50 Essential Thought Leaders in Secondary Education (2026)

Last updated: June 2026

The most important voices in secondary education right now are not simply the most famous names in education broadly. They are the researchers, curriculum designers, equity advocates, system reformers, and classroom innovators who have devoted their careers specifically to the years between roughly 11 and 18, the period when young people are most vulnerable to disengagement, most capable of transformative learning, and most in need of teachers and leaders who understand the distinctive demands of adolescence.

As of June 2026, secondary schools globally face a convergence of pressure that no previous generation of educators has encountered in quite this combination. Student wellbeing data has not returned to pre-pandemic baselines in most Western countries. The evidence base for effective teaching practice is stronger than it has ever been, yet implementation gaps between what research shows works and what happens in classrooms remain stubbornly wide. Curriculum reform is live in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and across multiple state systems in the USA simultaneously. Artificial intelligence is entering classrooms faster than policy can respond. The question of whose knowledge counts, whose cultural background is affirmed, and whose experience of school is safe and belonging-rich is being asked with greater urgency in staffrooms from Brisbane to Birmingham to Bogota.

The 50 people on this list have made substantial contributions to how secondary education is understood and practised. Each person was selected on the basis of active contribution to the field in 2025 and 2026, a documented body of work in secondary or K-12 education, and an amplification profile that makes following them genuinely useful rather than merely prestigious. I put together this list to surface the voices that every secondary school leader, curriculum designer, and policy thinker should be following, rather than recycling the same small set of names that appear on every list.

This is a global directory. The leaders on it come from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Finland, New Zealand, Kenya, Singapore, India, and beyond.

For those who want to build the leadership team culture that makes the ideas on this list actually take root in a school's everyday practice, Jonno White, Certified Working Genius Facilitator and author of Step Up or Step Out (10,000+ copies sold), works with school leadership teams around the world to build the communication and conflict resolution foundations that high-performing schools require. Email 

jonno@consultclarity.org.

Why Secondary Education Matters

Secondary school is the sector of education where the stakes are highest and the evidence of what works is most contested. Students who disengage during secondary school rarely recover their trajectory. A 2023 Gallup Student Poll found that student engagement drops sharply as students move from primary to secondary school, with active disengagement rising significantly through the high school years (Gallup, CONFIRMED RESULT). The OECD's PISA 2022 data showed that reading and mathematics proficiency gaps between high-performing and low-performing students are wider at secondary level than at any earlier stage (OECD, CONFIRMED RESULT). UNESCO's 2024 Global Education Monitoring Report identified secondary-level completion as the single most powerful predictor of long-term economic and social outcomes for individuals and communities in both high-income and low-income countries (UNESCO, CONFIRMED RESULT).

The secondary school leadership team has an outsized role in these outcomes. When a school has a high-functioning leadership team, with clear communication, genuine accountability, and a shared understanding of what excellent teaching looks like, the research consistently shows better student outcomes across every measure. When the leadership team is fractured by unresolved conflict or unclear roles, even excellent individual teachers cannot compensate.

Organisations can hire Jonno White to facilitate Working Genius sessions and leadership team offsites that address exactly these dynamics. Email 

jonno@consultclarity.org.

For more on the public school context across ANZ, check out my blog post '50 Best Thought Leaders in Public Schooling in Australia and New Zealand (2026)' at https://www.consultclarity.org/post/thought-leaders-public-schooling-australia-nz.

How This List Was Compiled

Each person on this list was selected on three criteria: active contribution to secondary or K-12 education in 2025 or 2026, a documented body of published work, public research, professional leadership, or sustained practitioner output, and an amplification profile that makes their work accessible to school leaders, teachers, and curriculum designers who want to act on it. People who had moved away from secondary education, or whose primary focus was higher education or early childhood, were not included regardless of general prominence. The list targets voices whose work can genuinely inform what a secondary school does next week.

Category 1: Learning Science and Evidence-Based Pedagogy

The most significant shift in secondary education in the past decade is not technological. It is epistemological. A growing body of research on how learning actually works, drawing on cognitive science, memory research, and instructional design, is forcing a reckoning with pedagogical traditions built on habits rather than evidence. The voices in this category are driving that reckoning, and their work is directly applicable in every secondary classroom globally.

1. Dylan Wiliam

Emeritus Professor of Educational Assessment, UCL Institute of Education, United Kingdom

One of the most-cited education researchers alive, Dylan Wiliam spent seven years teaching in urban secondary schools before a career that took him through the deanship of King's College London's School of Education and the deputy directorship of the UCL Institute of Education. His emeritus position at UCL accompanies continued work training teachers globally on assessment practice, including a 2026 APPA conference keynote in Australia.

His seminal work with Paul Black, Inside the Black Box, published in 1998, demonstrated through rigorous review of the research literature that formative assessment, when practised well, produces some of the largest effect sizes of any educational intervention. His book Embedded Formative Assessment translated that research into classroom-ready strategies for secondary teachers. In 2025 and 2026, he has been speaking and writing at the intersection of formative assessment and AI, arguing that understanding how AI changes feedback loops is one of the most pressing practical questions for secondary teachers.

2. Tom Sherrington

Education Consultant and Director, teacherhead consulting, United Kingdom

Tom Sherrington spent 30 years as a teacher and secondary school headteacher before moving to full-time consultancy, working with schools and colleges across the UK, Asia, and globally on teacher development, school improvement, and curriculum design. His blog teacherhead.com has become one of the most-read education resources on the planet, and he posts original content multiple times per month into 2026.

His book Rosenshine's Principles in Action, co-authored with Oliver Caviglioli and published in 2019, translated Barak Rosenshine's Principles of Instruction, originally written for American Educator, into a format that secondary teachers worldwide could apply immediately. The book has sold widely and is used in teacher training programmes across multiple countries. His Teaching WalkThrus series, also with Oliver Caviglioli, continues to influence how schools approach instructional coaching.

3. Mary Myatt

Education Adviser, Writer, and Founder, Myatt and Co, United Kingdom

Mary Myatt trained as an RE teacher, spent 20 years as a local authority adviser and inspector, and now leads Myatt and Co, an online platform and consultancy that works on curriculum and school improvement across the UK. Her Secondary Subject Networks are a primary resource for department heads and curriculum leaders in English secondary schools in 2026.

Her book The Curriculum: Gallimaufry to Coherence, published in 2018, made the case that curriculum design is the most consequential decision a secondary school makes, and that coherence across subjects and years is both achievable and non-negotiable for genuine student learning. Her co-authored work Huh: Curriculum Conversations Between Subject and Senior Leaders, written with John Tomsett, provides a practical framework for the conversations secondary school leaders need to have to make curriculum coherent rather than merely compliant.

