This article reports on the findings of a larger case study about the impact of values on educational leaders in Iceland. The environment of Icelandic schools has changed considerably in recent years. These changes have affected schools and changed the nature and scope of principals' work. Scholars have argued that these changes are primarily…

This article deals with the changes introduced in the Italian education system after the 1997 School Autonomy reform. Looking at the complex interplay between global influences and processes of local inflection, the work explores the degree to which we are witnessing a significant shift towards a new mode of governance and the interplay between…

School boards are expected to monitor and enhance the educational quality of their schools. To know whether and how school boards are able to do so, we first of all need to know whether school boards are aware of the educational quality of their schools in the first place. Taking Dutch school boards in primary education as an exemplary case (N =…

The development of emotional intelligence skills offers sufficient leadership qualities for advancing the organization and for achieving its objectives. In particular, the emotionally intelligent leader--principal is able to inspire and facilitate a self-conscious and organizational culture by adopting the values of understanding, trust, prospect,…

This study builds on a set of Australian case studies exploring the impact of Place on the work of principals and of the importance of Place in the preparation and development of principals. The project compares the ways that principals in Iceland and Australia build leadership capacity in small rural schools. Leaders of small schools in both…

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…

This article describes the development and validation of a measure for transformational and transactional leadership that may be used as part of a more comprehensive instrument to measure a school's capacity to implement school-based interventions. Data used for this study were gathered from the reports of 1144 teachers from 45 Norwegian…

South African democracy precipitated many changes and excavated many dormant issues, one of which was equity in the workplace. This extended into the sphere of education - a sector in which women were rarely seen in leadership positions. Following the implementation of several redress policies, women have managed to penetrate the gender equity…

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…

This article explores the notion of leadership identity construction as it happens through a leadership development programme. Influenced by a conception that leadership development is essentially about facilitating an identity transition, it uses an intersectional approach to explore school leaders' identity construction as it was shaped and…

Assessment of the legacy of apartheid at the end of the apartheid era in South Africa highlighted major inequalities between white and black, urban and rural areas, and several departments of education. Eighteen years into democracy, the country needs to distinguish between the initiatives taken by the government to address the apartheid legacy,…

The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 confers equality on all South African citizens regardless of race and gender. It has been reported that, under apartheid, gender inequality was a way of life and even social liberation movements observed it. Education is not exempt from gender inequality; the Department of Education in 2003…

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…

Attempts to improve poor academic performance in South African public schools resulted in the Schooling 2025 mandate, which stipulated the academic standards that learners needed to achieve by 2014. As school leaders must do this through their teachers the emotional tensions associated with such changes are likely to increase. This paper…

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore the life and career paths of women higher education administrators in sub-Saharan Africa. Specifically, the study sought to interpret the women's experiences and identities, through the framework of intersectionality and gender performance, as ones that contributed to advancement…