Unpacking School Leadership Activism: Evidence from INVALSI Data

School principals are central actors in shaping the quality, equity, and adaptability of education systems. Their behaviours and beliefs influence teachers' practices, organisational processes, and ultimately students' outcomes. This paper examines the activism of school principals in Italy through the lens of INVALSI survey data collected between 2017 and 2022. The analysis focuses on three domains (i) declared leadership practices, (ii) leadership beliefs, and (iii) decision-making strategies, capturing how principals act, think, and decide within their schools. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis are applied to uncover the latent dimensions that define leadership activism, while spatial mapping reveals its territorial distribution across Italian regions. The results point to a hybrid model of leadership that integrates strategic coordination, pedagogical engagement, and participatory governance. This model reflects the capacity of Italian principals to mediate between managerial accountability and the relational dynamics of their school communities, a balance that became even more salient in the postpandemic period. By linking behavioural evidence with spatial analysis, the paper advances a comprehensive framework to classify and interpret leadership activism in a decentralised education system. The findings offer three contributions: they demonstrate the coherence between principals' beliefs and practices, reveal regional patterns in leadership orientations, and provide actionable insights for the design of training and support policies. The study thus enriches the international debate on school leadership by showing how activism evolves through the interplay of context, agency, and institutional change.