School leaders worldwide are increasingly expected to perform what many describe as an impossible job: managing operations, compliance, safety, staffing, and community demands while still being held accountable for instructional improvement. Yet despite the overwhelming administrative load, research consistently shows that strong leadership is one of the most powerful drivers of student learning. This raises a fundamental question: on what evidence do leaders base the decisions that shape teaching and learning — and how often is that evidence grounded in what learning science tells us about how learning actually happens? In this blog, colleague Prof. dr. Jim Heal explores what leadership standards reveal about this gap, why it matters for daily decision-making, and how a new international study aims to map and strengthen leaders’ learning-science knowledge.

Educational leadership has become what scholars call a “hybrid role”—part instructional expert, part crisis manager, part community mediator (Honig & Hatch, 2004). As one superintendent put it: “I’m expected to be a CFO, a social worker, a curriculum expert, and a public-relations officer—and sometimes all before lunch.”

Amid these contextual pressures resides two fundamental questions:

1. On what evidence do leaders rely when making the decisions that shape teaching and learning?
2. How often is that evidence grounded in what research tells us about how learning actually happens?

The Missing Scientific Foundation: What Leadership Standards Reveal

Recent research shows that the systemic expectations we establish for educational leaders do not align with what leaders need to know to improve instruction. One of the clearest examinations of this misalignment comes from neuroscientist and education scholar Tracey Tokuhama-Espinosa, who conducted a comparative analysis of 20 professional leadership standards across Australia, the United States, and Canada (Tokuhama-Espinosa, 2019).

Her findings were stark:

• Only 3 of the 20 standards—less than 15 percent—explicitly referenced principles grounded in the learning sciences.
• The overwhelming majority emphasized managerial, financial, and compliance-related skills.
• None of the standards required leaders to demonstrate an understanding of core cognitive principles such as memory, attention, or prior knowledge—factors central to whether instruction succeeds or fails.
  
  

Tokuhama-Espinosa concludes that most leadership accountability systems expect administrators to act as managers first, educators second. This contradicts what decades of research on school improvement shows. For instance, we know that leaders influence learning most effectively when they understand the mechanisms behind it—how students encode information, how misconceptions persist, and how practice leads to expertise (Hattie, 2009; Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000). We also know that systems designed to develop leaders' instructional knowledge show stronger professional cultures and more coherent decision-making (Hallinger, 2011).

Despite this evidence into the importance of leaders who understand how learning happens, few leadership preparation programs require deep study of cognitive science. A 2020 review of principal-preparation curricula found that under 5 percent of course hours focused on how learning occurs or on evidence-informed instructional design (NPBEA, 2020).

These gaps matter—not abstractly, but in the daily decisions leaders make.

How insufficient knowledge of learning science harms decision-making

Without grounding in how learning works, leaders often struggle to differentiate between what is instructionally meaningful and what is simply administratively urgent.

A dearth of learning-science knowledge has been shown to affect leaders in several key ways:

1. Increased susceptibility to fads and weak evidence

Schools frequently adopt initiatives misaligned with established research because leaders lack the conceptual tools to evaluate claims. This “novelty bias” leads to cycles of adoption and abandonment, draining teachers’ time and attention.

2. Difficulty allocating resources strategically

Grissom et al. (2021) find that principals spend substantial time on operational tasks rather than instructional priorities, partly because they are less confident navigating domains tied to how learning occurs—such as curriculum evaluation, feedback systems, or professional development design.

3. Inconsistent or misaligned professional learning

Leaders often endorse PD that is popular, inexpensive, or politically safe rather than PD grounded in how learning occurs and how to teach as a result. Studies show that when leaders lack understanding of cognitive principles, they struggle to ensure that PD translates into improved classroom practice (Desimone & Garet, 2015).

4. Ineffective instructional coaching and evaluation

Without familiarity with research on memory, attention, or metacognition, leaders may rely on generic, non-instructional evaluation tools. As Papay (2012) argues, evaluation systems not tied to instructional science fail to improve teaching.

5. Erosion of teacher trust and instructional coherence

Teachers are more skeptical of initiatives that do not align with the realities of learning and cognition. Coherence—the alignment of materials, pedagogy, assessment, and leadership—is a primary determinant of school improvement (Newmann, Smith, Allensworth, & Bryk, 2001). Leaders without a grounding in learning science struggle to build it.

In short, leadership decisions—about hiring, PD, curriculum, scheduling, intervention programs—shape the instructional environment. Without understanding how learning happens, these decisions become less strategic, less coherent, and less impactful.

