Citation: Neves, C.; Almeida, A.P.; Ferreira, M. Headteachers and Inclusion: Setting the Tone for an Inclusive School. Educ. Sci. 2023, 13, 129. https://doi.org/10.3390/ educsci13020129 Academic Editor: Eleni Andreou Received: 29 November 2022 Revised: 18 January 2023 Accepted: 25 January 2023 Published: 27 January 2023 Copyright: © 2023 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). education sciences Article Headteachers and Inclusion: Setting the Tone for an Inclusive School Cláudia Neves 1, * , Ana Patrícia Almeida 1 and Marco Ferreira 2 1 Department of Education and Distance Learning, Universidade Aberta, 1250-100 Lisboa, Portugal 2 School of Education, Instituto Superior de Educação e Ciências, 1750-142 Lisboa, Portugal * Correspondence: claudia.neves@uab.pt Abstract: Inclusion is an unavoidable dimension of education and the school’s mission. Educational organisations must therefore seek approaches and practices that materialise in the effective manage- ment of diversity, equity and inclusion, since these are conditions for the involvement of the whole community to achieve the goals of education for all. This study sought to answer (i) How do school leaders conceptualize equity and inclusion? (ii) What guidance and administrative procedures do headteachers use to facilitate inclusion? (iii) What characterises their practices concerning leadership for equity and inclusion? The empirical focus of the research was a set of school principals of Por- tuguese public schools, where a qualitative methodology was used, namely the interview survey technique. The sample gathered 11 interviewees. The results show that, although from an ideological point of view, headteachers have a broad conception of inclusive education, from an operational point of view, the evidence shows the implementation of normative practices. The data point to a reproduction of Portuguese policies and their priorities, showing a leadership engaged in targets, outcomes and performance indicators. The conclusions of the article point to the need to explore new possibilities for understanding inclusion and leadership, and these understandings may impact the school’s transformation toward successful inclusion. Keywords: school leadership; inclusion; qualitative methodology 1. Introduction In recent decades there has been a global and gradual growth of interest in educational leadership, particularly around the attempt to identify and operationalise the knowledge, skills and practices related to educational leadership [1]. Current policy guidelines high- light the importance of leaders who know how to set and meet objectives oriented towards school and academic results, promote excellence and seek good results in external and internal assessment processes. As a result of this trend, there has been an attempt to stan- dardise the leadership practices of school administrators, promoted by policies that define standards and reference frameworks of competencies that serve as a guide for professional training, learning and evaluation of educational leadership. These attempts to homogenise educational leadership practices have been increasingly criticised for decontextualizing and neglecting issues related to equity and social justice [2,3]. Although it seems evident that educational leaders should motivate their staff to achieve common goals of education for all, the truth is that “in the maelstrom educa- tional leaders find themselves in, being caught up with administration and management rather than leadership, and often just trying to keep up with bureaucratic demands and desires” [4] (p. 1). According to Biesta [4], the question of what educational leadership ought to be is erased more often when engaging in targets, outcomes and performance indicators. If it is granted that educational leaders should lead, then the obvious question is what they should lead for—which can also be phrased as what they should lead towards [4]. Educ. Sci. 2023, 13, 129. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci13020129 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/education