Vision has been regarded as an essential component of effective leadership for more than 20 years. It is valuable because it provides the sense of purpose and direction required for educational organisations to thrive. All stakeholders expect principals, in particular, to develop and communicate vision clearly, as Dempster and Logan’s (1998) Australian research demonstrates. However, there are a number of problems with the vision-building process. As long ago as 1993, Bolam et al. showed that even leaders of highly effective British schools were unable to articulate a distinctive vision; the vision statements were very similar. This links to another problem: the extent to which ‘visions’ have to follow government imperatives rather than being grounded in the specific needs of schools and their students and communities (Bottery, 1998). Hoyle and Wallace (2005) go further and contrast what they call ‘visionary rhetoric’ with the ‘prosaic reality’ experienced by students, staff and parents. This brief introduction links to the opening paper in this issue, by Joseph Murphy and Daniela Torre, which provides an integrative review of vision. These authors note that vision ‘routinely surfaces’ in studies of effective organisations and that the principal is generally the essential figure in creating a school’s vision. Their paper provides ‘intellectual architecture’ or ‘essential scaffolding’ for this concept, drawing on an ‘exhaustive review’ of the literature from 1975 to 2011. They developed a framework from this review, comprising mission, goals and expectations. They conclude by stressing the importance of context, recognising that vision ‘does not take place in a vacuum’. Vision is expected to be underpinned by clear educational values and this informs the second paper, by Linda Hammersley-Fletcher. She explores the tensions facing English headteachers as they implement government initiatives which may be contrary to their values. Drawing on reflections from ten primary and secondary school heads, she shows that they felt it was imperative for them to meet the external targets set for them, a form of ‘compliance’, even when they conflicted with their values. The leadership field is replete with labels, of which ‘distributed’, ‘transformational’ and ‘instructional’ are perhaps the most frequently used in the 21st century. Trevor Male and Ioanna Palaiologou explore a different concept, that of pedagogical leadership. They define this notion as ‘forms of practice that shape and form teaching and learning’. Drawing on interviews with headteachers in secondary, primary and early years contexts, they connect pedagogical leadership to values, beliefs and culture, and conclude that leaders need to respond with fluidity to unpredictable events, within and beyond the classroom. School leadership in conflict zones is rarely researched, unsurprisingly, so Melanie C. Brooks’s paper on school principals in Southern Thailand is a welcome contribution to the literature. She reports on the work of school principals in areas targeted by Muslim separatist groups. The purpose of the research was to establish how school principals sustain trust with community leaders during times of conflict. She interviewed 20 such principals and notes that trust was compromised by the Educational Management Administration & Leadership 2015, Vol. 43(2) 175–176 a The Author(s) 2015 Reprints and permission: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1741143214563452 emal.sagepub.com