(2021). Diverging systems of educational leadership in the four nations of the United Kingdom? School Leadership & Management: Vol. 41, Diverging Systems of Educational Leadership in the Four Nations of the United Kingdom? Guest Editors: Philip A. Woods, Deidre Torrance, Caitlin Donnelly, Tom Hamilton, Ken Jones & Ian Potter, pp. 1-5.

ABSTRACT The Good Friday Agreement (1997) brought political violence in Northern Ireland to an end and provided the basis for shared government. A consociational political structure was adopted which institutionalised community differences while encouraging coalition government. The goal was that a requirement for consensus decisions would encourage cooperation between political leaders and promote

ABSTRACT This article offers a comparative analysis and interpretation of leadership in the four UK education jurisdictions (Scotland, Wales, England and Northern Ireland), informed by the articles in this special issue and by a project report, all outcomes of an initiative, ‘Educational Leadership, Management and Administration in the United Kingdom: A Comparative Review’, funded by the British Educational

ABSTRACT This article analyses the ways in which leaders in Multi-Academy Trusts (MATs) in England work to develop shared improvement practices across the schools they operate. It draws on case study evidence gathered as part of a larger mixed methods study (Greany [2018]. Sustainable Improvement in Multi-school Groups. DfE Research report 2017/038. London: Department for Education). There are now

ABSTRACT This article explores how headteachers/principals engage in social justice leadership practice using data gathered from the Scottish and American contributions to the International School Leadership Development Network’s (ISLDN) research on social justice leadership. While the literature focuses on high-level strategies to address issues of equity there is limited discussion of the day-to-day

ABSTRACT Multi-academy trusts are groups of schools in England led by an Executive Head Teacher and a Board of Trustees. High profile failures of these organisations raise questions over the way they are strategically led. Leadership studies argue that the absence of strategic thinking is a major detractor from performance & sustainability. However, creating strategy for a single organisation is very

ABSTRACT Numerous studies have highlighted the important role played by school principals in improving the learning of their students, especially those at risk of social exclusion. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to analyse the pedagogical leadership exercised by the principals of disadvantaged schools in the Community of Madrid (Spain). To this end, the approach employed was based on a mixed methodology

ABSTRACT This paper reports on a study completed with principal preparation students to measure the change in their beliefs about how to provide leadership that affirms diverse students and families in schools. The principal preparation program (PPP) in this study redesigned the internship to include crucial conversations around diversity and social justice. Students were prompted to reflect on social

ABSTRACT The role of the Heads of Departments (HoDs) in the school structure is to provide middle leadership. They assist the principals on the day to day leadership of the schools. They are responsible for ensuring the achievement of their departmental and school vision and mission. This study sought to explore the nature of the challenges faced by the HoDs in the Lesotho context. The study was framed

ABSTRACT For more than a century, numerous studies examined and reported how principals allocated their time. Assuming that differences in selection, participation and satisfaction of tasks by principals resulted in different outcomes, researchers have continued to study principal time use. In 1989, Wimpelberg, Teddlie, and Stringfield indicated a need for more sophisticated research of principal time

(2020). Leading professional enquiry: connect to learn. School Leadership & Management: Vol. 40, No. 5, pp. 379-383.

ABSTRACT During the last two decades, researchers and practitioners have shown great interest in research concerning how to implement change in local schools. The research repeatedly stresses the importance of trust among colleagues, yet few studies have examined intra-organisational trust, or the absence of such, during a change process within a decentralised school system that includes local education

ABSTRACT Focusing on primary school principals’ espoused strategies for developing social capital over their early years in the principal’s office, we show that investing in social capital was a core challenge during their formative years. Based on our analysis of data from a longitudinal study of 35 new principals, we argue that school principals made sense of the social capital challenge in two ways:

ABSTRACT This article examines the policy construction of leadership at all levels in Scottish education. In the current reforms ‘leadership at all levels’ is being used to mobilise support around changes to the role of the headteacher and of the local authorities (LAs) to bring about greater system alignment. From a critical policy analysis six themes are reported on: (1) Social Justice Ideology and

ABSTRACT This paper argues that educational policies and changes in Wales over the last thirty years have somewhat neglected issues concerned with management and leadership, in comparison with other countries and within the UK. More recently, however, leadership development has been provided and the Welsh National Academy for Educational Leadership has recently produced an organisational framework

