Artificial Intelligence (AI) has started to reshape educational leadership. While leaders guide schools toward improvement, AI is transforming teaching, learning, and other core domains of leading and managing schools and institutions. Some scholars contend the question is no longer whether AI will lead, but what human role remains. However, AI's complex impacts on educational leadership cannot be limited to discussions on management and practice in isolated contexts or systems. They may overlook how AI affects leadership beyond pedagogy and intellect, fail to compare approaches across global education systems, and miss the bigger opportunity: adapting leadership philosophy itself.
To elucidates AI's global impacts on educational leadership and how it has been approached by educational leaders worldwide, Dr Li Huan Chen from The Education University of Hong Kong and Dr Ming Ma from The University of Hong Kong have conducted a systematic review on the literature of AI and educational leadership from 2015 to 2024, addressing the fundamental issue of how to think, act, and lead in the AI age. Their study was published online in ECNU Review of Education on May 5, 2026.
The authors approached the study through Responsible AI (RAI), a multi-dimensional conceptual framework that stresses four domains for applying AI responsibly: technical challenges, legal liabilities, sustainability, and innovation management.
Their findings reveal three messages: 1. AI can empower educational leaders in facilitating learning and teaching, improving decision-making, and improving administration efficiency, but it also brings technical, ethical, socioeconomic, and professional implications as imposed challenges. 2. A consensus is yet to be reached on a global scale regarding the application of AI in educational leadership. 3. The future of educational leadership may lie in a human-centred, symbiotic partnership between AI and educational leaders, given that the latter reinterpret, transform, and shift educational practices through RAI.
Dr Chen and Dr Ma highlight that current global discussions on AI and educational leadership are limited to the technical and legal implications. However, "the responsible management of AI innovation in educational leadership to ensure their sustainability deserves equal attention." Educational leaders must embrace the changes brought by AI as they enjoy its benefits, leveraging AI as a chance to develop educational leadership both theoretically and practically.
Such an endeavour may comprise two fronts. The first front stems from the socio-cultural and developmental differences in contemporary, pluralistic education systems. Such differences may ripple through all four dimensions of RAI, shaping how it is understood, used, or simply ignored. The other front involves humanistic considerations for individuals in the face of technology—a core aim of educational leadership that cannot be overlooked. "Even in a future society of highly advanced technologies, educational leaders still need to remain even more committed to humanity and their moral duties to serve and lead students and teachers."
This study presents a timely reflection of global opinions of AI and educational leadership, and diversity and systematic differences in AI's application in leading educational institutions. It provokes changes in the purpose and means of educational leadership in the AI age.
ECNU Review of Education
Leading in the AI Age: A Systematic Review of Global Perspectives on AI and Educational Leadership
5-May-2026
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.