4. Craig Barton

Chief Academic Officer, Eedi, United Kingdom

Craig Barton taught secondary mathematics in UK schools for 20 years, served as TES Maths Adviser for a decade, and is now Chief Academic Officer at Eedi, a company he co-founded that produces the world's largest collection of diagnostic mathematics questions. His blog mrbartonmaths.com, the Mr Barton Maths Podcast, and the Tips for Teachers podcast are among the most widely consumed professional development resources in secondary mathematics globally.

His book How I Wish I'd Taught Maths, published in 2017, is a rare thing: a secondary teacher's honest account of how discovering the research on cognitive science and instructional design led him to realise that much of what he had been doing for a decade was actively working against student learning. The book has become standard reading in teacher training programmes. His 2025 Australian tour with Ollie Lovell introduced his diagnostic questions methodology to thousands of Australian secondary maths teachers.

5. Ollie Lovell

Director, Steplab Australia; Adjunct Lecturer, La Trobe University; PhD Candidate, University of Freiburg, Australia

Ollie Lovell has taught secondary mathematics in both public and private schools in Melbourne, hosts the Education Research Reading Room podcast (now in its eighth year with over two million downloads), and serves as Director of Steplab Australia, a professional learning platform for systematic improvement of teaching. His three books, Cognitive Load Theory in Action, Tools for Teachers, and The Classroom Management Handbook, are all Amazon bestsellers. He is currently completing a PhD in self-regulated learning through the University of Freiburg in Germany.

His Education Research Reading Room podcast is perhaps the most rigorous and accessible bridge between academic education research and secondary school practice in the world, bringing together researchers from cognitive science, instructional design, and school improvement with practising teachers in conversations that are both technically serious and practically useful. His 2025 tour with Craig Barton brought evidence-based maths pedagogy to secondary teachers across every Australian state.

6. Natalie Wexler

Education Writer and Author, United States

Natalie Wexler is an independent education writer based in Washington, D.C., author of The Knowledge Gap (2019) and Beyond the Science of Reading: Connecting Literacy Instruction to the Science of Learning (ASCD, 2025), and co-author, with Judith Hochman, of The Writing Revolution 2.0 (2024). Her Substack newsletter Minding the Gap is one of the most-read education newsletters in the USA and carries active posts into 2026, including engagement at the 2026 Learning Lab virtual conference as a keynote speaker.

Her 2019 book The Knowledge Gap made a rigorous case that the reading comprehension crisis in American secondary schools is not primarily about skills instruction but about knowledge deficits, students who arrive at high school without sufficient background knowledge to understand the texts they are asked to read. Her follow-up book Beyond the Science of Reading extended that argument into a broader framework connecting content-rich instruction to the science of learning, with direct implications for how secondary teachers plan units and build knowledge over time.

7. Daniel Willingham

Professor of Psychology, University of Virginia; Author, Why Don't Students Like School?, United States

Daniel Willingham is Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia, where his research focuses on the application of cognitive psychology to education. He was appointed by President Obama to serve as a Member of the National Board for Education Sciences in 2017. His column "Ask the Cognitive Scientist" has appeared in American Educator for two decades and his articles have been published in nineteen languages.

His book Why Don't Students Like School? (Jossey-Bass, 2009) remains the most readable and evidence-grounded account of how memory, attention, and prior knowledge interact in secondary classrooms. His central argument, that thinking is hard and that schools must work with rather than against the architecture of cognition, continues to shape how secondary school curriculum designers and instructional coaches frame their work. His more recent writing on AI and education has been widely shared in 2025 and 2026.

8. Paul Kirschner

Professor Emeritus of Educational Psychology, Open Universiteit Netherlands; Distinguished University Professor, Thomas More University of Applied Sciences

Paul Kirschner is one of the most cited educational psychologists in Europe, known for his work on cognitive load theory, collaborative learning, and evidence-based educational practice. His 2006 paper with John Sweller and Richard Clark, Why Minimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not Work, remains one of the most downloaded and most debated papers in education research globally.

His book Urban Myths About Learning and Education, co-authored with Pedro De Bruyckere and Casper Hulshof, systematically dismantled popular misconceptions about how secondary students learn, including learning styles, left-brain/right-brain differences, and the idea that students are naturally digital natives. The book has been used in teacher education programmes across Europe and Australia to build a more accurate evidence base among pre-service and in-service secondary teachers.

Category 2: Curriculum Design and Subject Knowledge

The secondary curriculum is not just a list of content. It is a series of decisions about what knowledge matters, in what sequence, for what purpose, and with what connection to the world students live in. The leaders in this category are shaping those decisions with intellectual rigour, practical wisdom, and a genuine commitment to demanding quality for every student regardless of background.

9. Christine Counsell

Visiting Fellow, University of Cambridge; Education Consultant, United Kingdom

Christine Counsell taught history in secondary schools, served as senior lecturer at the University of Cambridge Faculty of Education, and has been one of the most influential voices in the UK's curriculum knowledge movement for two decades. Her writing on what she calls the "fingertip" versus "residue" knowledge distinction, the idea that some curriculum knowledge must become deeply internalised while other knowledge serves as a scaffold to be released, has been widely adopted in secondary history departments and beyond.

Her work as a founding contributor to the Chartered College of Teaching's Impact journal and her sustained engagement with secondary subject leaders on curriculum design have made her a bridge between academic curriculum theory and everyday classroom practice. She was a central voice in the English curriculum reform debates of the 2020s and continues to work with multi-academy trusts and subject associations on curriculum coherence.

10. Doug Lemov

Managing Director, Teach Like a Champion, Uncommon Schools, United States

Doug Lemov is the author of Teach Like a Champion, first published in 2010 and now in its third edition (2021), the most widely distributed instructional practice guide for secondary teachers in the world. As Managing Director of the Teach Like a Champion team at Uncommon Schools, he has spent fifteen years systematically observing the most effective secondary teachers in high-poverty urban schools and codifying their techniques into a transferable framework.

His book Practice Perfect, co-authored with Erica Woolway and Katie Yezzi, extended his thinking from individual techniques to the design of teacher practice and professional development. His continued LinkedIn activity in 2025 and 2026 focuses on the intersection of attention, belonging, and rigorous instruction, and his TLAC podcast regularly reaches secondary teachers and instructional coaches globally.

11. Daisy Christodoulou

Director of Education, No More Marking, United Kingdom

Daisy Christodoulou is Director of Education at No More Marking, a comparative judgement assessment company, and author of Seven Myths About Education (2014) and Making Good Progress (2017). She began her career as a secondary English teacher and her writing on what assessment should and should not do has influenced UK education policy and classroom practice substantially.

