Trajectories and Challenges in Educational Administration in Europe's Outermost Regions: An Exploratory Study of Research Conducted between 2020 and 2025
Trajectories and Challenges in Educational Administration in Europe's Outermost Regions: An Exploratory Study of Research Conducted between 2020 and 2025

Summary/Abstract: Background/purpose. This study examines recent scholarship on Educational Administration in Europe’s outermost regions, focusing on sixteen master's dissertations defended at the University of Madeira (2020 2025). It examines how these works reflect emerging governance challenges related to leadership, inclusion, and local development. Materials/methods. A qualitative meta synthesis was conducted. Each dissertation was coded against four analytic dimensions (objectives, conceptual lenses, methodology, findings) and the resulting matrix was triangulated with international literature to identify convergences and gaps. Results. The corpus converges on four themes: the centrality of collaborative leadership, the mediating role of organizational culture in implementing policy, the growing use of mixed method approaches to evaluate curricular and social action initiatives, and the persistent quest for equity in marginalized settings such as prisons, social housing and senior education. Leadership style, stakeholder participation and inter institutional cooperation emerge as decisive factors for successful innovation. The meta-synthesis reveals convergent trends toward collaborative, participatory, and adaptive leadership, and highlights the role of educational governance in promoting social inclusion and territorial development across diverse contexts. Conclusion. Evidence indicates that educational administration in peripheral territories is most effective when anchored in adaptive, inclusive leadership and supported by coherent multilevel policies. The review generates a four pillar reference framework - leadership, policyculture nexus, pedagogical processes, and equity - that can guide future research and practice.

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