Proceedings of the international conference on management and entrepreneurial leadership for K-12 education excellence (LEADK12 2026)

This paper examines how distributed educational leadership is enacted within the Italian school context in response to two major contemporary challenges: managing emergency situations in volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous learning environments, and enhancing middle management as a lever for collaborative and resilient school governance. The study is grounded in the framework of the Second-Level Master’s programme in “Leadership and Management in Education” at Roma Tre University and adopts a qualitative, exploratory, and descriptive research design. Empirical data were collected between 2020 and 2024 through 152 case studies conducted in Italian schools of different levels and geographical areas, complemented by semi-structured interviews with school principals. From this wider corpus, 20 cases were selected for in-depth analysis: 10 focused on emergency situations, particularly those related to the COVID-19 pandemic, and 10 focused on the development of middle management roles. The findings show that Italian schools responded to emergencies not merely through compliance with formal directives, but by activating reflective, participatory, and adaptive decision-making processes involving school leaders, teachers, students, families, local authorities, and third-sector organizations. The study also highlights the strategic role of middle management in supporting organizational continuity, professional collaboration, shared responsibility, and workplace well-being. However, persistent challenges remain, including the limited formal recognition of middle management functions, work overload, and the need for clearer role definition and targeted training. Overall, the research suggests that distributed educational leadership, when supported by school autonomy, reflexive practices, and strong relational networks, can contribute to the development of integrated and resilient educational ecosystems capable of addressing uncertainty and sustaining organizational learning.