The 21st century education systems are at the intersection of rapid education reforms (Harris &Chapman, 2004), market-driven processes as a result of neoliberal policies,  racism, inequity, socioeconomic deprivation,  League Tables, accountability measures, school failure, violence, insufficent teacher quality, immigration and so on. The list could be extended. Yet, the commonality lies in the fact that we can not think of schools and education systems as “challenge-free” globally . This places  European and world school systems at risk as they face with multidimensional challenges increasing the turbulence level in the schools as organizations (Norberg & Gross, 2018)

We are  urged to think about the relative concept of “challenge”, and the notion of context must remain central to theorizing and unique investigation.  A disadvantaged school facing a regime of high accountability has its own challenges in a country, whereas a school without proper infrastructure in an underprivileged village in a remote part of the world experience their own particular challenges. None of the above can be underestimated but requires particular strategies and solutions in their own contexts. The austerity of the challenges facing schools depend on their cultural, socio-political and economic contexts, whereby the level and severity of the challenge is critical. Each and every single challenging school circumstance is significant to tackle to develop strategies to secure the betterment of future generations as well as successful school leadership for improvement.

The role of school leaders and teachers is critical in coping with and securing better environment within challenging school contexts. We know that the growing diversity and dramatic social change around the world place tremendous pressure on school leaders (Lopez, 2016; Taysum & Arar, 2019), as various adverse school settings (Archambault & Garon, 2011) intensify the challenges. The need to explore the influence of distinctive school contexts on the nature and character of school leadership is manifest. The nature of challenges brought up by the school contexts globally show variations, yet the reality is we all must deal with growing diversity and the dramatic social change. Differences endure in coping with the challenges in different cultures (Taysum & Arar, 2019). Therefore, the growing interest on the leadership in schools facing challenging circumstances (Ahumada, Galdames & Clarke, 2015; Bush, Joubert, Kiggundu, & van Rooyen, 2010) is evident. In this respect, the aim of this symposium is to discuss various and unique challenges of schools from 4 different countries of 3 different continents and understand the strategies and practices employed by the key actors within the education systems to navigate their ways under these circumstances to better cater for the needs of society and students. Therefore, the proposed symposium gathers scholars from different countries (Turkey, Israel, China and the UK) who intend to answer the following questions:

1. What are the challenging school circumstances around the world?

2. How do schools and education systems position themselves in such challenging contexts?

3. How do school leaderhip, policy and praxis tackle such challenges around the globe?

4. How can we map the terrain of challenging schools research from a glocal perspective?

Most of the time such challenges are about sensitive issues such as refugee students, LGBT students, deprived school contexts and conservative and neoliberal policies surrounding them. Given the significant role of educational research has a significant in reaching answers to such questions in an era of risk,as scholars, we feel the urge to analyze different country contexts with diverse challenges  to contribute to the research and practice knowledge by dealing with privatization, migration, population changes and disadvantaged school contexts, already  present in the European context as well,  from 4 different countries in this symposium

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