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,…

This article addresses issues of educational leadership in postcolonial and post-conflict environments. The focus relates to large-scale testing protocols, diversity in schools, asset-based community development, and communications technology. The article highlights the importance of context to the tenets of social justice, equitable human…

Finnish national data sets on schools (N = 496) and pupils (N = 74,143; 14-16 years) were used to study whether a systematic documenting policy for the violations of school smoking bans was associated with pupils' smoking and their perceptions on the enforcement of smoking bans. Attending a school with a systematic documenting policy was…

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…

Finland's education system is regarded as one of the most effective in the world. Shared values of the Finnish welfare society continue to influence national education policies that determine how education is organized, governed, and led. Findings from a national study of the superintendency, however, suggest recent demographic and financial…

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…

During recent decades, the rise of the global economy launched a wide array of social, economic, and political changes in nations throughout the world. Heightened concern about the quality of schools launched what is arguably the most pervasive, intense, and protracted attempts at educational reform in recent history. Examinations of the…

Since the mid-1990s, teacher professional community has achieved increasing influence as a strategy for facilitating productive change in schools. This study investigates the impact of principal quality and leadership on the development of teacher professional community in Hong Kong primary schools. More specifically, we examine the means by which…

In this study we bring together Argyris and Schön's theories of interpersonal effectiveness and research on negotiation to develop a model of effective leadership behavior in conversations involving actual or anticipated disagreement. A concurrent mixed-methods design was used to assess shifts in how 18 Australian superintendents responded to…

The Finnish educational system is known for its equality. However, in many key areas in national and international assessments, Swedish-language schools in Finland have lagged behind their Finnish-language counterparts. So far there is little research into the underlying reasons for this discrepancy. In this article, in order to illuminate the…

School federations are groups of two or more schools operating under a single governance structure. The study reported in this article compared federations designed to raise performance in low-attaining schools against a matched sample of their non-federated counterparts. The findings are based on quantitative analysis of data collected in…

The current study aimed to understand the principal's role in promoting or inhibiting the appearance of teacher organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB) in safety education. Based on semistructured interviews with 30 teachers and 10 principals working in the Israeli State Education System, it was found that the principal influences teacher…

Grounded within knowledge management (KM) theory and conceptions of tacit and explicit knowledge, this article draws on historical evidence from the Early Years Literacy Project (EYLP), a four-year instructional renewal strategy implemented across 100 schools in a large Canadian school district. The EYLP management approach included a series of…