Purpose: This paper aims to contribute to the literature on beginning the principalship by identifying and illustrating key challenges that novice principals encounter in their first year for which they would benefit from improved preparation. Design/methodology/approach: The paper is a synthesis of a decade of research focusing on the principal…

Investigates teachers' and principals' perceptions of instructional leadership in a sample of Western Australian government primary and secondary schools, using the Instructional Leadership Questionnaire. Instructional leadership was viewed as a shared responsibility; teachers felt principals were less involved than principals felt they were.…

This paper proceeds from the basis that leadership can only be understood in context and by viewing it from the inside. In particular, it argues that the contextual complexity of small school leadership warrants attention from researchers, policy makers and system administrators and describes the nature of this complexity as depicted in the…