School leader recruitment, retention and motivation in Europe

Abstract

This review briefly considers recent research on the recruitment, retention, motivation and impact of school leaders. These areas are intertwined in various ways, with motivation influencing retention for example. Therefore, rather than attempting to focus on individual aspects and artificially separate various domains, the individual and the environment in which school leaders work are taken as being largely inseparable. As a result, rather than treating school leadership as separated from the context in which it takes place, this paper takes these to be interlinked, with context central in shaping the working lives of school leaders.