Volume 10, Issue 1 (2025)

From the Editor in Chief

In 2010, ELA started as a vision to publish scholarly works and provide a space to showcase research in educational leadership. After stepping away from ELA for just a bit, under Dr. Robyne Elder’s care the journal flourished. So, to return home, as it were, is a great honor. I am grateful to Dr. Elder for taking the lead and maintaining the quality and rigor of the publication. We now live in a very different educational landscape and on a different platform, but ELA’s spirit within this space remains. In this issue, the reader will see that the original vision still holds - researchers that look at challenges facing schools and society at large, through a critical, human, and educational leadership lens on teacher mental health and wellbeing; Canadian schools and their leaders’ efforts to use the lens of social justice and equity; and a case study focused on the theories of Dewey, Freire and Bourdieu to inform policy and practice in school reform. Ethical leadership remains an important thread in the manuscripts: a call for strong moral, ethical leadership in our institutions of higher education for schools considering AI-based Early Alert Systems (EAS); the importance of expanding support when confronting mental health challenges; the experience of sustaining and leading with Unconditional Positive Regard (UPR) that can be emotionally and psychologically costly; how teacher leaders (TL’s) still need to be part of the voices for change to inform educational reform as well as policy; and how teacher inexperience is an issue related to students’ disciplinary outcomes. I believe, as the Editor-in-Chief of ELA, each of these manuscripts not only adds to an important conversation about educational leadership at the intersection of dynamic challenges in our society at large but also adds to a deeper understanding of the leadership we must enact to meet our complex and rapidly changing reality.

Welcome to the Fall 2025 issue of The Journal of Educational Leadership in Action (ELA)—and I hope you consider submitting a manuscript for our special editor edition Spring 2026. It’s good to be home.

Warm regards,

Dr. Lynda Leavitt, Editor-in-Chief, The Journal of Educational Leadership in Action (ELA)