Her book Making Good Progress argued that the way secondary schools typically structure formative assessment, through levels and grades, works against students' actual learning progression and that teachers need a more granular understanding of what mastery actually means in each subject. Her ongoing work on comparative judgement as an assessment method is reshaping how secondary schools think about writing assessment in particular.

12. Michael Pershan

Mathematics Educator and Writer, United States

Michael Pershan has spent his career teaching and writing about secondary mathematics with rigour and honesty. His Substack is one of the most practically useful mathematics education resources for secondary teachers who want to think seriously about explanation, worked examples, and the gap between intention and student experience.

His book Teaching Math With Examples (John Catt, 2021) is a sustained argument for the pedagogical value of worked examples, drawing on cognitive science and classroom experience to help secondary teachers design explanations that stick. His continued writing in 2025 on the limits of discovery-based learning in secondary mathematics has been influential and widely shared in teacher networks.

Category 3: Educational Equity and Access

The most persistent failure of secondary education systems globally is not about pedagogy. It is about whose learning is prioritised, whose background is affirmed, and who arrives at the end of secondary school with the knowledge, qualifications, and confidence to access what comes next. The voices in this category are doing the hard work of making secondary schools more equitable, not through slogans but through frameworks that teachers can actually apply.

13. Zaretta Hammond

Teacher Educator and Independent Researcher; Founder, Ready for Rigor, United States

Zaretta Hammond began her career as a secondary school expository writing teacher before becoming a nationally recognised teacher educator and the author of Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain (Corwin, 2015). Her work draws on neuroscience to explain why and how culturally responsive teaching practices accelerate learning for students who have been historically underserved in secondary schools, particularly Black and Latinx students in the USA.

Her central argument, that culturally responsive teaching is not primarily about representation or celebration but about activating cognitive engagement and building independent learning capacity, makes her work practically applicable for secondary teachers across subjects. Her forthcoming book Rebuilding Student Learning Power focuses on instructional equity and cognitive justice, extending her framework deeper into classroom practice. She posts regularly on LinkedIn and her work is widely cited in secondary teacher professional development.

14. Bettina Love

Professor of Education, Teachers College Columbia University; Author, We Want to Do More Than Survive, United States

Bettina Love is Professor of Education at Teachers College Columbia University, where she leads the Abolition and Healing Research Collaborative, and the author of We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom (Beacon Press, 2019). Her framework of "abolitionist teaching" challenges secondary educators to move beyond mere survival discourse for marginalised students toward a vision of radical joy, freedom, and full human flourishing.

Her writing on "spirit murdering," the cumulative psychological damage done to Black and brown students by secondary schools that are inequitable by design, has been widely cited in equity-focused professional development. She was included in the 2025 RHSU Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings at Teachers College Columbia. Her LinkedIn presence is active and her work directly shapes how school leaders frame the equity conversation in their buildings.

15. Pedro Noguera

Dean, USC Rossier School of Education, United States

Pedro Noguera is Dean of the USC Rossier School of Education at the University of Southern California, one of the country's most prominent education deans and one of the most widely cited scholars on the relationship between race, poverty, and secondary school outcomes. His research over three decades has consistently focused on what high-performing secondary schools do differently in high-poverty communities and what systemic conditions prevent those practices from scaling.

His 2008 book The Trouble With Black Boys argued that secondary schools' approaches to Black male students were shaped more by fear and deficit thinking than by genuine understanding of their capabilities, a challenge that secondary school leaders continue to grapple with in 2026. His ongoing writing on the need for secondary schools to be genuinely healing-centred environments makes him essential reading for any school leader working in high-need communities.

16. Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz

Associate Professor, Teachers College Columbia University; Creator, Racial Literacy Development Framework, United States

Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz is Associate Professor of English Education at Teachers College Columbia University and the creator of the Racial Literacy Development (RLD) framework, which provides secondary English teachers with a structured approach to developing students' capacity to understand and respond to race and racism. She was included in the 2025 RHSU Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings.

Her framework has been adopted in secondary schools across the USA as a way to build genuine racial literacy rather than performative diversity work. Her writing and talks address how secondary teachers can do this work in their own lives before bringing it into their classrooms, making her a voice for teacher development as much as for student curriculum. She is active on LinkedIn and her work is cited extensively in secondary teacher education programmes.

17. Gholdy Muhammad

Associate Professor, University of Illinois Chicago; Author, Cultivating Genius, United States

Gholdy Muhammad is Associate Professor at the University of Illinois Chicago and author of Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy (Scholastic, 2020) and Unearthing Joy (Scholastic, 2023). Her Historically Responsive Literacy (HRL) framework gives secondary literacy teachers a five-layer structure for designing units that affirm students' identities, build historical knowledge, develop skills, strengthen intellect, and create opportunities for critique and joy simultaneously.

The framework has been adopted in secondary school districts across the USA as an alternative to standards-driven curriculum design that strips away cultural context. Her 2023 follow-up book Unearthing Joy extended the framework to address how joy and beauty are not peripheral to rigorous learning but central to it. She is active across social media and education conferences in 2025 and 2026.

18. Cornelius Minor

Teacher, Educator, and Author, United States

Cornelius Minor is a Brooklyn-based teacher, professional development facilitator, and the author of We Got This: Equity, Access, and the Quest to Be Who Our Students Need Us to Be (Heinemann, 2019). A former secondary English teacher, he works with school systems across the USA on building the practical conditions for equity, not just the rhetoric of it, with particular focus on how individual teachers can act regardless of what their school system is doing.

His approach to professional development, which centres what he calls "micro-moves" that teachers can make immediately to create more equitable classroom environments, has been widely adopted in secondary school professional learning communities. His LinkedIn presence is active and he posts regularly about what secondary teachers can do today to make their classrooms more just.

Category 4: Systems Reform and School Improvement

Secondary schools do not exist in isolation. They operate within systems, whether district, state, national, or international, that either enable or constrain what is possible at the building level. The voices in this category are the system thinkers: people who understand how secondary education works as a complex adaptive system and who are generating the ideas that school leaders need to navigate it.

19. Michael Fullan

Professor Emeritus, OISE, University of Toronto; Co-Director, New Pedagogies for Deep Learning, Canada

Michael Fullan is Professor Emeritus at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto, Order of Canada recipient, and Co-Director of New Pedagogies for Deep Learning, a global initiative working with school systems in multiple countries on transforming secondary learning through collaboration, digital tools, and deep learning competencies. His most recent book, The New Meaning of Educational Change, 6th edition, was published in 2025. A further book, The Six Secrets of Change 2.0, is due in May 2026.

