Leadership is considered to be significant for creating a developing and learning school organisation. In Sweden, distributed leadership and teacher teams are an "institutionalised practice"; despite this, sustainable school improvement is difficult to achieve. This article presents findings from a case study of three schools that…

For three years from 2008 every school in England had a designated school improvement partner (SIP), portrayed as a critical friend, whose role was to support and challenge the headteacher. A mixed-methods study involving a national survey and face-to-face interviews evaluated the enactment of the national policy from the perspective of the direct…

School-to-school collaboration has been central to many improvement efforts over recent decades. In an attempt to promote both improvement and equity current developments in England have included changing formal governance arrangements to promote collaboration for improvement through "federations" and "chains" of schools.…

Few concepts are more noted in the leadership effects research than vision. It is a cardinal element in the school improvement equation as well. Yet, it remains one of the least well-specified components of that algorithm. Based on a comprehensive review of the research on effective leadership and school improvement from 1995 to 2012, we bring…

Coalition government policies have put into question the role of local authorities in a "self-improving school system". In a number of local authorities new authority-wide partnership bodies are being set up involving all local schools, including academies, and controlled by headteachers. This article begins with an analysis of the new…

The purpose of this study of school improvement planning in the southeastern USA was to establish the current view of the process through the eyes of the district superintendents. The answers to the questions were consistently mixed. Generally, the presence of school improvement planning is prevalent in the large majority of districts. However,…

The notion of leadership for learning as a resource for improving student learning in schools has attracted much attention from scholars. However, its use lacks clarity or meaning for teachers implementing this concept in schools. In seeking to pursue a better understanding of leadership for learning based on a comprehensive review of relevant…

As education's main workforce, teachers have been the target of policies designed to shape and affirm new versions of professionalism. This paper examines this issue as it is exemplified by the Teachers of Teachers Network (TTN), a program developed by Chile's Ministry of Education. As a program designed to identify and reward high…

This paper examines the relationship between leadership roles and skills in secondary schools in Greece. Drawing upon a sample of 124 secondary public school principals, a structured questionnaire was developed to measure leadership roles and skills. The Competing Values Framework (CVF) was adopted to operationalize the eight leadership roles. The…

When it comes to organizational performance, leaders matter. Without significant attention to the preparation and development of school leaders, government initiatives aimed at building world class education systems are unlikely to succeed. Across the Anglophone world leadership preparation and development has become a key leverage point in…

Principals, as one of the professional leaders in a school, are accountable for the quality of education in the school. This is a part of the normal job description and expectations for the person in such a post. In the South African context with a large number of underperforming schools, there is an intention to have an additional performance…

The past two decades have witnessed increasing global acceptance of the important role that capable leadership plays in education reform and school improvement. Consequently, policymakers internationally have actively sought means of strengthening capacity for school-level leadership, with a particular focus on the design of more effective…

It is known that the work of headteachers is demanding. Observation, diaries and logs completed by headteachers show a relentless, complex and emotionally demanding workload. What can be learned about headship from how new headteachers spend their time, and perhaps as importantly, what can new headteachers themselves learn? This article draws upon…

In about a decade the theory of distributed leadership has moved from a tool to better understand the ecology of leadership to a widely prescribed practice. This article considers how to account for its spread and dominance and what purpose it serves. The concept offers an enticing suggestion of including more in leadership, and even sometimes…

There has been limited research on how teachers, parents and students perceive effective school leadership in practice. The purpose of this article is to present some of the findings derived from a study of key stakeholders' perceptions of effective school leadership. Key stakeholders were identified as teachers, students and parents. Data were…