As improving low-performing schools has become a critical strategy to achieve educational equity in China, local educational departments have implemented various school collaboration programs. Drawing on international literature and empirical data from in-depth interviews and policy documents in two Chinese urban districts, this multiple-case…

This study tested a moderated-mediation model of the processes linking principal ethical leadership and professional learning communities in China, in which teacher obligation is included as a mediator, and teacher participation in school decision making is considered as a moderator. The results from 3374 teachers revealed significant direct and…

Emotions hover like a shadow over the lives and work of school principals. This study aimed to build an understanding of principals' emotional trajectories across principalship career stages by investigating the life stories of four excellent principals from China who were approaching retirement. The major data source was semi-structured…

School-university partnerships bring meaningful learning opportunities for teachers, and empowering teachers with leadership roles has become an important approach for teacher learning. This study shows how teacher leaders exercised brokerage practice to support teacher learning in one small-scale school-university partnership in China based on…

Parents are one of the most important factors promoting children's educational success. Using parent survey data from rural primary and middle schools in one county, this study examines the implementation of the parent councils (PCs) policy in rural China, specifically, the relationships among PCs, school-based parent involvement (PI), and parent…

While principal leadership has been exercised in day-to-day practices to address the needs of teachers as professional learners, empirical studies regarding its effects on teacher professional learning have not increased proportionally. Using a sample of 255 secondary school principals and 2756 teachers from four provinces of Beijing, Shanghai,…

The current paper aims at developing and validating a Teacher Leadership Inventory (TLI). Adopting the theoretical-empirical strategy of instrument development, the procedure consisted of taking a sample of panel experts and undertaking six sequential empirical studies with sufficient samples of teacher leaders from China. After verifying content…

This article describes the development of a teacher leadership scale (TLS) that can be utilized in early childhood education in China. A mixed methods research design was developed to meet the research aim, and both qualitative and quantitative data on the perceptions of teacher leadership from both middle leaders (i.e. vice-principal, key stage…

This study employed a multilevel modeling approach to examine the impact of principal instructional leadership on teacher efficacy and the mediating role played by faculty trust in that process. A total of 50 secondary school principals and 714 teachers in a minority region of Western China participated in the study. The results indicate that…

Teachers' voice behaviour plays a critical role in school reform by providing constructive suggestions to promote teaching, students' learning and school management. This study investigates how and under what conditions principals' authentic leadership contributes to teachers' voice behaviour. Data collected from 982 teachers in 38 primary schools…

Universities have been coping with various challenges and pressures over the last decade. Therefore, capacity building for academic leaders is a critical point for universities to survive in this challenging era. Yet, existing studies suffer from several limitations. Among others, they do not consider the examination of academic staff members' and…

Teacher professional learning plays a critical role in education reform by enabling teachers to refine their professional skills and keep up with changing content knowledge, pedagogy, and trends in schooling. This study examines how and under what conditions principal instructional leadership contributes to teachers' professional learning in…

This paper reports on a study that examined the effect of school principals' emotional intelligence, and their instructional leadership, on improving teachers' instructional strategies. A sample of 534 primary teachers from 54 primary schools in China was approached and invited to respond to a questionnaire. Structural equation modelling…

The study explored the relationships among instructional leadership, professional learning community components, and teacher self-efficacy in the context of mainland China. Study subjects were 1082 elementary school teachers participating in a questionnaire survey. The results showed that instructional leadership had significant effects on the…

In the last decade, there has been growing interest in professional learning communities (PLCs) outside mainstream Western contexts. In this paper, we provide a narrative synthesis of empirical studies of PLCs in kindergarten to 12th grade educational systems in mainland China published between 2006 and 2015. The review reveals five major emerging…