With more than 40 books and translations into multiple languages, Fullan's influence on how school systems think about change is unparalleled. His concept of "leading from the middle," the idea that real system transformation in secondary education requires activating the energy of the middle tier of educators rather than simply mandating from the top, has become one of the most practical frameworks for district leaders navigating reform.

20. Pasi Sahlberg

Professor of Educational Leadership, University of Melbourne, Australia/Finland

Pasi Sahlberg is a Finnish education expert and Professor of Educational Leadership at the University of Melbourne, where he researches educational reform, school improvement, and education policy. A former Director General at the Finnish Ministry of Education, he spent years as a secondary school teacher and teacher educator before becoming one of the world's most influential voices on what high-performing education systems share.

His book Finnish Lessons (2011, with updated editions through 3.0 in 2021) won the 2013 Grawemeyer Award and remains the most widely read account of how Finland reformed its secondary education system by building teacher professionalism, reducing standardised testing, and prioritising equity over competition. His LinkedIn posts in 2025 and 2026 address school enrolment trends in Australia, equity in Scotland and South Australia, and the global implications of AI for schooling.

21. Andy Hargreaves

Research Professor, Boston College; Professor Emeritus, University of Toronto, Canada/UK

Andy Hargreaves is Research Professor of Educational Change at Boston College and one of the most widely cited scholars of educational leadership and school reform globally. He has co-authored key books with Michael Fullan, and is known for his work on teacher professional capital, sustainable school change, and the wellbeing of the teaching profession.

His 2022 book Five Paths of Student Engagement, co-authored with Dennis Shirley, addresses the challenge of re-engaging secondary students post-pandemic through identity, intellectual engagement, community, practice, and wellbeing, providing secondary school leaders with a practical framework grounded in research. He remains highly active in educational policy conversations globally.

22. Dennis Shirley

Professor of Education, Lynch School, Boston College, United States

Dennis Shirley is Professor of Education at Boston College's Lynch School and has spent his career studying educational change and teacher activism across multiple countries. His collaborative work with Andy Hargreaves on the Five Paths of Student Engagement is particularly relevant for secondary school leaders working on re-engagement after the pandemic years' learning losses.

His broader research programme examines how secondary schools can sustain improvement over time without becoming dependent on either top-down mandates or individual charismatic leaders, making his work important for school leaders who want to build genuine organisational capacity rather than compliance. He is an active writer and speaker in 2025 and 2026.

23. Viviane Robinson

Distinguished Professor Emerita, University of Auckland, New Zealand

Viviane Robinson is Distinguished Professor Emerita at the University of Auckland and one of the most influential school leadership researchers in the world. Her research on student-centred leadership, particularly her extensive work on the effect sizes of different school leader behaviours on student outcomes, is among the most practically useful for secondary school principals trying to understand where to focus their limited time and energy.

Her book Student-Centred Leadership (Jossey-Bass, 2011) identified five dimensions of leadership practice that produce the largest impacts on student learning in secondary schools and remains one of the most frequently cited books in principal professional development programmes. Her ongoing research through the University of Auckland continues to shape how New Zealand's secondary school system approaches leadership development.

Category 5: Student Wellbeing and Adolescent Development

Adolescence is not a problem to be managed. It is a profound developmental period that secondary schools either support or undermine through every structural and cultural choice they make. The voices in this category understand the science of adolescent development, the conditions that produce genuine wellbeing rather than its appearance, and the ways that secondary schools can build environments where young people feel genuinely safe, known, and capable.

24. Dan Siegel

Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, UCLA School of Medicine; Author, Brainstorm, United States

Dan Siegel is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine and the author of Brainstorm: The Power and Purpose of the Teenage Brain (2013), one of the most widely read accounts of adolescent neuroscience for educators. He founded the Mindsight Institute, which develops resources for schools and clinicians on how to cultivate emotional intelligence and self-understanding.

His work translates developmental neuroscience directly into practical implications for secondary school design: why adolescents need genuine autonomy, why threat-based environments shut down the very learning secondary schools are trying to achieve, and why the adult relationships in a school are the most powerful variable for adolescent wellbeing and learning. His writing and speaking in 2025 and 2026 focuses on how schools can become environments that support rather than suppress adolescent development.

25. Lisa Damour

Clinical Psychologist; Executive Director, Laurel School's Center for Research on Girls; Author, United States

Lisa Damour is a clinical psychologist, Executive Director of Laurel School's Center for Research on Girls, and the author of three books on adolescent psychology: Untangled (2016), Under Pressure (2019), and The Emotional Lives of Teenagers (2023). She is a contributing writer to The New York Times on psychology and parenting, and a regular CNN commentator.

Her work directly addresses the emotional and psychological experiences of secondary school students, particularly girls, at a time when adolescent mental health data has continued to deteriorate globally. Her LinkedIn presence is active and her 2023 book has been widely used by secondary school counsellors and wellbeing teams trying to understand and respond to the anxiety crisis among adolescents.

26. Jonathan Haidt

Professor of Ethical Leadership, NYU Stern School of Business; Author, The Anxious Generation, United States

Jonathan Haidt is Professor of Ethical Leadership at the NYU Stern School of Business and the author of The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness (Penguin Press, 2024), which became one of the most widely read and debated books on secondary education and adolescent wellbeing globally in 2024 and 2025.

His central argument, that the shift to smartphone-mediated social life during the critical years of adolescence is a primary cause of the current mental health crisis among secondary school students, has been both praised for its clarity and challenged for its causal certainty. Regardless of where that debate settles, his book has made the phone-free school movement a serious policy discussion in secondary schools across the USA, UK, Australia, and beyond, and school leaders need to understand his argument.

27. Lucy Foulkes

Researcher, Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford; Author, United Kingdom

Lucy Foulkes is a researcher in psychology at the University of Oxford and the author of What Mental Illness Really Is (and What It Isn't) (Penguin, 2021) and Losing Our Minds (Penguin, 2024). Her work is directly relevant to secondary school wellbeing programmes because she challenges the medicalisation of normal adolescent distress and argues that secondary schools need to build environments that develop emotional resilience rather than simply identifying and referring students to clinical services.

Her LinkedIn posts in 2025 and 2026 address how schools can distinguish between normal adolescent difficulty and genuine mental health need, and why over-pathologising normal adolescent experience may be making the wellbeing crisis worse rather than better. This is a genuinely difficult conversation that secondary school leaders and counsellors need to engage with.

28. Peps Mccrea

Founding Dean, Ambition Institute, United Kingdom

Peps Mccrea is Founding Dean of the Ambition Institute, one of the UK's leading organisations for school leadership and teacher development, and the author of Lean Lesson Planning (2015), Memorable Teaching (2017), Motivated Teaching (2020), and Develop Expert Teaching (2025). His work is specifically designed for secondary teachers and covers how to design lessons that are both efficient and effective given what cognitive science tells us about memory and motivation.

