This article considers a secondary science department that has, since 2000, developed distributed leadership as a form of human capacity building. Using a longitudinal ethnographic case study allowed us to consider how distributed leadership can be nurtured and developed in a department. Our analysis centres on two key issues: the nature and…

School leadership, head teacher professional development and school management practices in sub-Saharan Africa have varied little from the model of schooling established during colonial rule. Leadership for Learning (LfL) is a programme of school leadership developed at the University of Cambridge over a period of 10 years in conjunction with an…

The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine how district leaders of two school systems in the USA describe an effective principal. Membership categorisation analysis revealed that district leaders believed an effective principal had four major categories of characteristics: (1) documented characteristics (having a track record and being a…

Over the past 30 years, school principals have been exhorted to articulate a clear vision as a key tool for stimulating the improvement of teaching and learning in their schools. Over the past decade, as school systems have sought to distribute leadership more broadly within schools, the same imperative has applied to middle-level leaders. Indeed,…

We approach the recent argument put in this journal that teaching assistants (TAs) should be more strongly trained, monitored and supervised when teaching on intervention programmes. We suggest that the argument sits uneasily with wider management and educational literature. We examine TAs' experience of delivering important intervention…

This article contributes to the growing debate around how we understand and develop multi-agency leadership in children and young people's services. Bringing together a range of inter-disciplinary research, it presents a framework for multi-agency leadership development, which, it argues, is well theorised, multi-level and versed in key field…

This paper outlines the initial findings of an action research project that focuses on the possible contribution of peer observation to a more collaborative environment and teachers' professional growth at The University High School. The research component played a significant part as previous attempts to change the culture at the school were…

Leadership development has been an area of much research, particularly in the last two decades. This has been mirrored by increased policy activity to build leadership capacity in schools through preparation programmes and continuing professional development. This article examines continuing professional development provision for head teachers in…

In recent years international trends towards teacher empowerment and leadership have gained increased attraction in East Asia's education policy and practice. Yet, as scholars have noted, the values underlying these practices often conflict with traditional cultural norms of East Asian societies which stress hierarchical and status differences.…

This article presents the findings of a study into the leadership practices of Hong Kong principals working within an environment of increasing accountability. The study set out to investigate the relationships between sets of principal leadership practices and the levels of "alignment," "coherence and structure" and "support for students" in the…

This study investigated the differences and similarities in the impact of school leadership on student mathematics achievement in different global regions using TIMSS international data. Three-level unconditional and conditional hierarchical models were fitted to the data in each country. The findings showed that the variables of teacher…

This article reports and interprets the findings of a study of headteachers' views and perceptions of continuing professional development (CPD) provision and their ongoing CPD needs and priorities, carried out in 2007 in Scotland, involving headteachers from the primary and secondary sectors. Topic areas in which headteachers generally were most…

School leaders have been given an important role in initiating and implementing school improvement, which demands new forms of leadership. This invokes the question of the basic competences for leadership that are presently required. This article focuses on the formulation of competences for school leaders in the Netherlands with the aim of…

In recent years the UK secondary educational landscape has witnessed significant change, with the introduction of an ever-extending spectrum of competing government initiatives and policies. This has resulted in the steady erosion of the traditionally recognized role of headteacher. This paper presents the results of a practitioner-based study…

This article is based on a synthesis study of school leadership development conducted for the National College of School Leadership (NCSL) in England. It first outlines a perspective on leadership focusing on the concepts of wisdom, deliberation and higher order capacities. Then it describes and assesses two distinct models of leadership learning,…