Study examined adolescents' participation in sports, school, and community extracurricular activities to assess the influence of different involvement roles and adult support on leadership skills. The study found that males and females who perceived their adult support more positively had more positive perceptions of their leadership skills.…

In this article, I provide findings from a multisite case study of three urban high schools. In each of the schools, principals endeavoured to foster the capabilities of their department chairs to enhance school-wide instructional capacity and increase student achievement. Data were gathered from interviews, participant observations and document…

Co-teaching and various forms of team teaching are common in today's schools but have rarely been viewed in relationship to supporting novice special education teachers. Personal compatibility is consistently reported as a key factor in the success of co-teaching. Special educators who co-teach often take a backseat role in the general education…

Previous research in the area of resistance has inadequately described opposition to change within-school reform initiatives with a social justice orientation. A lack of attention to, and agreement on, the nature and causes of resistance may explain why so many equity-minded educational reforms fail to be sustained. This article highlights various…

Our detailed study of two secondary schools in Nova Scotia which had experienced regular principal succession examined succession and its impact on teacher morale. We found that the process of principal succession and the new principal's practices have the potential to change a school culture and both positively and negatively affect teacher and…

Principal preparation around the development of reflective practices has traditionally focused on the individual reflective practices of principals. Recently, reflective discourse between principals and students has facilitated principals' understanding of student perspectives regarding school policies and processes. We explore the use of digital…

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…

This article will argue that diverse national, regional and local contexts leave different rooms for manoeuvre for school principals. The social technologies applied by the authorities (like accountability systems) can be "tight" or "loose" and so leave little or much room for principals' interpretations of what a good school is and what…

For nearly 5 years, the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) has been engaged in efforts to reduce the number of out-of-school suspensions for students with disabilities and their typical peers by applying the principles of positive behavioral support throughout its more than 700 K-12 schools. Initially, LAUSD focused solely on reducing the…

The author recently left her position as special services director in an urban school district in Vermont, a state that embraces inclusion for students with disabilities, to accept the position of superintendent of schools in the same district. The new job requires overseeing the educational mission of six elementary schools, two middle schools, a…

Students with learning disabilities are entering college at increasingly higher rates, but persistence and degree attainment is lower than that of their nondisabled peers. Poor transition planning has been identified as a likely contributor to this problem. In an effort to address the needs of these students, several studies have been conducted to…

This article discusses how a radical approach to teacher education encourages both pre-service teachers and high school students to embrace a paradoxical model of leadership. A project that positions high school students as teachers and learners in an undergraduate secondary teacher certification course challenges pre-service teachers to learn to…

Before youth can be accepted as important players in school decision making, the concept of student voice must gain acceptance among powerful stakeholders in the school. Using social movement theory as a lens, this article examines the consequences of positioning a student voice effort inside or outside of school walls. Positioning influences the…

What makes a headmaster successful? And what does a successful headmaster do? This article presents some results from a research project--Successful school leadership in different school cultures--that aims to provide answers to these questions. The results derive from interviews, questionnaires, observations and pupils' essays, and comprise the…

The following case study (Stake, 2000) explores the collective properties of the group of leaders working together to enact instructional change in an urban high school (Spillane, et al., 2001). It documents how an urban public high continues to work toward developing and enacting a model of leadership that is transformational, distributed, and…