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The purpose of this paper is twofold: to discuss methodological challenges facing US scholars when conducting international research; and to present personal reflections as educational leadership faculty in the USA conducting and publishing on research undertaken in Haiti and Thailand.

This study drew from educational leadership literature and personal experiences to identify methodological challenges to conducting and publishing international research in the field of educational leadership.

The methodological challenges facing international research – language, data, publication, and career incentives – should not be reasons to hinder scholars from conducting research in international contexts. Allowing methodological deterrents to impede international research limits US scholar engagement in global conversations and places the field of educational leadership in the USA at risk of a parochial and myopic future.

This paper explores the methodological reasons as to why US scholars are not engaging in international research and provides two vignettes of faculty research in international contexts. This discussion is valuable for faculty interested in or presently conducting research beyond US borders.

This chapter reports findings from a qualitative case study of principals and assistant school principals in southern Thailand who work in areas targeted by Muslim separatist groups. Principals and assistant school principals discussed the pressures they experienced working in an area of conflict and the requirements placed upon them by the Thai Ministry of Education (MoE). This study emphasizes the importance of social context to school leadership and career development. Findings suggested that the MoE’s centralized practice of policy implementation has particular consequences on the development of principals in the three border provinces because it fails to take into account the unstable social context. Consequently, many teachers working to become principals and principals wanting to become senior principals find themselves unable to meet the requirements and resort to unethical practices to achieve promotion.