The capacity for schools to improve student learning represents an important area of scholarship for policymakers, schools, and scholars. In understanding how to support student learning, the notion of school leadership has emerged as a key area of research interest. Understanding the influence of this literature in schools is important. As such,…

On an international scale, public administration is undergoing considerable restructuring as principles of private enterprise are becoming the orthodoxy. At the same time, economic instability (or crisis) is gripping both national and global financial markets, suggesting a flaw in the system or even that capitalism has reached it limits. Crises in…

During the last several decades, educational reform in Sweden has been at once contentious, fast paced, and uneven as control of Parliament and educational policy shifted between left- and right-wing political factions. These political power shifts within Parliament created tension between national and local municipal governments and provoked…

The underlying theoretical argument in this article views municipal school superintendents in the Nordic context as middle managers in organizational theory terminology. Empirical support for this discussion emerges from national data collected among Norwegian school superintendents in 2009. Findings show that the actual work and leadership…

Denmark has entered global competition by expanding collaboration with European countries, which is profoundly impacting the public sector and school governance. Relations between the state and institutions are transforming from traditional democratic, public-sector models of governance into new forms characterized as corporate and market-driven…

A recent study of scholarship on educational leadership and management in East Asia identified a rapidly growing corpus of published studies focusing on educational leadership and management in Hong Kong. This article undertakes a "topographical analysis" of this literature with the aim of describing the nature of topics and research…

Educational leadership practice is embedded and shaped in its own context. However, contemporary policy makers are keen to use research findings from multiple educational systems to produce overall, generic models of best leadership practice. Therefore, research needs to encompass analyses of the political, societal, cultural, and institutional…

Previous work on policy implementation has often suggested that schools leave their "thumbprints" on policies received from above. During the implementation of Primary Class Size Reduction (PCS) Initiative in Ontario, Canada, however, school principals spoke with remarkable uniformity about the ways PCS affected their work. This article reports…

Elements of directed autonomy were visible in public education long before the concept had been defined in the scholarly literature on organizational management. Most notably, states established common curricula and adequacy standards and then held local school boards accountable for compliance. Civic engagement, a liberty-based process through…

For decades, researchers have studied student achievement gaps in many countries. This article posits that a similar learning gap may be occurring among the organizations we call school systems--a potential gap between school systems that have maintained the status quo and those that have been working to innovate and improve. The case study…

In September 1999, Donald J. and Catherine Willower established the Willower Family Lecture Series as a way to add to the intellectual climate of the University at Buffalo-State University of New York (UB), while enhancing the reputation of its Graduate School of Education (GSE). This lecture series resides in UB's Department of Educational…

This article review examines Arthur Levine's 2005 "Educating School Leaders," a report that recommended the elimination of the Ed.D. and the establishment of a new degree, the Master's in Educational Administration. The article review draws attention to the central irony of Levine's report: after chronicling the many ways that schools of education…

Focusing on the school principal's day-to-day work, we examine who leads curriculum and instruction- and administration-related activities when the school principal is not leading but participating in the activity. We also explore the prevalence of coperformance of management and leadership activities in the school principal's workday. Looking…

This article sketches out a framework for inclusive leadership. As one of the constellation of approaches to leadership and social justice, inclusive leadership is concerned first and foremost with inclusion, both in its processes and the ends for which it strives. It provides another lens to help those concerned with social justice recognize…

This article explores the work of leaders who promote social justice against the grain of public expectations. Employing a biographical lens, it describes a study of White South African principals who consciously and deliberately transform their white schools into racially diverse communities of teachers, learners and parents. It looks at the…