ABSTRACT The policy context for schools in England places great emphasis on leadership and autonomy as drivers of educational improvement. The purpose of this article is to explore how we can better understand, in this context, the challenges of leadership and autonomy and the conditions of leadership development that support or hinder the practice of ethical autonomy. The article summarises analyses

ABSTRACT The education system in England, along with the leadership and management of its schools, has changed dramatically over the past fifteen years, heavily influenced by key features of the private school sector. However, in this article, it is argued that the strong policy focus on autonomy and diversity was in fact an accentuation of the historical tradition of the English system: secondary

ABSTRACT The purpose of this article is to explore novice principals’ attempts to make sense of their new organisational roles, challenges and discrepancies. To frame our work, we focused on new comer sense-making perspective of job socialisation. Sense-making is a relevant conceptual perspective through which novice principals come to discover, interpret and respond to their new pluralistic context

Earlier this year, COVID19 slammed the door firmly shut on all aspects of everyday life. It interrupted international travel, it devastated economic growth, and it disrupted schooling globally. In ...

ABSTRACT This article draws upon the educational leadership knowledge base to explore central concepts, questions, and issues of relevance to the contemporary policy context in Wales. The article is not a review of the leadership literature, but rather it explores the empirical evidence to address three key questions that are critical to school and system improvement. The aim of this article is to

ABSTRACT The growth of influence of transnational organisations in education and other policy fields is well documented. Current research indicates the de-centring of nation-state power, the rise of multi-national agencies and the growth of influence of transnational experts. Research in the critical policy studies (CPS) tradition seeks to problematise policy-making, to explore the processes and define

ABSTRACT The public education system in Chile was reformed in 2017, introducing networking as a principle for governing and improving schools. Between 2018 and 2025, 70 Local Public Education Services (SLE) will replace 345 municipalities as the intermediate level of the new system. SLEs are mandated to lead the formation of networks to support the improvement of schools. This paper presents a qualitative

ABSTRACT Social capital has recently emerged as an effective approach to rethink schools as wider learning ecosystems where students, teachers and families have greater access to learning resources through social interaction. Literature has not provided research-based assessment tools that document school leaders’ abilities to weave social relationships between actors within the school and across the

ABSTRACT International human rights instruments provide a legal basis for an agreed set of human values globally. These ‘values’ are expected to underpin the purposes and content of education. This paper aims to explore how compliance with human rights instruments and values is balanced by educational leaders in Northern Ireland where diverse interpretations of human rights are held by the main communities

Networks are fast becoming the nervous system of our society and it is no exaggeration to state that the twenty-first century is the age of networks (Van Dijk 2006). Digital technology is the first thing that comes to mind when people think about networks however, it is important to note that networks are not only present in the technology arena; but also have effects in politics, economics, society

ABSTRACT Increasingly, policymakers, school and school system leaders are turning to Professional Learning Networks (PLNs) as a means to achieve bottom-up educational improvement at scale (Brown and Poortman, 2018). Likening the leadership challenges of establishing PLNs to conquering a labyrinth, this paper draws on extant literature to explore one key factor thought vital to the success of PLNs:

ABSTRACT In Australia, there is a national education agenda for school improvement with an increasing focus on how school leaders can fulfil this agenda. As school principals are arguably faced with increasing demands, the importance of school middle leaders is increasing. This article presents the initial findings from a larger project on middle leadership in Australian schools, the first phase of

ABSTRACT Recent international research highlights the importance of a strong professional identity based on pedagogical leadership to achieve educational improvement. Several studies indicate a clear relationship between the role of gender identity and the development of a leadership identity. This article tells the story of a female school principal in a Spanish school context. Using a biographical

ABSTRACT Canada prides itself for being multi-cultural, valuing diversity, and having educational outcomes that have been identified as excellent and equitable with above average performance and lower than average impact of socio-economic status and immigrant status in PISA. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, plus policies concerning child care, language rights, immigration, and Indigenous

ABSTRACT A challenge to support school networks in Chile is the competitive culture promoted by market-oriented educational policies that have harmed school leaders’ capacities to work and learn together. This is an empirical research about a Collaborative Inquiry Networks (CIN) strategy to support the development of networked leadership capacities of headteachers and curriculum coordinators from one

