IB international schools’ leadership reviewed

This article presents an interpretive review of empirical research on leadership in International Baccalaureate (IB) international schools published between 2000 and 2025. In this article, ‘IB leadership’ refers broadly to leadership practices within schools offering IB programmes, including principals, senior leaders, programme coordinators, and directors, while recognising that these roles operate differently across diverse institutional contexts. Drawing on both IB-commissioned and independent studies, the review analyses 18 empirical investigations using a PRISMA-informed methodology. The analysis identifies a persistent paradox in the literature: while the relative autonomy, resources and international ethos of IB schools appear to create favourable conditions for values-based educational leadership, these opportunities are simultaneously constrained by marketisation, governance arrangements and accountability pressures within the global education marketplace. The reviewed studies cluster around three recurring themes: the organisational conditions shaping leadership in international schools, tensions between market logics and educational values, and leadership practices across IB programmes. Together, the findings position IB schools as useful sites for examining transnational educational governance, revealing how leadership self-determination is both enabled and limited by global market dynamics. The review concludes by identifying senior leadership in IB schools as a critical but under-researched site for advancing understanding of educational leadership across transnational educational contexts.