Superintendents from eight southeastern United States school districts self-described their leadership styles across the choices of autocratic, laissez-faire, democratic, situational, servant, or transformational. When faced with this array of choices, the superintendents chose with arguable equitableness, indicating that successful leaders can…

Research has long accorded heads of subject departments a key middle leadership role in secondary schools. Unfortunately, researchers have found that the exact nature of this leadership is "blurred" in that it is difficult to isolate its distinctive qualities. In addition, there are also debates concerning whether professional and emotional…

Over recent years, the demands on urban school leaders have grown exponentially. Yet the consequences of taking on a more community-orientated role challenge the scope and practice of leadership. School leaders who are working to connect to communities may discover uncomfortable truths--criminal activities or extremism. This article is an…

Headteachers, like the leaders of most organisations, operate in a climate of accelerating but discontinuous change. Their responsibilities and accountabilities increase constantly with little sign of reprieve. Yet, many headteachers take on more than one headship in the course of their careers, prompting questions such as: (1) What are…

In this article, the author explores some of the issues about schools and communities, suggesting that schools need to be more strongly connected to their communities and, for this to happen, more systematic ways need to be developed of understanding the nature and complexity of those communities (which are often diverse and changing rapidly,…

Kerry and Murdoch (1993), analysing the essential characteristics of leaders and school principals, raised two key questions: (1) What kind of leadership will schools require to help them face the next ten years?; and (2) How equipped are managers in school to provide that leadership? Traditionally, aspiring school principals emerge from the…

This article suggests that the balance of powder invested in principals at incorporation has shifted to the Learning and Skills Council (LSC), which for some is reminiscent of Local Education Authority (LEA) control. The evidence is taken from 28 semi-structured interviews with ten college principals between 2001-2003 as control passed from the…

This article examines the emergence of assistant heads onto the landscape of primary school leadership. Through the use of job descriptions, questionnaires, interviews and a case study, the functions that assistant heads are performing in primary schools is examined and their opinions, attitudes and beliefs about their work are considered. The…

It has been argued that "leadership" is seen as being centrally synonymous with school effectiveness and yet there is comparatively little evidence of the effects of leadership on school outcomes. More specifically, studies of principalship in Hong Kong have tended to be conducted in the quantitative tradition. The study described in this article…

The accession of new senior leaders and middle leaders are significant events and may bring a desired continuity of current improvement efforts, or herald a new direction for the school. Although attention has been paid to building leadership capacity in schools, perhaps via the distribution of leadership, little attention has been paid to…

European university administrators report their impressions and conclusions about academic restructuring, personnel policy, and retrenchment following a visit to institutions in the United States. (MSE)

It is proposed that in a time of social and political conservatism, American higher education is moving from traditional to nontraditional procedures, from familiar patterns to newer ones, and is driven by external pressures as well as internal ones. (MSE)

In Spain, social change and crisis, and the need for higher education reform, have been particularly intensive. However, it was not until the recent University Reform Act that a framework for reorganization based on the principles of the public university was established. (MSE)

A Quebec university administrator describes the province's university system; explains budget restrictions imposed on the universities and the Ministry of Education's new financial plan; and discusses general versus specific financing, cost-effectiveness, assessing instructional and research quality, and institutional adjustment to market trends.…

A University of Leiden study on the potential use of quantitative, literature-based indicators as tools for monitoring research productivity and establishing research policy, based on the bibliographic productivity of two major faculties, is reported and discussed. (MSE)