Educational leaders in Arizona, the U.S., and around the world have experienced numerous challenges to education amidst the Covid 19 pandemic, including rapid shifts to and from virtual education, major increases in social emotional needs among students and adults, and inequities illuminated by disproportionate access to technology and internet. For this special issue of the journal, the editors of eJEP called on recognized authors who provided keynote addresses or led panel discussions at the 2021 Arizona Professors of Educational Leadership Annual Conference, titled Breaking the Mold: Challenges of Preparing School Leaders for Supporting Transformative Teaching and Learning Environments in a Post-COVID World.  Their contributions provide valuable insights and perspectives to inform and transform the preparation of educational leaders. Abstracts from the first two articles within the special issue highlight challenges and opportunities for leadership preparation in the U.S. and Europe. The two articles that follow contextualize contemporary challenges to education and leadership historically and consider relationships among education and democracy. Finally, the last article summarizes highlights from the conference and the articles with implications for leadership preparation within and beyond the Covid 19 Pandemic.

The term Powerful Learning Experience (PLE) is an outgrowth of a University Council for Educational Administration (UCEA) project. Colleagues who were engaged in the Leaders Supporting Diverse Learners (LSDL) project, along with researchers examining exemplary educational leadership programs refined the original framework. The version described in the following article is based on Young’s (2019) presentation of the framework to the World Educational Leadership Summit (WELS). The PLE framework consists of ten key attributes that encourage active teaching and learning processes, problem-based, context-rich products, and other evidence of learning outcomes. The authors have found that leadership preparation experiences that reflect a combination of these ten attributes facilitate deeper understanding of educational leadership and the development of knowledge and skills that are both transferable to a variety of contexts and adaptable for multiple challenges.

In this article, the authors address the challenges facing democracy in the U.S., including restrictions on voting rights, declines in the rule of law, disputed elections, and the non-peaceful transfer of power.  They assess the historic failure on the part of K-12 education systems and university leadership preparation programs to prepare students for living in a democracy, and pose questions including: “To what extent has our education system contributed to this situation?  To what extent have we failed to prepare our students to take their places as constructive and productive members of their communities and of our pluralistic democracy? And if we have failed, what can we, and must we, do about it?”  As a path toward more democratic outcomes, the authors propose a greater emphasis on transformative education, in which transformative leaders strive to create the conditions to enact democratic education in ways that truly prepare K-12 students to take their place as informed, engaged, and constructive participants in their communities and our pluralistic democracy.  They further recommend attention to  transformative leadership in educational leadership preparation programs as an anchor for leadership studies.

School leaders play an important role in ensuring and enhancing the quality of schools. Continuous professional development and training of school leadership has for this reason become increasingly important in many countries. This article presents trends in the development of school leadership. Examples from selected European countries and curricula are presented. Trends that are identified pertain to the domains of leadership practices; leadership and sustainability; and leadership needs. The article elaborates on two domains: (1) the use of self-assessment and feedback as part of the professional development of school leaders, (2) the impact of professional development, that is, the ways in which theory and knowledge is translated to practices. Moreover, approaches to research on, and evaluation of, the quality of school leadership development are described as well as the World School Leadership Study (WSLS) and its potential for international comparative research as it, seeks to inform practices and contribute to policy and academic discourses on the provision of professional development for school leadership.

This article summarizes findings from a panel of educational leaders in Arizona regarding the reinvention of education following the pandemic than began in the 2019-2020 school year. The author situates these leaders’ perspectives in a global context that is heavily influenced by digitalization and globalization. It is argued that technology and virtual education can support positive educational and personal development in experience-rich, growth-promoting uses of technology. Evidence is provided of Arizona leaders’ efforts to be forward-focused in envisioning how to promote, post-Covid, positive uses of technology and ensuring access and equity to education for all students. The author shares conclusions about the importance of relationships, flexibility, attention to issues of equity and access, and support for the social and emotional needs of students and teachers.

The global pandemic of 2020-2021 forced schools and universities to constantly adapt to shifting conditions. Individuals completing their internships between March of 2020 and May of 2021 faced the challenge of making adaptations not only as full-time educators and graduate students, but, in many cases, as parents as well. Gaining meaningful experience during the clinical experience of the internship is challenging under any circumstances, but the pandemic added significant new challenges. This article provides evidence of adaptations made by interns, site mentors, and university faculty that may be helpful in creating innovative clinical experiences in the future. The article summarizes the findings from a panel discussion held at the May, 2021 Arizona Professors of Educational Leadership Conference which was facilitated by the author, as well as from semi-structured interviews with stakeholders involved in the internship experience. The article includes a discussion of implications for planning and supervising internships, and offers policy recommendations and suggestions for future research.