The starting point for this article is the lack of a robust research base regarding details of what works and why for school leaders' professional development. The article extends work undertaken for a recent commissioned literature review of selected international reports on supporting school leaders' development strategies. The authors reveal…

This article presents a case study of one very small school in a remote location of Western Australia. The study is part of a larger programme, International Study of Principal Preparation, investigating the challenges facing novice principals in the first 3 years of appointment and the extent to which they felt they were adequately prepared to…

This study builds on a set of Australian case studies exploring the impact of Place on the work of principals and of the importance of Place in the preparation and development of principals. The project compares the ways that principals in Iceland and Australia build leadership capacity in small rural schools. Leaders of small schools in both…

A variety of factors are associated with students' achievement in secondary school physics, including cohort size--the total number of students studying Physics in the school--and socioeconomic status. Earlier studies also showed boys achieving better in Physics, while more recent research has shown better results for girls. Statistical analysis…

There is a robust body of work highlighting distinctive challenges encountered by leaders of small schools in pursuit of school improvement but this work has focused on the school as the unit of change and neglects the role of the district. As the district potentially influences what principals know and how they use their knowledge, this article…

Anecdotal evidence from teachers in Western Australia suggested that increasing numbers of on-entry students have been performing at high levels over recent years on the Performance Indicators in Primary Schools Baseline Assessment (PIPS-BLA). This paper reports the results of an investigation into the performance of high-scoring students. Data…

The assessment of literacy and numeracy skills of students as they enter school for the first time is not yet established nation-wide in Australia. However, a large proportion of primary schools have chosen to assess their starting students on the Performance Indicators in Primary Schools-Baseline Assessment (PIPS-BLA). This series of three…

Sustainability is the integration of ecological, social, and economic approaches to ensuring healthy local and global communities for present and future generations. Although environmental science and social studies teachers have assumed primary responsibility for sustainability related programs and initiatives, whole school approaches to teaching…

This paper examines the theories of organisation that have informed our understanding of schools as complex social worlds and the practice of school leadership that seems to be required in such environments. This understanding has, in turn, determined the research approach we have adopted for investigating principals' work and for ascertaining the…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to report innovative research aimed at ascertaining whether standards for school leaders could be applied to the process of selecting senior secondary school principals for appointment. Specifically, psychometrically robust measures of performance are sought that would sufficiently differentiate performance to…

Purpose: This paper aims to highlight what principals consider their most severe challenges in the first three years of appointment and the extent to which they believe they were adequately prepared to meet these challenges. Design/methodology/approach: The paper reports on the initial Western Australian findings of a survey developed for Phase…

Despite increasing demand for wellness approaches from disability advocates and consumer groups, they are not implemented routinely in childhood disability services. Interviews were conducted with 23 allied health therapists and managers working within four Australian childhood disability services. They described attempts to embed wellness…

This paper uses the Rasch measurement model to analyse data collected on children's attention, activity and impulsiveness at the end of their first year at school by teachers in England, Scotland and Australia. The analysis offers insights into differences in teachers' perceptions of children's behaviour between countries and changes with age. The…

This paper provides an example of the application of the cognitive interview, a qualitative tool for pre-testing a survey instrument to check its cognitive validity, that is, whether the items mean to respondents what they mean to the item designers. The instrument is the survey used in the final phase of the International Study of Principal…

This introductory article examines the elusive concept of Europeanisation and discusses the implications of this process for educational leadership, especially as it applies to the formation of school leaders. With an eye to Europeanisation, the article also investigates four pertinent themes extrapolated from the scholarly discussion contained in…