Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present the author's commentary on the special issue of "Journal of Educational Administration" entitled "Systemwide Reform: Examining Districts under Pressure". Design/methodology/approach: The author gives her personal opinions, draws upon her recent experiences in the national…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present the author's commentary on the special issue of "Journal of Educational Administration" entitled "Systemwide Reform: Examining Districts under Pressure". Design/methodology/approach: In framing her reflections, the author has looked across the five articles in the special…

Purpose: While Singapore's outstanding educational achievements are well known worldwide, there is a disproportionate paucity of literature on school leadership practices that contribute to and support pedagogical initiatives that--along with socio-cultural factors--are normally considered responsible for its educational success. The aim of this…

Purpose: In far too many cases the initiatives to change schools by introducing new programs, processes and reforms has not resulted in obtainment of the desired outcomes. A major reason for limited outcomes suggested in this paper is that there has been a failure to learn from and apply constructs and measures related to understanding,…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify the legacies of the "Journal of Educational Administration" ("JEA") since its foundation in 1963 to the present (2011) and to illuminate the main contributions of the Journal to the academic field of educational administration (EA) worldwide. Design/methodology/approach: The method employed in…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of what the author believes to be his major contributions to the field of Educational Administration. Design/methodology/approach: The approach taken is a personal review and reflection based on research. For purposes of structuring the article three themes have been…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper was to conduct a critical analysis of the origins and implementation of problem-based learning in educational administration as a window into the limitations of this approach and more generally administrator preparation. Design/methodology/approach: The author reviewed the published work of the originator from…

Purpose: This paper aims to serve as an introduction to and overview of this special issue of the "Journal of Educational Administration" entitled "Building organisational capacity in school education". The co-editors have solicited contributions from authors in Wales, Australia, Canada, the USA, England, Hong Kong and New Zealand.…

Purpose: The paper aims to argue that there has been a privileging of the private (social mobility) and economic (social efficiency) purposes of schooling at the expense of the public (democratic equality) purposes of schooling. Design/methodology/approach: The paper employs a literature review, policy and document analysis. Findings: Since the…

Purpose: Despite the critical role of support personnel in education, the literature about their supervision has been less than informative. In an effort to provide additional guidance to school leaders seeking to improve the supervision of such personnel, the purpose of this paper is to examine and compare three distinct groups of support…

Purpose: The purpose of this end piece, framed in aesthetic and critical theory, is to review the author's own approach with graduate students regarding the omnipresence and significance of emotion in organizational leadership, and to comment on the contributions to emotional theory found in this volume of the "Journal of Educational…

Purpose: This short essay aims to reflect on the global experiences women in education have had in becoming leaders as noted in the articles in this special issue on women's leadership. Design/methodology/approach: The essay draws upon relevant historical and contemporary literature about women in the professions and in the workforce. Findings:…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to give an account of the ways in which one experienced secondary principal of an English secondary school developed and sustained a successful school over a 13-year period in changing policy contexts. Design/methodology/approach: The paper draws from data collected during two three-day-visits separated by a…

Purpose: Much of the recent research on data-driven decision making in US schools has focused on standardized test scores while other forms of data in schools have gone largely unexamined as useful data, such as teacher-assigned grades. Based on the literature, the theory outlined in this paper is that grades, as data historically overlooked in…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships between teachers' organizational commitment perceptions and both their psychological hardiness and some demographic variables in a sample of Turkish primary schools. Design/methodology/approach: A total of 405 randomly selected teachers working at primary schools in Ankara…