To lead schools effectively, leaders need more than organizational competence. They need what researchers increasingly call learning-science literacy: a foundational understanding of the cognitive, motivational, and developmental principles that shape learning.

Such knowledge helps leaders:

• Become critical consumers of new initiatives or research claims.
• Distinguish between surface-level improvement and changes that genuinely improve learning (Fullan, 2020).
• Select coherent, evidence-informed strategic priorities.
• Support teachers using principles grounded in decades of cognitive and educational research.
• Frame leadership not as management, but as an educative act.
  

A new study aims to understand what leaders know, what they can apply and why that matters

One emerging international study aims to address this knowledge gap directly. The research team, established across The United States, Canada, and the Netherlands, is working to create an assessment instrument capable of answering two foundational questions:

1. What do educational leaders know about how learning happens?
   
   
2. To what extent can they apply that knowledge to real decisions?
   
   

The instrument aims to assess leaders’ understanding of the following learning science principles, to determine whether they can recognize them within real-world instructional contexts, and to capture how their decision-making is shaped by what they know.

• Memory and cognitive load
  
• Motivation and engagement
  
• Transfer and schema-building
  
• Prior knowledge and misconceptions
  
• Formative assessment and feedback
  
• Spaced practice, retrieval, and metacognition

Leaders will respond to applied scenarios reflecting daily leadership responsibilities—such as evaluating PD programs, selecting curricula, or reviewing instructional data.

The aim is to build a baseline map of leaders’ learning-science knowledge across contexts and countries. That map, in turn, will allow universities, ministries, and school systems to design professional learning and leadership preparation programs that address actual needs—not assumed ones.

The goal is not accountability. It is precision: understanding leaders’ learning-science knowledge so that the system can better support them in becoming more instructionally grounded and more confident in making evidence-informed decisions.

Where educational leadership must go next

The future of schooling depends not only on effective teaching, but on strong, educative leadership. Leaders must be able to interpret research, coordinate instructional systems, and create coherent environments where learning can flourish.

When leaders understand learning, they make better decisions. And when systems understand their leaders, they can better prepare, develop, and support them.

The stakes are high. Because in the end, the role of a school leader is not to manage a building—it is to lead learning.

We're proud that Jim is a professor at Academica and connected to the projects within Research for Impact and our Master for School leaders . Next to this he developed  (together with Academica & prof. Carl Hendrick) the online course How Teaching & Learning Happens. 

References

• Bransford, J., Brown, A., & Cocking, R. (2000). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and school. National Academy Press.
• Desimone, L. M., & Garet, M. S. (2015). Best practices in K–12 professional development. Psychology of Learning and Motivation, 60, 81–108.
• Fullan, M. (2020). The new meaning of educational change (5th ed.). Teachers College Press.
• Grissom, J. A., Egalite, A., & Lindsay, C. A. (2021). How principals affect students and schools: A systematic synthesis of two decades of research. Wallace Foundation.
• Hallinger, P. (2011). Leadership for learning: Lessons from 40 years of empirical research. Journal of Educational Administration, 49(2), 125–142.
• Hattie, J. (2009). Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. Routledge.
• Honig, M., & Hatch, T. (2004). Crafting coherence: How schools respond to multiple, often conflicting, demands. Educational Researcher, 33(8), 16–30.
• Jepma, I., Willemsen, M., Haagsman, A., van den Berg, E., & de Groot, J. (2024). Kennisgedreven onderwijs: Onderzoek naar evidence-informed werken in het funderend onderwijs. Sardes / SEO Economisch Onderzoek.
• Kaufman, J. H., Bush, M. W., & Diliberti, M. (2022). Teachers, principals, and district leaders report high levels of stress. RAND Corporation.
• Leithwood, K., Louis, K., Anderson, S., & Wahlstrom, K. (2004). How leadership influences student learning. Wallace Foundation.
• National Policy Board for Educational Administration (NPBEA). (2020). Professional standards for educational leaders (PSEL) analysis report.
• Newmann, F. M., Smith, B., Allensworth, E., & Bryk, A. (2001). Instructional program coherence: What it is and why it should guide school improvement policy. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 23(4), 297–321.
• Papay, J. (2012). Refocusing the debate: Assessing the purposes and tools of teacher evaluation. Harvard Educational Review, 82(1), 123–141.
• Sahlberg, P. (2015). Finnish lessons 2.0: What can the world learn from educational change in Finland? Teachers College Press.
• Tokuhama-Espinosa, T. (2019). A comparative analysis of regional standards for school leaders: Implications for the professional learning of educational leaders. Frontiers in Education, 4, Article 136.
• (1) Study proposal: Understanding educational leaders’ knowledge of the learning sciences (unpublished research protocol).