His book Motivated Teaching, published in 2020, has become one of the most widely used texts in UK secondary school teacher professional development because it translates motivation research directly into actionable teaching strategies. His most recent book Develop Expert Teaching (2025) addresses how secondary school leaders can design professional development that genuinely builds expertise rather than consuming time without improving practice.

Category 6: Technology and the Future of Secondary Learning

No secondary school leader can afford to ignore the question of what technology means for learning, for assessment, for the teaching profession, and for students' own development as independent thinkers. The voices in this category are not technology cheerleaders. They are serious thinkers who are asking the hard questions about what AI, edtech, and digital tools mean for secondary schools in 2026 and beyond.

29. Rose Luckin

Professor of Learner-Centred Design, UCL Knowledge Lab, United Kingdom

Rose Luckin is Professor of Learner-Centred Design at the UCL Knowledge Lab and one of the world's most respected academic voices on artificial intelligence in education. She has advised governments, the OECD, and school systems globally on how AI should and should not be integrated into secondary schools, and she brings both technical rigour and genuine pedagogical caution to a conversation that often lacks both.

Her work emphasises that AI in secondary schools must be evaluated not primarily on efficiency but on what it does to students' capacity to think independently, and her research on AI literacy for both teachers and students is directly applicable to secondary school professional development planning in 2026. She keynoted a UK AI leadership network in 2025, and her LinkedIn activity is consistent and substantive.

30. George Couros

Author; Education Consultant; Adjunct Instructor, University of Pennsylvania, Canada/USA

George Couros is a Canadian educator and the author of The Innovator's Mindset (2015) and Innovate Inside the Box (2019, co-authored with Katie Novak), books that have been widely read in secondary school leadership teams globally. He is an adjunct instructor at the University of Pennsylvania and a frequent speaker at secondary school conferences across North America and internationally.

His framework for the "innovator's mindset," the idea that the most important thing secondary schools can develop is students' capacity to create rather than merely consume, is highly relevant to discussions of AI in secondary education and the question of what human capacities schools should be developing in an age of increasingly capable AI. His LinkedIn posts in 2025 and 2026 engage consistently with the AI and education conversation.

31. Karin Nygard Skalstad

Research Lead, Ark Curriculum Plus, United Kingdom/Norway

Karin Nygard Skalstad works as a Research Lead with Ark Curriculum Plus in the UK and brings a Nordic perspective to secondary curriculum and pedagogy questions. Her work sits at the intersection of curriculum coherence, teacher professional development, and the application of cognitive science to secondary school design, and her LinkedIn presence in 2025 and 2026 addresses how secondary schools can build coherent knowledge structures across subjects.

Her background teaching secondary school in Norway before moving to curriculum development work in the UK gives her a comparative perspective that is rare among secondary education voices in England, where much of the current curriculum reform conversation is insular. Her writing on how Norwegian and English secondary schools approach knowledge differently is a useful provocation for any curriculum leader.

32. Neil Selwyn

Professor of Education, Monash University, Australia

Neil Selwyn is Professor of Education at Monash University in Australia and one of the most rigorous critical scholars of education technology globally. Unlike most voices in the edtech space, Selwyn brings sustained sociological scepticism to claims about technology and secondary education, asking whose interests are served by particular technology implementations and what evidence exists for claimed learning benefits.

His books, including Should Robots Replace Teachers? (2019) and Education and Technology: Key Issues and Debates (multiple editions), are standard texts in teacher education programmes and provide secondary school leaders with the intellectual tools to make genuinely evidence-based decisions about technology adoption rather than being swept along by commercial pressure or enthusiasm. His posts in 2025 continue to address AI in secondary schools with characteristic rigour.

Category 7: Leadership, Culture, and Professional Learning

Secondary schools are led by people. The culture of a secondary school, the degree to which teachers feel trusted, students feel known, and parents feel in genuine partnership, is determined more by leadership behaviour than by any policy or programme. The voices in this category are doing the hard work of understanding what secondary school leadership actually requires and how to develop the leaders who can deliver it.

33. Jason Leahy

Executive Director, Illinois Principals Association, United States

Jason Leahy has served as Executive Director of the Illinois Principals Association for nearly two decades, making him one of the longest-serving state principal association leaders in the country. A former secondary school chemistry and physics teacher, high school principal, and doctoral graduate, he has led the development of Illinois's New Principal Mentoring programme and participated in the redesign of the state's principal preparation programmes.

His importance as a thought leader is not primarily academic but practical and systemic: he represents what sustained, evidence-informed leadership development for secondary school principals looks like when it is embedded in a professional association rather than located in a university or consulting firm. His work demonstrates how state-level professional bodies can be genuine engines of secondary school improvement.

34. Elena Aguilar

Founder, Bright Morning; Author, The Art of Coaching, United States

Elena Aguilar is the founder of Bright Morning, a professional learning organisation for coaches and school leaders, and the author of The Art of Coaching (Jossey-Bass, 2013), a book that has become the primary professional resource for instructional coaches in secondary schools across the USA. Her follow-up books The Art of Coaching Teams (2016) and Coaching for Equity (2020) extend her framework to team dynamics and equity work.

Her approach to coaching, which she calls "transformational coaching," addresses not just teachers' practices but their beliefs and ways of being, recognising that secondary school improvement requires changing culture and not just technique. Her LinkedIn presence is active and her online community through Bright Morning reaches thousands of secondary school coaches and leaders annually.

35. Shane Leaning

Host, Education Leaders Podcast; Secondary School Principal, New Zealand

Shane Leaning is the host of the Education Leaders podcast, which had reached approximately 150 episodes by late 2025 and doubled in size in its final six months of that year, reaching school leaders globally. He leads from within a secondary school context in New Zealand and brings a practitioner's perspective to conversations about school culture, instructional leadership, and the challenges facing secondary principals in the ANZ region.

His podcast platform has made him a connector of secondary school leadership thinking across New Zealand, Australia, and increasingly internationally, with episodes featuring researchers and practitioners from multiple contexts. His 2025 episode with Dr Tamara Yuill Proctor on curriculum integration at secondary level is particularly relevant for school leaders navigating whole-school curriculum reform.

36. Tom Bennett OBE

Founder, researchED; Behaviour Adviser to the UK Government, United Kingdom

Tom Bennett OBE is the founder of researchED, a grassroots professional development movement that has brought research literacy to secondary teachers in the UK and globally since 2013, and is the UK Government's behaviour adviser to schools. His work centres on evidence-based approaches to classroom behaviour management and the critical evaluation of educational research by practising secondary teachers.