ABSTRACT Worldwide, leadership stories are narratives of principals facing very different problems. The purpose of this study was to identify the current problems faced by Portuguese school principals, through these actors’ voice. Nineteen public school Portuguese principals participated in this study. Semi-structured interviews were conducted, transcribed, coded, and categorised using Nvivo11 Pro

ABSTRACT This article explores Swedish principals’ emotional identity by employing an analysis instrument built up of three dimensions identified in the study by Crow, Day, and Møller (2017): “the professional,” “the situated or socially located,” and “the personal dimension.” The article builds on data obtained from a survey given to Swedish principals, completed in January 2019 (n = 1,286). The findings

Drs. Middlewood, Abbott, and Robinson are professors at the Centre for Education Studies at the University of Warwick, UK. In 2015, Drs. Middlewood and Abbott collaborated on a book titled Improvin...

The idea of the teacher as a leader is far from new. There is a wealth of evidence underlying the pivotal importance of leadership at the classroom level, illuminating how teachers actively contrib...

ABSTRACT This paper elaborates three leadership roles to turn school networks into vehicles for powerful learning and democracy These leadership roles were identified through a review of four school networks, three in the Global South and one in the English-speaking world. The networks were selected for the availability of case studies about their development and the existence of evidence suggesting

ABSTRACT This article analyses the collaborative leadership of a network-based approach that seeks to subvert the social inequality suffered by the residents of Los Asperones (Málaga, Spain), where approximately one thousand people live in extreme exclusion. The network is made up of various socio-educational associations, schools and social services. The main techniques for collecting information

Within the framework of the CaixaProinfancia programme, networks have been developed in 18 regions of Spain which promote intersectoral cooperation to combat the social and educational exclusion of...

ABSTRACT This work attempts to examine instructional leadership from a peer influence perspective within a districtwide network of educational leaders. This approach to instructional leadership supplements a conventional understanding of technical core of professional collaboration. We argue from a social network perspective that individual perception is likely to be influenced by the perception of

ABSTRACT Since the 2000s there has been a growing global interest in policies that redefine, support, and monitor school leadership roles. Despite this, research knowledge on the international use of school leadership standards is limited, specifically on its relationship to various role demands (or imperatives) of school administration. Drawing from data from the International Project on Effective

Equity has finally caught up with excellence in the minds and priorities of policymakers around the world. Manifestos, papers and directives are increasingly being littered, like confetti, with the word ‘equity’ and it is likely that this policy zeitgeist is not going to disappear any time soon. Grand claims are made for education systems that are pursuing equity, inclusion and justice. A recent OECD

ABSTRACT This article presents findings from a study into the reality of beginning as a principal in a New Zealand secondary school. The views of beginning, experienced and former principals are presented and discussed drawing on the literature of organisational sensemaking. The findings suggest that the challenges of unexpected occurrences, relationship issues and isolation remain throughout a principal’s

ABSTRACT Leadership is an essential contributor to effective professional networking within education. In the pursuit of school and system improvement, leaders at all levels are being challenged to collaborate and network in order to secure the best positive outcomes for students. Professional learning networks are one of the main developments in many education systems in recent years. The article

ABSTRACT This paper explores issues of social justice in relation to the practice of two principals from two Australian public schools. The stories of these principals are set against a policy backdrop in Australia that has seen renewed emphasis on school autonomy reform, on the one hand, and heightened external accountability and compliance, on the other. Drawing on interview data from a small-scale

ABSTRACT The aim of the research is to pinpoint which leadership-related factors affect school success, specifically focusing on features and strategies used by the principals. The work follows the International Successful School Principalship Project methodology in two case studies in Andalusia (Spain). Both schools (with differentiated environments) are classed by the research as ‘invisible or visible

In 2008 we published an article in this journal entitled Seven Strong Claims about Successful School Leadership (Leithwood, Harris, and Hopkins 2008). The article was based on a major literature re...

