The term "leadership" metaphorically embodies a gendered hierarchy of labour. In this study women deans' values were found to be incongruent with the masculine discourse creating inner conflicts and alternative discourses. Data collected from 10 women deans from both male-dominated and female-dominated colleges were used to deconstruct leadership…

In this conceptual paper, an exploration of the leadership gap between theory and praxis, which manifests itself in three different kinds of fissure in current thinking and research in the field of educational leadership, management and administration, will be undertaken. It is argued that there is a public image/communication gap, which current…

US administrators must meet the demands of accountability while maintaining a balance and the joy of learning in their schools. Accountability comes with the US laws No Child Left Behind (2002) and Title II Reauthorization (2002). Increased accountability has had a major impact in several other countries as well. This paper is largely conceptual…

My interest in critical leaderful educational practices emanated from my experiences as a researcher in a South African National Department of Education project that piloted the White Paper on "Inclusive Education Policy from 2001-2003" and in 2006 when I worked as a volunteer consultant with Twenty30, an independent, not for profit organization…

The concept of tolerance is closely related to education. There has been a growing body of literature on the issue of tolerance in schools, since it directly influences the school climate. This study has investigated teacher perceptions of tolerance in teacher-administrator relationships in state schools in Turkey. A sample of 308 teachers was…

The purpose of the study was to investigate whether Exemplary, Recognized and Acceptable schools differ in their school climates, as measured by the 10 dimensions of the Organizational Health Inventory. Significant differences were found on all 10 dimensions of the Organizational Health Inventory, with Exemplary schools out-performing Acceptable…

Educators who enter administrator/leadership preparation programmes undergo an interesting transformation. They enter as teachers, thinking as teachers do, and they graduate as future administrators, thinking as administrators do. This enhanced, school-wide perspective provides a number of benefits to the teachers themselves, to their…

With the global economy becoming more integrated, the issues of cross-cultural relevance and transferability of leadership theories and practices have become increasingly urgent. Drawing upon the concept of parallel leadership in schools proposed by Crowther, Kaagan, Ferguson, and Hann as an example, the purpose of this paper is to examine the…

This interview study examines the way practitioners in Wisconsin public schools created conditions to facilitate refugee parent involvement. Practitioners' perceptions of barriers to refugee parents' school involvement are explored as well as the strategies used to promote meaningful parent involvement. Interviewees included nine school…

This paper discusses the results of field research focused on educational communication in the classroom. The research involved 11 primary schools in Italy. Nearly 100 hours of videotaped educational interactions were produced. The empirical analysis of the communication processes allowed us to analyse the main structures of educational…

Project Achieve is a professional development (PD) project that utilizes teacher leaders (TLs), former teachers who have been reassigned to provide school-based mentoring, instruction, lesson plan assistance and modelling of lessons for urban middle school teachers. A primary goal of Project Achieve is to evaluate the extent to which TLs were able…

This article analyses the concept of organizational culture and the relationship between the organizational culture and the performance of staff work groups in schools. The article draws upon a study of 12 schools in Wales, UK, which despite being in disadvantaged settings have high levels of pupil attainment. A model is developed linking the…

This study draws on the experiences and insights of current college and university presidents to understand whether transactional, transformational or a combination of these leadership strategies advances an institution-wide diversity agenda. The qualitative elite interview study demonstrates that both styles of leadership appear important and…

Terms such as "leader", "manager", "teacher" and "student" prevail in most schools and, accordingly, school hierarchies are viewed as rational ways of organizing teachers and their work that institutionalize authority. We are deeply concerned that the term "teacher leadership" has crept into educational vocabulary and there has not been sustained…

This qualitative study examined boundary spanning leadership in community-based contexts. The study focused on exceptional leaders of university-school-community partnerships in two urban regions of the USA. The findings indicate that boundary spanners are aided by contextual knowledge, interpersonal skills, trust and connectedness, but they also…