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…

We focus on gender stereotypes in West European university management by comparing two countries: Sweden and Ireland. In secular Sweden there are strong policies that are implemented at all political levels supported by the public discourse; while in Ireland such measures are few and the equality infrastructures and discourse have been weakened by…

As accountability systems have increased demands for evidence of student learning, the use of data in education has become more prevalent in many countries. Although school and administrative leaders are recognizing the need to provide support to teachers on how to interpret and respond to data, there is little theoretically sound research on…

Research to date about the English government's policy to make schools independent of local authorities (LAs) has looked at the "macro" level of national policy and at the "micro" level of the institution. The study of which this article is a part, explores changes at the "meso" level--the locality. The article…

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 legal basis of free schools, provided for in the Academies Act 2010, allows the Secretary of State for Education "to enter into Academy arrangements with any person". A range of debate has ensued over who will govern free schools. This article develops an analysis of the individuals and organizations that have had free school…

The purpose of this research is to examine the motivations of females aspiring to school superintendency positions in Texas. We report on a reanalysis of data from two previous studies and how the findings build an understanding of previously documented obstacles and barriers female candidates encounter in their journey toward the superintendency.…

This article presents and discusses the findings of a recent study on the professional identities of middle managers in a school of healthcare in a selected Chartered (pre-1992) UK university. Attention focuses on the career backgrounds of the middle managers, perception of identity and the interactional balance between the professional, academic…

This article emerged as a case study from a fact-finding mission of a joint programme between the Centre for Commonwealth Education (CCE) in Cambridge University and the Institute for Educational Planning and Administration (IEPA) in University of Cape Coast, Ghana, to embed innovative approaches to teaching and learning in the basic schools of…

This study provides empirical data about the role and work context of the school principal in the Lebanon. The study applied grounded theory methods in collecting and analysing the data. The data were collected through a series of open-ended interviews with 53 secondary school principals, and focus group interviews with 8 principals from public as…

This article contributes to an emergent literature of empirical studies on how emotion impacts leadership. The purpose of the study was to examine how secondary school administrators derived meaning from critical incidents of significant emotional events retrospectively, and how the understanding impacted leadership. A conceptual framework of…

Since the mid-1980s, a global resurgence of large-scale reform in the field of education has been witnessed. Implementing these reforms has created many dilemmas for change leaders. Following a three-year qualitative research project, the present study explores the dilemmas leaders faced during the implementation of the national curriculum reform…

This article reports on a study that was conducted in 10 urban schools, situated in the city of Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. The research explored the perceptions of school stakeholders with regard to the effects of power relations between teacher unions and school managers. It is assumed, within the context of this…

The overarching purpose of this study is to examine the prospects of school leadership for the development of intercultural education. The article focuses on the ways in which Greek-Cypriot headteachers conceptualize: diversity and intercultural education; and their school leadership roles in culturally diverse settings. To this extent, interviews…