Using data from a national study on principals' responses to the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, we describe crisis leadership as boundary spanning -- managing up, down, and outwards to lead the response. School leaders had to manage outside expectations to ensure their schools responded to the crisis in ways that allowed for…

Purpose: This study builds on research scrutinizing school autonomy in policy and school governance by shifting the focus from a formal structural view of autonomy to examining how principals negotiate autonomy in their daily work. Drawing on multiple dimensions of autonomy and street-level bureaucracy, this study examined how principals, as both…

While debates rage on regarding various approaches to educational change and improvement, there is no doubt recent decades have been marked by a shift in how these approaches are conceptualized and enacted. In the last 20 or so years many nations have applied neo-liberal principles of competition, profit, and efficiency to the public sector and to…

Purpose: In response to the proliferation of neoliberal reforms and a "new professionalism" (Evetts, 2009, 2011), researchers argue that school leaders, like teachers, have experienced a form of "de-professionalization" (Keddie, 2017) and that the principalship may even be an "emergent profession" (Stone-Johnson and…

This inquiry found that the lack of external accountability pressures neither appeared to negatively impact teachers' efforts, commitment to relevancy and rigor in their classrooms, or their responsiveness to families. This is one of a series of briefs that focused on a 'critical incident' surrounding school closure and offers pragmatic…

Despite the recognized importance of parent engagement, schools often fail to meaningfully engage parents. One approach to help remedy this issue would be to surface educators' beliefs and cognitive maps which inform parent engagement practices. These influential values and belief systems within an institutional field, known as logics, offer a…

In 2020, the United States experienced twin pandemics disproportionately impacting BIPOC communities and their schools and school systems--one new, COVID-19, and one longstanding, that of white supremacy and anti-Black racism. This phenomenological study of 20 Black female principals in two states provides insights into how these leaders, who so…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to argue that current ways school systems have addressed social mobility is misguided at best and, at worst, hurts social mobility. Instead, we call for a focus on investment in teachers' professional capital as a primary lever for enhancing the likelihood they can effectively prepare and develop all children…

Purpose: While educational infrastructure is consistently identified as a key lever for educational change, it is often overlooked in research and practice and specifically in relation to technology in schools. By using educational infrastructure as a lens to examine a group of districts' implementation of 1:1 programs, this work provides…

This case study blends the accounts of 10 Black women who engaged in a research study on their experiences of microaggressions when serving as school leaders, to tell the story of one Black female principal in a mostly White suburban district. We describe the ways the environment enabled and perpetuated gendered racist incidents at multiple levels…

This study focuses on how a cohort of participants in a programme aimed at producing "turnaround leaders" came to understand this policy and their role within it. Using a theory of action framework, I find that, over time, participants' espoused theories of turnaround shifted in three key areas: (1) the cause of poor school performance,…

This case study explores a central office's attempt to improve its school performance by shifting from a loosely to a more tightly coupled organization through greater oversight and standardization of practice. Educational leaders and, specifically, district-level and central office administrators often negotiate between providing schools autonomy…

Teacher Leadership is an effective way to support positive school change (Lai and Cheung 2015; Mangin and Stoelinga in Effective teacher leadership, Teachers College Press, New York, pp 1-9, 2008). To accelerate success, professional development programs aimed at building teacher leadership have proliferated across the globe. And yet, teacher…

Though research suggests identity construction and articulation of personal motivations regarding actions may be as, if not more, important to determine whether an individual may be successful in a school leadership role, collectively we know relatively little about aspiring principals' motivations for becoming school leaders. Utilizing a…

Principals are positioned at the center of school improvement. In the United States, current turnaround reforms target the principalship as a key lever for change. This article uses institutional theory to explore the logics of turnaround leadership that steer principals and their work. Specifically, we draw on qualitative interview data from a…