His book Running the Room: The Teacher's Guide to Behaviour (John Catt, 2020) is a serious, rigorous, and practical resource for secondary teachers managing classroom behaviour across the full range of contexts. His researchED conferences, held in multiple countries annually, have created a community of practice among secondary teachers who want to engage seriously with research without uncritical deference to academic authority.

Category 8: Global Voices and Underrepresented Perspectives

The secondary education conversation remains dominated by Anglo-American voices. The leaders in this category bring perspectives from Scandinavia, Sub-Saharan Africa, South and East Asia, and the Middle East that are essential for any genuinely global understanding of what secondary schools are, what they can do, and what they owe the young people in their care. Secondary school leaders in any country who limit their reading to domestic voices are making a serious strategic error.

37. Maina Mwangi

Director, Teach For Kenya, Kenya

Maina Mwangi is Director of Teach For Kenya and one of the most prominent voices on secondary education access and equity in East Africa. Teach For Kenya works with secondary schools in underserved communities, and his LinkedIn posts in 2025 address the intersection of secondary school infrastructure, teacher quality, and the particular challenges of educating adolescents in contexts of resource scarcity.

His perspective on what secondary education equity means in a Kenyan context, where access to secondary schooling is still not universal and where quality is extraordinarily variable, challenges the predominantly Western framing of most secondary education thought leadership. His work on what good secondary school leadership looks like when resources are scarce and community trust must be built from scratch is directly relevant globally.

38. Arnav Bose

Leadership Team, Teach For India, India

Arnav Bose serves in a leadership role at Teach For India and is one of the most active voices on secondary education equity and access in India, where secondary school completion rates and quality are both significant challenges at scale. His LinkedIn posts in 2025 address the intersection of secondary school leadership, teacher development, and the particular dynamics of educating adolescents in under-resourced urban communities across Indian cities.

His perspective on secondary education reform in a country of India's scale and complexity challenges easy assumptions from both Western and Finnish-style education reform narratives. What works in a small secondary classroom in Helsinki does not automatically translate to a secondary school in Mumbai or Bengaluru with far fewer resources and far greater diversity of student need.

39. Sam Sims

Research Fellow, Education Policy Institute; Former Secondary Teacher, United Kingdom

Sam Sims is a Research Fellow at the Education Policy Institute and a former secondary teacher whose work focuses on teacher retention, teacher effectiveness, and the conditions that allow secondary teachers to build expertise over time. His 2021 paper on teacher retention, widely cited across UK education policy, demonstrated that secondary schools' failure to build structured opportunities for teachers to develop expertise is a primary driver of both teacher attrition and student learning outcomes.

His work on "expertise-informed professional development" connects cognitive science, specifically the research on deliberate practice, to what secondary school leaders should be doing to develop their teachers rather than merely training them. His LinkedIn posts in 2025 are focused on the evidence base for different approaches to secondary teacher professional development.

40. Pak Tee Ng

Associate Professor, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Pak Tee Ng is Associate Professor at the National Institute of Education at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and one of the most important voices on educational leadership and school improvement in the Asia-Pacific. His research examines how Singapore's secondary school system has achieved high PISA performance while also building in recent years a greater focus on student wellbeing, creativity, and the development of lifelong learning dispositions.

His book Learning from Singapore: The Power of Paradoxes (2017, Routledge) challenges both uncritical admiration for Singapore's test-score performance and dismissive critiques that ignore the genuine innovations in teacher development and school leadership that have produced those results. His writing in 2025 and 2026 on the question of how Singapore is responding to AI in secondary schools is particularly timely.

41. Anna Hogan

Associate Professor, University of Queensland, Australia

Anna Hogan is Associate Professor at the University of Queensland and one of Australia's leading researchers on the commercialisation and privatisation of secondary education, examining how corporate interests shape curriculum, professional development, and school policy in ways that secondary school leaders often do not notice. Her work is important precisely because it asks questions that are rarely asked in secondary school professional development contexts.

Her research on how private educational technology companies and consulting firms are reshaping what secondary schools believe good teaching looks like, and whose interests are served by those narratives, is a corrective to the uncritical adoption of commercial products and frameworks that many secondary schools engage in. Her LinkedIn activity in 2025 focuses on AI companies entering the secondary education space.

42. Chris Emdin

Professor of Science Education, Teachers College Columbia University; Author, For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood, United States

Chris Emdin is Professor of Science Education at Teachers College Columbia University and the author of For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood and the Rest of Y'all Too: Reality Pedagogy and Urban Education (Beacon Press, 2016), one of the most widely read books on engaging disengaged secondary school students from marginalised communities. He was included in the 2025 RHSU Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings.

His concept of "reality pedagogy," the idea that secondary teachers must enter and value students' cultural and community realities before students will engage with academic knowledge, has been adopted in secondary school professional development programmes globally. His work on hip-hop pedagogy and his STEM Twitter community (#HipHopEd) are particularly relevant for secondary teachers in urban schools seeking culturally affirming approaches to science and technology education.

43. Neil Hopkin

Principal, The English College Dubai; Author, AI and the Learning Revolution, United Arab Emirates

Neil Hopkin is Principal of The English College in Dubai and one of the most active secondary school voices on AI integration and the cognitive science of learning in the Middle East's rapidly growing private secondary school market. His LinkedIn posts in 2025 and 2026 are regular, original, and substantive, addressing how secondary schools in the Gulf region are responding to the AI question with a practical sophistication that outpaces many Western school systems.

His work at the intersection of educational research, AI implementation, and secondary school leadership makes him a genuinely useful voice for school leaders globally who are trying to navigate AI responsibly rather than reactively. His perspective from one of the world's most international secondary school markets adds a genuinely different lens to the global conversation.

44. Beate Cresp

CEO, Association of Heads of Independent Schools of Australia (AHISA), Australia

Beate Cresp is Chief Executive Officer of AHISA, the peak body for heads of independent secondary schools in Australia, and one of the most informed voices on the governance, leadership, and strategic challenges facing secondary school principals across the Australian independent sector. She brings a sector-level perspective that most individual school leaders cannot access.

Her work involves deep engagement with the conditions under which secondary school leaders are able to do their best work, including governance structures, board relationships, and the principal wellbeing challenges that are driving unsustainable rates of leadership turnover in Australian secondary schools. Her posts and public statements in 2025 and 2026 address the sustainability of the secondary principal role with directness that many sector bodies avoid.

45. John Hattie

Emeritus Laureate Professor, Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne, Australia

John Hattie is Emeritus Laureate Professor at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne, and the author of the Visible Learning series, beginning with Visible Learning: A Synthesis of Over 800 Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement (Routledge, 2009), which synthesised effect sizes from more than 800 meta-analyses to identify what factors most influence student achievement in secondary and K-12 schooling.

