School leadership refers to the persons or teams that guide, manage or lead education institutions at multiple educational levels (Pont, 2020). In Palestine, school leaders form a community of practice which aims to maximise the collaboration among them and exchange best practices to improve their professional growth, decision making and problem solving skills during and post crises. Education improves through effective school leaders. School leaders could improve the quality of thinking, learning and management as they can share multiple scenarios with teachers and students. In the Palestinian context, school leadership could be defined as a mixture of history, memory, educational and financial crises, the daily struggle against occupation, the desire of independence and several initiatives to make tangible changes in schools (Salha & Affouneh, 2023). School leaders face various challenges like workplace problems, and leading organisational change. Data were gathered through interviews and questionnaires by a mixed method case study design, with the gathering of quantitative and qualitative data. Results, and integration are used to provide in-depth evidence for the investigated case. Specifically, the researcher of this present study used sequential design, as it began with qualitative data collection, which was analysed and used to construct the study questionnaire. It was then followed by qualitative data collection in order to strengthen the interpretation of the results of quantitative data analysis. Findings revealed school leaders made significant differences in student learning and school improvement when granted autonomy to make decisions. School leaders acquired knowledge and skills in decentralisation as a new policy for education under uncertainty. Despite the lack of resources, Palestinian school leaders demonstrated trust in learning and teaching as national interest, and belief that community engagement is a main factor in school policy. In Palestine, School leadership is a goal and a tool, a goal that should promote and a tool to create community leaders and a community of practice. It could be difficult to lead schools in uncertain conditions, which is the usual case in Palestine. School leaders showed high flexibility to overcome several challenges to normalise emergencies and to manage crises. Designing a well-structured program of school leadership within University Education Departments, during and post crises is urgently needed to secure social justice, quality education and professional development. Adoption of decentralisation policy to empower school leaders to manage crises is recommended to engender their immediate response and learning through situational practices operationalising this symposium's frameworks and methodologies.

Salha, S. & Affouneh, S. (2023). The State of Art of Educational Leadership in Palestine: The Two Faces of the Coin. In Kh. Arar et al., (Eds). Demystifying Educational Leadership and Administration in the Middle East and North Africa (1st ed, pp 153-165). Routledge. DOI: 10.4324/9781003334835-9. Pont B. (2020). A literature review of school leadership policy reforms. Eur J Educ, 55: 154–168. https://doi.org/10.1111/ejed.12398