Principals’ accounts of practices, system support and challenges in leading secondary immersion education in Ireland

ABSTRACT Sparse attention in the educational leadership literature is given to those leading immersion schools, despite the established connection between educational leadership and context, including cultural context. By eliciting principals’ accounts of practices in leading Irish language-medium immersion education in secondary schools, this study begins to fill this gap. Here, six principals’ accounts provide insight into principals’ leadership practices; system-level support; and challenges encountered as they lead immersion schools. Analysis of their accounts points to the necessity to support these and future principals in more specialised, targeted and practice-focused ways for the contexts in which they lead, with implications for multiple education system stakeholders. These implications are relevant to dual-language and bilingual schools in other cultural contexts, particularly minority language settings, and to educational settings more broadly in recognition of diversity and multilingualism.