Reclaiming Everyday Leadership in Jordanian Schools: Navigating Power, Policy, and Local Educational Futures

This qualitative research explores leadership as a daily, relational, and moral practice for school principals in Jordan, within a centralized education system subject to reform imperatives. Jordan is a compelling context for this research, given the centralized system, economic conditions, regional security, and constant reform imperatives. Principals must balance implementing national policy with the realities of their local communities while maintaining stability in their schools. This research, through semi-structured interviews and document analysis, seeks to explore how school principals in Jordan interpret, mediate, and translate policy into practice. This research found that leadership practice can be seen in physical presence, values-based decision-making, discretionary use of the “spirit of the law,” distributed responsibility, acts of care, and justice-based protection of human dignity. Preparedness for the future is not seen in formal strategies, but in daily practices that encourage flexibility, participation, and ethical responsibility. This research contributes a contextually grounded model of leadership practice under constraint, which has implications for leadership preparation, policy, reform in a centralized education system, and quality education.