Leadership in pre-service teacher education: A systematic literature review

Leadership in pre-service teacher education has gained increasing scholarly attention, yet the field remains conceptually fragmented and unevenly synthesized across contexts and methodologies. This systematic literature review aims to consolidate and critically analyze recent research on leadership in pre-service teacher education, with particular attention to conceptual foundations, institutional practices, and developmental outcomes. Guided by the PRISMA framework, a comprehensive search was conducted across two major databases, Scopus ( n = 1,176) and Web of Science ( n = 303), covering peer-reviewed publications published between 2022 and 2026. After applying rigorous inclusion and exclusion criteria, the final corpus comprised studies that explicitly addressed leadership within initial or pre-service teacher education contexts. The synthesis identifies three overarching themes: (1) Conceptualisations and Models of Leadership in Pre-Service Teacher Education, which reveal a shift from positional and hierarchical views towards relational, distributed, and practice-oriented leadership models; (2) Leadership Practices and Institutional Conditions Supporting Pre-Service Teacher Development, highlighting the role of mentoring, institutional climate, curriculum design, and leadership distribution in shaping professional learning experiences; and (3) Leadership for Capacity Building, Agency, and Future-Ready Pre-Service Teachers, which emphasizes leadership as a mechanism for fostering professional identity, adaptability, innovation, and readiness for complex educational demands. The findings reveal a shift from leadership as a formal or positional role towards leadership as a relational, pedagogical, and institutional process embedded within curriculum design, mentoring structures, and organizational cultures. However, leadership development remains unevenly institutionalized and inconsistently operationalized across contexts. This review contributes by reconceptualizing leadership as a mediating institutional condition rather than an individual role, offering strategic implications for teacher education policy, programmed design, and sustainable leadership development in initial teacher education.