Leadership as conversion: how school leaders enable teacher capabilities for responsive education in diverse schools

This article addresses how school leadership develops teacher capabilities for pedagogically responsive education in increasingly diverse contexts. Drawing on Sen’s capability approach and the theory of practice architectures, it conceptualizes pedagogical responsiveness as a collectively supported capability-set rather than individual teacher dispositions. The study examines how leaders mediate discursive, material-economic and relational arrangements that enable or constrain teachers’ agency to enact inclusive and socially just practices. It advances three propositions: (1) pedagogical responsiveness constitutes a collective capability; (2) school leaders orchestrate the arrangements that build these capabilities and (3) developing teacher capability for responsive education is central to realizing equity and inclusion goals in education. Findings show that locally produced practice arrangements act as institutional conversion factors shaping teachers’ opportunity and agency freedom to develop and enact responsive practices. The article concludes by exploring how recognitive and redistributive leadership can reshape these arrangements, proposing an ecological framework for understanding how responsive practices emerge, sustain and transform in diverse schools, with implications for workforce development and educational justice.