Around the world there is the growing recognition that teacher agency and professional influence are critical components in the pursuit of school and system improvement (Harris, Jones, and Huffman 2017; Campbell et al. 2018). The possibility and potential of teacher leadership remains a central issue within the international discourse about educational reform and change. This potential is reflected

ABSTRACT The purpose of this article is to explore the development of the knowledge base on middle leadership in schools. Since the seminal reviews conducted by Bennett a contemporary scan only of the scholarly literature on middle leaders/leadership in schools has not been undertaken. Consequently, this article looks at outputs relating to this topic by examining research papers indexed in the Web

ABSTRACT Although research generally attests to the beneficial role of transformational leadership (TL) for school effectiveness, little empirical work has distinguished individual- from group-focused dimensions of TL and analysed their relationships with target variables at the individual and group level of followers simultaneously. Using a dual effects model of TL, the present study aims to fill

ABSTRACT Over the past two decades, there have been significant efforts to investigate knowledge production in the field of educational leadership and management (EDLM) in non-Western contexts. Consistent with this effort, the present paper aims to identify the contribution of Turkish scholars to the international EDLM literature. More specifically, the review examined the volume, journals, authors

ABSTRACT Assessment leadership has often been associated with school leaders (SL), comprising principals and vice-principals. This study aimed to examine the under-researched assessment leadership role of Middle Leaders (ML) instead. Data was drawn from a larger, mixed-methods project that involved a self-report questionnaire administered to principals, MLs and teachers across twelve schools as well

ABSTRACT The instructional leadership approach expects school leaders to give top priority to ongoing improvement of teaching quality and academic outcomes. Researchers have found that despite the top-down pressures to assume an instructional leadership role, school principals demonstrate limited direct involvement in such leadership. The current qualitative study, based on semi-structured interviews

ABSTRACT This exploratory multi-case study investigates the types of teacher performance data principals consider and collect when evaluating teachers. Data come from public school principals (N = 10) in the U.S. state of Michigan and includes: interviews (n = 30), observations (n = 20), and artifacts collected in 2016 and 2017. Additionally, specific teacher evaluation district documents inform this

ABSTRACT Although the benefits of teacher collaboration have been touted, school administrators often struggle to foster productive collaboration at their sites. This study takes a deep dive into teachers’ interactions to understand how administrators’ efforts to engineer collaboration play out in teachers’ relationships. Analysis of qualitative interview and observation data with a social network

ABSTRACT Mentors for beginning teachers in schools are often unacknowledged middle leaders in their schools. Through their work with beginning teachers, they not only provide local leadership in their contexts, they influence and shape the work of the next generation of teachers. Government-funded mentor training for the purpose of supporting beginning teachers in Education Queensland schools commenced

A great deal has been written, promised and delivered in the name of professional learning for teachers. The professional learning terrain is, without question very busy and highly lucrative. Comme...

ABSTRACT All large high schools have teachers in middle tier roles who help run the school, and subject leaders (SLs) who engage in administrative and pedagogical practices to improve departmental achievements. By applying structuration theory (Giddens, 1984. The constitution of society: Outline of the theory of structuration. Berkeley, CA: University of California.) we seek to understand how rules

ABSTRACT This review of research employed science mapping to analyse the intellectual structure of the knowledge base on educational leadership and management in Africa. The review analysed 645 Scopus-indexed documents on EDLM in Africa published between 1960 and 2018. Meta data associated with these documents were analysed using the VOSviewer software. The complementary use of citation and co-citation

ABSTRACT Middle leadership is a dynamic area of policy in Scottish and Irish education to build leadership capacity. This article reports on a critical policy analysis of sequential sets of Scottish and Irish policy on middle leadership to identify codes of meaning. Two aspects are reported: (1) constructions of the purposes of middle leadership and (2) key themes in changing policy paradigms. While

ABSTRACT This longitudinal study aims to create in-depth knowledge about the phenomena of middle-leadership and career in school by identifying (1) driving forces for seeking and maintaining middle-leading positions, (2) opportunities and difficulties in maintaining the middle-leading role over time, and (3) underlying thoughts of career disclosed in the respondents’ expressions. Five different reasons

ABSTRACT Appointing a headteacher in England is important but under-researched, hence the study reported here. We interviewed and surveyed chairs of governing boards that had recently undertaken the appointment process. Governing bodies follow broadly similar recruitment and selection processes, which have a number of problematic aspects: the unique nature of the context; the complexity of the processes;