In this article the author questions whether the understanding of teaching and leading is the same today as it was last year? The chances are that the concept of what it means to be a teacher and a leader has changed. After describing three leadership types: servants, managers, and monkeys, Buskey suggest several things that are needed to improve…

Defending emotions is neither banal nor senselessness. It is not falling into sentimentality (Camps, 2011, p. 33) would say. Emotions take shape within human actions and imply leadership, not just in a purely mechanistic sense, but in the sense set out by Sartre (1973), dealing with the way the individual understands emotions and the role they…

As both Friedman (2007) and Wagner (2008) have eloquently emphasized in recent years, children need to learn more complex material in preparation for further education and work in the twenty-first century. Teachers, therefore, must learn instructional approaches that develop the knowledge and skills students need to succeed in an increasingly…

Within this essay and the author's reflections on the articles in this special issue, the question considered is: where have all the disruptions gone? On a fundamental level, educational leadership should have something to contribute, since it holds in trust the very educational systems that go a long way to producing the human condition, and…

While educational policy-makers bemoan the ways in which educational reforms falter, they both valorize and punish leaders for their key role in change. In this paper, using a national study funded by the English Creative Partnerships programme, we suggest that it may be helpful to understand the limits to change by seeing change leadership as…

Since the 1980s, there has been a burgeoning literature on women and educational leadership. The focus has primarily been on the underrepresentation of women in leadership informed by a feminist critique of the mainstream literature. Over time, key feminist theories and research have been appropriated in education policy and are now embedded in…

This commentary focuses on school leadership as connective activity. Leadership is essentially about designing, managing and energizing the right connections, and untying the wrong ones, in order to make schools successful, equitable, happier places. The author's basic proposition is that school leaders who influence students and their communities…

The history of leadership in educational settings that has a principal focus on student learning is one dominated by Western cultures, particularly those in the USA; also, it has developed two near-identical models of leadership commonly known as "instructional" or "learning-centred". This paper explores the relevance of these models in the…

Emotional factors play a part in the learning process, and, so too for leadership. Fullan (2001) identified self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, social skills, adaptability, stress management and general mood as fundamental characteristics of emotional intelligence. If leaders exemplify these characteristics, this will positively…

Democratic leadership rests on sacred values, awareness, judgement, motivation and courage. Four turning points in a 38-year school administrator's career revealed decision-making in problematic moments stemmed from values in a personal and professional code of ethics. Reflection on practice and theory added vocabulary and understanding to make…

The current de-democratization process in which the world now apparently finds itself ". . .represents the longest continuous period of deterioration in the nearly 40-year history of Freedom House's annual assessment of the state of political and civil liberties in every country of the world". As Gilley (2010: 161) observes, ". . .the hottest…

Around the world there is a preoccupation with improving the performance of schools and school systems. Comparisons made between countries through PISA and PERLs have led to a preoccupation, and in some cases, an obsession, with securing a high position in the international league tables. The minds of policy-makers and politicians alike are…

The question as to who controls academics' knowledge is an important and increasingly urgent question. From the perspective of the good old ivory tower, it does indeed seem that corporate business has gained a high degree of control over the work of academics. The amount of money that is involved in publisher take-over deals not only shows how big…

Due to privatization of higher education in India, there has been an emergence of sub-standard schools throughout the country. The higher education system in teaching institutes lacks incentives to perform; there is no reward for the meritorious and no way to ease out the non-performers. The quality of teaching and research cannot be evaluated…

Regardless of what one thinks of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the current national education legislation has demonstrated the power and potential of learning standards linked with systems of accountability to influence classroom experiences. Unfortunately, the changes promoted by the legislation have tied the professional hands and suppressed the…