The concern of this paper is educational leadership at the school level in contemporary post-conflict societies. It is predicated on the simple, yet profound, observation that leadership can only be understood within the context in which it is exercised.

Gronn and Ribbins (1996), have argued for some time that context constrains leadership and gives it its meaning, and is therefore the vehicle through which the agency of particular leaders may be empirically understood. Nevertheless, empirical research into leadership of organizations has lacked such sensitivity to context. In the realm of education, it is only recently the need has been recognized to investigate how different contexts influence the nature of school leadership and demonstrate how leaders in schools located within different environments shape their leadership accordingly. For example, attention has been devoted to the ways leadership is understood and practised in the small, remote school; the challenges of leadership in multi ethnic schools in constructing and nurturing an inclusive school culture and the complexity of leadership as it is exercised in faith schools.

More poignant for this paper is the focus on leadership in schools “encountering a multiplicity of economic, emotional and social challenges” (Harris & Thomson, 2006, no page no) that, in certain combinations, result in constant crisis. One category of schools faced with such challenges is located in inner city, low socio economic environments and has spawned a genre of leadership studies known as “leadership in challenging circumstances”. These circumstances entail increasing intensity and complexity that engender a level of environmental turbulence requiring different kinds of leadership from those applying to organisations operating in less complicated and relatively stable situations. An extreme example of environmental turbulence is represented by those societies involved in a ‘new war’. These wars are contrasted with the ‘old wars’ waged from the 18^th to the mid-20^th century. Involvement in such wars, meant the state defended territory through its armed forces in uniform and the decisive encounter was the battle (Kaldor, 2005). Since 1945 there have been few inter-state wars. ‘New wars’, however, with their origins in the informal wars of the second half of the 20^th century, have become prominent as authoritarian states have disintegrated.       

This paper focusses on education in post-new war societies. In these circumstances education systems need revitalising from conditions hardly conducive to enhancing the vibrancy of schools and the communities they serve. Buckland (2006, p.7) has identified problems common to post-new war societies which debilitate education systems’ capacity to recover from the devastation the conflict has caused. These include lack of domestic revenue to maintain education systems, chronic shortage of qualified teachers, oversupply of unqualified teachers, numbers of war-affected youth, poor record keeping, corruption, lack of transparency in education governance and the vicissitudes of international financial and humanitarian support. This paper, therefore, investigates leadership in post-new war societies, at the individual school level by reporting insights from recognized experts on the realities of school leadership in promoting educational development in three post-new war contexts situated in Europe and elsewhere.

Gronn, P. and Ribbins, P. (1996).Leaders in context: Postpositivist approaches to understanding school leadership. Educational Administration Quarterly, 32(3), pp. 452-473. Harris, A. and Thomson, P (2006). Leading school in poor communities: What do we know and how do we know it? Paper presented at the International Congress of School Effectiveness and Improvement, Fort Lauderdale, 3-6 January 2006 Kaldor, M. (2005). Old wars, new wars and the war on terrorism. http://www.lse.ac.uk/Depts/global/Publications/PublicLectures/PL_Old%20Wars%20Cold%20War%20New%20Wars%20and%20War%20on%20Terror1.pdf (accessed on 4 Nov. 2010).