contributes to the field by offering a scoping review of the literature on middle-level leadership in secondary schools from 2002 to 2021. The overall goal is to provide an overview of organizational research on this topic and thereby to discuss new paths informed by a behavioral and complex systems perspective. After an initial search which identified 1047 abstracts and three screening phases, 32 articles were selected for analysis with the goal of answering seven research questions covering: geographical location, research methods, definitions of middle-level leadership, theoretical perspectives, organizational objectives, relationships between middle-level leadership with decision-making processes and central themes. Findings indicate a wide variety of definitions of middle-level leadership, theoretical perspectives, research methods and central themes approached in the article. There is a complex interplay between organizational processes that either facilitate or restrain the variation necessary to match the complexity of the environment. The discussion of findings paves the way for a reflection on new directions for research in this field, informed by a behavioral and complex systems perspective.