Dr. Köksal Banoğlu, a postdoctoral fellow in the EPL, has been awarded the 2025 BELMAS (British Educational Leadership, Management and Administration Society) Best Blog Runner-up prize at the BELMAS Annual Conference on July 5, 2025. This recognition was given for his blog post, “The Importance of Collaborative Networks in Educational Leadership: When Lone Wolves Turn into Networking Buddies”, published on the BELMAS Blog: https://www.belmas.org.uk/blog/the-importance-of-collaborative-networks-in-educational-leadership.
The blog highlights the often-overlooked value of informal principal networks within education districts, offering practical insights for strengthening these ties to foster trust, collaboration, and collective problem-solving. Drawing on social network theory, Dr. Banoğlu presents empirical evidence demonstrating how principals’ professional interactions shape decision-making, knowledge-sharing and school improvement efforts. To that end, the piece challenges long-standing notions of heroic leadership, where individual leaders are often portrayed as solitary figures steering schools through complexity. Instead, the blog advocates for a more relational and collaborative approach to education leadership through district-wide collaborative networks.
