94% of researchers rate our articles as excellent or good
Learn more about the work of our research integrity team to safeguard the quality of each article we publish.
Find out more
ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Educ.
Sec. Leadership in Education
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/feduc.2025.1545842
This article is part of the Research Topic Extended Education - Leadership in Practice View all articles
Rethinking Leadership in Extended Education: How Collaborative Development Drives Organisational Quality
Provisionally accepted- University of Oldenburg, Oldenburg, Lower Saxony, Germany
Effective school leadership significantly impacts student learning outcomes and equitable educational opportunities. However, the increasing complexity of educational environments -marked by expanded learning spaces and diverse institutional involvementpresents new challenges. This study investigates leadership approaches within Germany's extended education system, using all-day schooling as a case study. Data were collected from 1,355 school leaders across primary and secondary schools via a standardised online questionnaire. Structural equation modelling was employed to explore the effects of shared leadership responsibility and collaborative school development on key organisational quality indicators: designated collaboration time, breadth of extracurricular aims, and curricularextracurricular synergy. The findings highlight that collaborative school development, rather than shared leadership responsibility, is the primary driver of organizational quality across all measured indicators. Shared leadership responsibility, while less impactful overall, contributes to the allocation of staff collaboration time, a crucial factor for teamwork and integration. These results underscore the importance of fostering collaborative practices within leadership frameworks to enhance educational quality in extended education contexts. This study provides insights into broader leadership strategies that prioritize collaboration as a cornerstone of innovation and progress in extended education.
Keywords: extended education, Leadership, school development, shared leadership responsibility, collaborative school development, All-day schools, organisational quality, collaboration
Received: 15 Dec 2024; Accepted: 20 Feb 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Kielblock. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Stephan Kielblock, University of Oldenburg, Oldenburg, 26129, Lower Saxony, Germany
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.