The broad consensus that exists internationally on the importance of management in student performance and school improvement is, currently, something incontestable and supported by different studies. However, the debate on the desirable management model in specific educational contexts and its relationships with the leadership that should accompany it are still pending issues of unresolved political and professional decisions.
This text organizes and presents the advances that have been developed on the subject until reaching distributed management models with transformative leaders, focused on learning processes, and capable of promoting more efficient, inclusive, safe, healthy, and sustainable educational centers. , and personally and socially useful. To the reflection and analysis on the nature and meaning of the managerial function and the leadership that must accompany it, several chapters are added that deal with the professional development of these managers, reviewing aspects of initial and ongoing training, and the transitions that affect them and their networking. Differential aspects are also considered, such as those specific to managerial practice in vulnerable environments, in vocational training centers and in rural contexts.
The work, aimed especially at managers, scholars and researchers, advisors, teachers and those responsible for educational systems, thus seeks to disseminate existing knowledge, providing theoretical and practical frameworks that can support their intervention in educational centers. But, beyond the formalization and development carried out, the interesting thing about this contribution lies in the two messages it transmits. At an implicit level, the demand for the need to maintain and promote study models on leading managers that go beyond mere structural analysis and advance in the description and knowledge of the complex human dynamics on which they act. At an explicit level, it helps us to know the strengths and weaknesses of the proposals that exist, related to the management function and leadership, providing new visions and ways of understanding and analyzing their activity.