Purpose: The aim of this paper is to discuss the views of black and ethnic minority school leaders about the "Investing in Diversity" program, a black-led program developed in 2004 to address the underrepresentation of black leaders in the London schools. Major themes are identified from interviews with black and South Asian women graduates of the…

Purpose: The aim of the paper is to argue that principal preparation programs should help candidates: recognize the political role of the school principal; develop political skills (including the ability to strategically appropriate policy); and understand that the political approach of the principal influences teaching, learning, relationships,…

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to explain how errors in policymaking contribute to the minimal impact that structural, curricular and cultural changes have made on teaching practice in American schools. Design/methodology/approach: Drawing on the author's research legacy, the paper extends an historical analysis to explore and explain current…

Purpose: This article aims to discuss the conceptualisation process of developing a new one-year taught-master's programme in educational leadership at an Aotearoa/New Zealand university. Design/methodology/approach: The perspective taken is a highly personalised one from the two lead "drivers" of the programme and outlines the two-year process of…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify the key individuals, associations and significant events contributing to the establishment and first 50 years of successful publication of the "Journal of Educational Administration". Design/methodology/approach: This paper is historical in design. Information relevant to its 50 years of…

Purpose: Research, spanning half a century, points to the critical role of school administration and to the successful implementation of US government policies and programs. In part these findings reflect the times and a US educational governance system characterized by local control, a constitutionally-constrained federal government,…

Purpose: An increase in the number of disruptive and violent events on college and university campuses instigated this review of the methods used to interrupt the trend, with the goal of identifying a preliminary model for systematic management of such threats. The intent is to instigate research, review and discussion in order to decrease the…

Purpose: This article aims to reinterpret principal preparatory programs to also include the collective learning-from-success process (success-based learning), thus providing a complementary instructional framework on how to prepare principals for today's public school reality. Design/methodology/approach: The discussion reviews the core…

Purpose: Schooling is a significant tool for fostering future generations, which, in turn, implies that the curriculum is an ethical document. It mirrors the society's notion of what is valuable, useful and necessary from a societal and individual perspective. The purpose of this paper is to address the Scandinavian curricula's ethical framework,…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to argue that emotion has a central role to play in rational decision making based on recent research in the neuroanatomy of emotion. As a result, traditional rational decision-making theories, including Herbert Simon's modified model of satisficing that sharply demarcates emotions and values from rationality…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present the argument that leadership preparation programmes in the new millennium should be required to train school leaders emotionally as well as cognitively. A number of scholars have stressed that leaders are increasingly working within roles that are politically sensitive, conflicted and complex,…

Purpose: The purpose of the paper is to discuss and examine the development of frameworks and models to guide future research into studies of women's paths to educational leadership worldwide. Design/methodology/approach: A grounded theory approach to the development of a model of the factors and their interaction that determine the path to…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to, first, establish the interdependency between the successful achievement of organisational change and the attainment of values alignment within an organisation's culture and then, second, to describe an effective means for attaining such values alignment. Design/methodology/approach: Literature from the…

Purpose: This paper aims to assess the empirical utility and conceptual significance of distributed leadership. Design/methodology/approach: Three main sources of evidence are drawn on. The paper reviews some neglected commentary of an early generation of distributed leadership theorists. It also discusses a strand of social science writings on…

Purpose--The paper aims to provide a theoretically-based set of skills and practices that develop organizational members and leaders while building organizational capacity. Design/methodology/approach--The paper advances four arguments about learning and leading, drawing on classical and contemporary scholarship of organizational learning theory…