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 purpose of this study is to examine principal succession planning and management by analyzing current practices of handling school leader succession in four Georgia school systems. Design/methodology/approach: Looking through the lens of organizational leadership succession theory, the practices of school systems as they experienced…

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 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: This paper aims to highlight what principals consider their most severe challenges in the first three years of appointment and the extent to which they believe they were adequately prepared to meet these challenges. Design/methodology/approach: The paper reports on the initial Western Australian findings of a survey developed for Phase…

Purpose: The New Zealand Ministry of Education has constructed a wide-ranging "Professional Development Plan" providing a four-stage national pathway for progression to principalship; the first stage has been the conduction of the National Aspiring Principals Pilot (NAPP) programme in five regional locations. The purpose of this paper is to…

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 examine first the job responsibilities undertaken by vice-principals and second to investigate the respective contribution of each job responsibility in preparing them for the principalship. Because new principals are drawn predominantly from the ranks of vice-principals in Hong Kong, it is important to…

Purpose: This paper aims to explore the extent to which the programme for principal preparation in Scotland relates to what is expected of principals once they are in post and what it is that they actually do. Design/methodology/approach: The paper analyses the professional experience of five relatively new elementary school principals reported in…

Purpose: This paper aims to use the results of three research initiatives to present the life-long learning leader 4L framework, a model for leadership development intended for use by designers and providers of leadership development programming. Design/methodology/approach: The 4L model is a conceptual framework that emerged from the analysis of…

Purpose: This paper aims to contribute to the literature on principal preparation by examining the experiences of novice principals and what their experiences mean for principal preparation in the USA. Design/methodology/approach: The researchers employed qualitative methods to examine the experiences of four novice principals over a two-year…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present an overview of the principal preparation programming available to school leaders in Kenya and Tanzania. Design/methodology/approach: The authors analyzed information about the educational leadership programmes offered by a range of public and private institutions in East Africa. Data were gathered…

Purpose: This paper aims to contribute to the literature on beginning the principalship by identifying and illustrating key challenges that novice principals encounter in their first year for which they would benefit from improved preparation. Design/methodology/approach: The paper is a synthesis of a decade of research focusing on the principal…

Purpose: This paper is intended to provide an overview of trends in European education and to offer a framework for considering the elements of school management. Design/methodology/approach: This paper reports elements of the planning and implementation of a graduate-level leadership development initiative in Bulgaria. Findings: Several lessons…