His core finding, that teacher feedback, collective teacher efficacy, and formative assessment produce the largest effects on student learning, directly shaped secondary school professional development globally in the 2010s and 2020s. Note that in 2025, the University of Melbourne opened a formal research integrity investigation into allegations related to his work, and school leaders engaging with his research should follow that investigation as it concludes. His emeritus position and the ongoing global use of the Visible Learning database make his work unavoidable in secondary education discussion.

46. Jenni Donohoo

Educational Consultant; Author, Collective Efficacy, Canada

Jenni Donohoo is an independent educational consultant based in Canada and the author of Collective Efficacy: How Educators' Beliefs Impact Student Learning (Corwin, 2017), a book that made the research on collective teacher efficacy, the most powerful variable identified in the Visible Learning research, accessible and actionable for secondary school leadership teams. Her work with professional learning communities in secondary schools across Canada and internationally is deeply practical.

Her ongoing consultancy work and LinkedIn activity in 2025 address how secondary school leaders can build and sustain collective efficacy rather than just measuring it, distinguishing between the surface features of collaboration and the genuine shared belief in collective capability that produces improved student outcomes. She is a frequent contributor to secondary school professional development programmes globally.

47. Ross Morrison McGill

Founder, TeacherToolkit; Secondary Teacher and Author, United Kingdom

Ross Morrison McGill, known as @TeacherToolkit, is the founder of the TeacherToolkit website, which has been read by over 20 million people globally and is the UK's most-followed educator on social media. A practising secondary teacher who has remained in the classroom throughout his career as a thought leader, he posts original content on teaching practice, wellbeing, and school improvement multiple times per week. He was invited to Number 10 Downing Street in April 2025 to share social media expertise with the Secretary of State for Education.

His books, including 100 Ideas for Secondary Teachers (2013) and Mark, Plan, Teach (2017), bring secondary classroom-level practitioner wisdom to a format that is accessible to other teachers and school leaders. His distinctive contribution is remaining credibly in the classroom while simultaneously influencing national education policy conversation.

48. Deborah Loewenberg Ball

William H. Paige Professor of Education, University of Michigan, United States

Deborah Loewenberg Ball is the William H. Paige Professor of Education at the University of Michigan and one of the most important figures in understanding what secondary mathematics teachers need to know and be able to do. Her concept of "Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching" (MKT), developed over decades of research, distinguishes between subject knowledge and the specific pedagogical content knowledge that effective secondary maths teachers deploy in their classroom interactions.

Her work has reshaped how secondary maths teachers are prepared and how secondary schools evaluate mathematics instruction. Her ongoing research at Michigan on instructional practice in secondary mathematics continues to produce findings that connect directly to classroom improvement. She is active in education research conferences and policy discussions in 2025 and 2026.

49. Hamish Chalmers

Research Associate, University of Oxford; Author, Mostly Harmless Education Research, United Kingdom

Hamish Chalmers is a Research Associate at the University of Oxford and the author of Mostly Harmless Education Research: A Teacher's Guide to Understanding Research (John Catt, 2021), one of the most genuinely useful books for secondary teachers who want to engage with education research without the methodological literacy that academic training provides. He is active on LinkedIn and at researchED events in 2025 and 2026.

His specific contribution is building research literacy in secondary school teachers, helping them distinguish rigorous evidence from opinion dressed as research, and apply a genuinely critical lens to the professional development offerings and product claims they encounter. In a secondary education market saturated with confident claims about what works, his work on how to evaluate those claims is practically invaluable for school leaders.

50. Karin Chenoweth

Writer-in-Residence, Education Trust; Author, Schools That Succeed, United States

Karin Chenoweth is Writer-in-Residence at the Education Trust and the author of multiple books on high-performing schools in high-poverty communities, including Schools That Succeed (2017). Her work on what secondary schools in high-poverty communities do differently to produce strong outcomes for all students is among the most practically useful in the USA.

Her 2017 book Schools That Succeed remains a widely recommended resource for secondary school leaders who want to understand not what research says should work but what actually works in real secondary schools serving disadvantaged students. Her decade of visiting and documenting these schools produces a kind of evidence that randomised controlled trials cannot: a richly described picture of what different looks like in practice.

Notable Voices We Almost Included

Several voices were seriously considered but did not reach the final 50. Jo Boaler's work on mathematics pedagogy is important, though her research claims have faced significant scrutiny in 2024 and 2025. Michael Matsuda, Superintendent of Anaheim Union High School District, represents an extraordinary model of district-level secondary school transformation and his co-authored 2025 book The Future of Public Education is worth reading for any secondary school district leader. Chandra Turner brings important equity journalism to secondary education. Tim Shanahan's foundational work on reading instruction has deep secondary implications and his 2025 book Leveled Reading, Leveled Lives was the year's best-selling education title at Harvard Education Press.

Common Mistakes to Avoid When Engaging with Secondary Education Thought Leadership

The most common mistake secondary school leaders make when engaging with thought leadership is treating it as a destination rather than a starting point. Reading John Hattie's Visible Learning and implementing a checklist of high-effect-size strategies is a fundamentally different exercise from understanding why those strategies work and how to adapt them to a specific school context. The research tells you what tends to work. It does not tell you what to do next in your school, with your students, taught by your teachers.

The second most common mistake is consuming thought leadership in one lane only. A secondary school leader who reads only curriculum design voices, or only equity voices, or only cognitive science voices, is building a partial picture of a problem that requires all of them simultaneously. The most effective secondary schools are simultaneously rigorous in their curriculum, equitable in their practice, evidence-informed in their pedagogy, and attentive to student wellbeing. These are not competing priorities. They are interconnected dimensions of the same problem.

The third mistake is mistaking geographic specificity for universality. Several of the most influential secondary education thought leaders, including those in this list, are primarily writing for their own national context. Pasi Sahlberg's work on Finland is compelling but Finland's secondary school system operates in a social, political, and cultural context that cannot be simply transplanted elsewhere. Secondary school leaders reading globally need to apply judgment about what transfers and what requires translation.

The fourth mistake is confusing thought leadership consumption with professional development. Following 50 people on LinkedIn is not the same as changing your practice. The gap between knowing what research says and doing something different in your school is bridged not by more reading but by conversation, coaching, structured implementation, and the kind of leadership team culture where difficult questions are asked and honestly answered.

Book Jonno White to facilitate a Working Genius session or leadership team offsite that helps your secondary school leadership team turn the ideas on this list into genuine shared commitments. Email 

jonno@consultclarity.org or visit consultclarity.org.

