Objectives: The present study aimed to describe, explain, and represent the experiences of school principals as emancipatory leaders. The central concern of the study was to explore how school principals, within a centralized educational system, navigate the tensions between formal organizational requirements, administrative regulations, social expectations, parental demands, and their human and ethical responsibilities. The study was grounded in the assumption that a school is not merely an administrative organization governed by rules and procedures; rather, it is a human, moral, cultural, and social community in which principals’ decisions can influence the dignity, participation, justice, learning, empowerment, and well-being of teachers, students, and families. From this perspective, emancipatory leadership was explored through three interconnected dimensions: the “why,” the “how,” and the “what.” The “why” concerned the conditions, challenges, and rationale underlying the emergence of emancipatory leadership; the “how” addressed the processes and practices through which it is enacted; and the “what” examined its ethical, social, and human essence in school leadership.l
Materials and Methods: This study adopted a qualitative approach using descriptive phenomenology as its research strategy. The research setting included primary schools in Mashhad, Iran, and the participants were school principals from different educational districts of the city. Participants were selected through purposive and criterion-based sampling. In total, 27 school principals participated in semi-structured interviews, including 10 women and 17 men, whose executive and managerial experience ranged from 15 to 30 years. Although theoretical saturation was reached after the twenty-second interview, five additional interviews were conducted to ensure data adequacy and richness. Each interview lasted approximately 40 to 60 minutes. The data were analyzed through thematic network analysis, adapted from Attride-Stirling’s approach. The analysis followed three major stages: text reduction, text exploration, and integration and interpretation. During the first stage, initial codes and basic themes were identified; during the second stage, thematic networks
were constructed, described, and interpreted; and during the third stage, the findings were integrated into organizing and global themes. The trustworthiness of the findings was established using the criteria of credibility, dependability, transferability, and confirmability. Member checking was conducted by sharing interview transcripts and extracted codes with participants. In addition, the researchers consulted academic supervisors, advisors, and educational administration experts, repeatedly reviewed the analytical process, and provided detailed descriptions of the research context and procedures. d
Discussion and Conclusion: The analysis resulted in 77 initial codes, 45 basic themes, 15 organizing themes, and 5 global themes. The findings revealed that school principals frequently experience role conflict between formal organizational expectations and their social, ethical, and human responsibilities. Within the “why” dimension, the global theme of ethical engineering emerged, encompassing masculine management, political appointment, contextual sensitivity, and role-oriented leadership. This finding indicates that bureaucratic mechanisms, political pressures, gender stereotypes, disregard for local and cultural differences, and excessive emphasis on compliance with regulations may reduce school leadership to a mechanical and impersonal form of management. Within the “how” dimension, two global themes were identified: collective leadership and women’s transcendent leadership. Collective leadership was characterized by intelligent interventions, communicative rationality, and constructive consultation. Women’s transcendent leadership emphasized ethical leadership and social rationality. Within the “what” dimension, the global themes of moral compass and human mission emerged. These themes included conscious collective reflection, cultural production, educational equalization, de-dogmatization of duties, continuity of role, and distributed transcendence. Overall, emancipatory leadership was represented as a human-centered, participatory, justice-oriented, and context-sensitive form of school leadership. It transforms principals from mere executors of administrative directives into ethical agents and facilitators of collective growth. Through critical dialogue, power sharing, trust building, recognition of diversity, empowerment of school members, and commitment to human dignity, emancipatory principals create conditions for a dynamic, democratic, and ethically responsive school community. The findings challenge the limitations of passive, dogmatic, and purely rule-bound management, while emphasizing the need to revise principal preparation and professional-development programs in Iran. They further highlight the importance of strengthening the ethical, social, participatory, and human dimensions of educational leadership in policy-making and school administration.