Implementation Guide: How to Use This List

Start by identifying the most urgent challenge your secondary school is facing right now. Is it student disengagement, particularly in years nine and ten? Is it a pedagogy gap between what your most effective teachers do and what your least effective teachers do? Is it curriculum incoherence across subjects and year levels? Is it an equity problem where particular groups of students are consistently underperforming? Is it a leadership culture issue where the team cannot have honest conversations about what is not working? The thought leaders most relevant to each of these challenges are different, and beginning with the most relevant voice is far more useful than attempting to engage with all 50 simultaneously.

Once you have identified your priority challenge, choose two or three voices from this list who address it most directly. Read one book, follow their LinkedIn posts for a month, and listen to any available podcasts. Then do something important: bring what you have learned into a structured conversation with your leadership team. This is where most secondary school improvement efforts break down. The leader reads, is inspired, and attempts to implement alone. What actually moves secondary schools is collective engagement with ideas and collective commitment to change.

For more on building the leadership team culture that makes those conversations productive, check out my blog post on leadership development experts for schools at https://www.consultclarity.org/post/leadership-development-experts-schools.

Build your own secondary education thought leadership diet deliberately. One international systemic voice (Fullan, Sahlberg, or Hargreaves), one pedagogy and instructional design voice (Wiliam, Sherrington, or Lovell), one equity voice (Hammond, Muhammad, or Love), one curriculum voice (Myatt, Christodoulou, or Wexler), and one wellbeing voice (Damour, Siegel, or Foulkes) gives you a balanced diet that covers the full range of what an effective secondary school leader needs to be thinking about.

International travel is far more affordable than clients expect, and many organisations find that bringing Jonno White in to run a Working Genius facilitation for their secondary school leadership team costs less than they anticipated. Email 

jonno@consultclarity.org.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who are the most influential thought leaders in secondary education globally? The most influential voices in secondary education globally in 2026 include Dylan Wiliam for formative assessment, Michael Fullan for school system change, Pasi Sahlberg for international comparative education, Zaretta Hammond for culturally responsive teaching, Tom Sherrington for evidence-based pedagogy, Natalie Wexler for knowledge-rich curriculum, and Jonathan Haidt for adolescent wellbeing. The specific voices most relevant to any individual secondary school leader will depend on the particular challenges that school is navigating.

How do I know which secondary education research is reliable? Secondary education research varies enormously in quality. The most useful signal is whether the research has been independently replicated, whether it has been subject to peer review in rigorous journals, and whether the effect sizes claimed are plausible given what we know about educational interventions generally. Hamish Chalmers's book Mostly Harmless Education Research is the most practical guide for secondary school leaders navigating this question.

What are the biggest challenges in secondary education globally in 2026? The most significant challenges in secondary education globally in 2026 include the ongoing post-pandemic learning recovery, the mental health and wellbeing crisis among adolescents, the integration of AI into teaching and learning in ways that support rather than undermine independent thinking, persistent equity gaps between students from different socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds, and the retention and professional development of secondary school teachers. Every voice on this list is addressing at least one of these challenges directly.

How can a secondary school build a culture that learns from thought leadership? The most effective secondary schools build structured time for teachers and leaders to engage with research and thought leadership together, not individually. This means dedicated professional learning community time, a leadership team that models intellectual curiosity, and a culture where it is safe to say that something the school is currently doing is not working as well as it should.

Organisations can hire Jonno White, author of Step Up or Step Out (10,000+ copies sold), to facilitate the conversations that make genuine professional learning communities possible. Email 

jonno@consultclarity.org.

What secondary education thought leadership voices are most relevant for Australian secondary schools? Australian secondary school leaders will find particular value in Ollie Lovell's work on cognitive science and instructional practice, Pasi Sahlberg's writing from his Melbourne base on comparative education and equity, Neil Selwyn's critical technology research from Monash, Anna Hogan's work on commercialisation from the University of Queensland, and Beate Cresp's sector-level perspective from AHISA. For the broader UK voices that have strong Australian readership, Tom Sherrington, Mary Myatt, and Dylan Wiliam are all relevant and regularly visit Australia for professional development events.

Final Thoughts

Secondary school is where education's promises are kept or broken. It is the sector where disengagement is most visible, where equity gaps compound most rapidly, and where the quality of teaching and leadership has the most direct consequence for a young person's life trajectory. The 50 voices on this list have dedicated their careers to making secondary education better, more equitable, more evidence-informed, and more attentive to what adolescents actually need from the years they spend in school.

The common thread across every one of these thought leaders is that they take the work seriously. Not in the sense of grimness or joylessness, but in the sense of genuine intellectual rigour and authentic commitment to the young people whose education they are trying to improve. That combination of rigour and care is what the best secondary schools also model, and it is what every secondary school leader who is following these voices should be aspiring to build in their own buildings.

If your secondary school is navigating a challenging moment, whether a culture problem, a curriculum overhaul, a student wellbeing crisis, or a leadership team that cannot yet have the honest conversations it needs to have, you do not have to navigate it alone. Jonno White, Certified Working Genius Facilitator, author of Step Up or Step Out (10,000+ copies sold), and host of The Leadership Conversations Podcast (230+ episodes, 150+ countries), works with secondary school leadership teams globally. Whether virtual or face to face, international travel is often far more affordable than clients expect. Email 

jonno@consultclarity.org.

For more on the specific voices shaping secondary education in independent schools, check out my blog post '50 Essential Thought Leaders in Independent Schooling' at https://www.consultclarity.org/post/thought-leaders-independent-schooling.

About the Author

Jonno White is a Certified Working Genius Facilitator, author of Step Up or Step Out, and leadership consultant who has worked with schools, corporates, and nonprofits around the world. His book Step Up or Step Out has sold over 10,000 copies globally, and his podcast The Leadership Conversations has featured 230+ episodes reaching listeners in 150+ countries. Jonno founded The 7 Questions Movement with 6,000+ participating leaders and achieved a 93.75% satisfaction rating for his Working Genius masterclass at the ASBA 2025 National Conference. Based in Brisbane, Australia, Jonno works globally and regularly travels for speaking and facilitation engagements. Organisations consistently find that international travel is far more affordable than expected.

To book Jonno for your next keynote, workshop, or facilitation session, email 

jonno@consultclarity.org.

Sources

Gallup. (2023). State of America's Schools Report. Gallup, Inc.

OECD. (2023). PISA 2022 Results. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

UNESCO. (2024). Global Education Monitoring Report 2024. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

Next Read

Secondary schools face a specific set of leadership culture challenges that are distinct from other sectors. Building a leadership team that can have honest conversations, navigate conflict without damage, and sustain high performance over time is the foundation on which every other secondary school improvement effort rests. Keep reading: https://www.consultclarity.org/post/thought-leaders-stem-schools