Following a professional program to ensure qualification for school leadership is a growing trend. However, school leaders have also come to understand and use content from educational programs in widely different ways. There is therefore a need to study how participating school principals experience learning differently within one and the same…

This report describes how teacher leadership is represented in the official documentation of key educational stakeholders in Alberta, Canada. Six themes emerged from the researchers' document analysis: foundational understandings; student diversity; innovative curriculum and student engagement; community engagement; 21st century competencies; and…

Perhaps one of the most scathing critiques on school leadership and management literature in Africa is its reliance on western models that do not quite fit the context, hence a lack of relevance. In this article I present a postcolonial reading of the representation of school leadership and management literature in Africa. The analysis suggests…

With the policy windows open for decolonial practices, educational leaders in Africa have much to ponder on as they examine and transform their leadership practices to suit the current climates. All progressive leaders seek to lead institutions where they could motivate followers, enhance performance as they utilise relevant leadership qualities.…

In China, accreditation training programme has been a compulsory programme for all the aspiring and new principals, which is also a part of National Training Plan. Under such hierarchical system, leadership preparation in China is supported, implemented, evaluated, and also, constrained by different levels of administrative organisations and…

This article presents a case study aiming to encourage and support principals from six countries to work in Principal Professional Learning Communities (PPLCs) to enhance their leadership competencies and foster strong leadership for school development and teacher learning. We argue that the need for principals to participate in a PLC is a…

Over the past decades, principals have experienced an increased pressure emanating from the responsibility for managing change and building organisations, whilst striving to improve students' learning outcomes (Abrahamsen, Aas, & Hellekjaer, 2015; Hargreaves & Fink, 2006). Leadership learning programmes appear to emphasise the requirements…

The aim of the present article is to review literature on mentoring of school principals. The review focuses on the importance of mentoring in fostering effective leadership as a principal by presenting the pervasive definitions and perspectives on mentoring in the field. Second, based upon predefined selection criteria, we present empirical…

This article describes the process of designing and creating six computer-based simulations for school leadership training programmes, in the context of the Chilean school system. For the design and construction of the simulations, six scenarios were selected from case analysis of principals with formal training and experience in different…

The educational system in Mexico has allowed teachers without preparation and training in leadership to pursue leadership positions. This paper presents the findings of a study aimed at analyzing the processes of leadership learning experienced by school principals in the course of their leadership practice. The methodology used was a qualitative…

This paper reports on the development of the revised Social Justice Questionnaire (SJQ2), an instrument which permits the quantitative examination of socially just school leadership. The SJQ2 is based on data drawn from an exploratory province-wide study to determine to what extent, and how, school principals on Prince Edward Island understand and…

This qualitative study was undertaken as part of the ISLDN global study of social justice leaders, focused on the leadership stories of the respondent. This study is framed in authentic leadership and examined the leader's self-awareness, authentic behaviors, and relationships, which both communicated and solidified the authenticity of the leader.…

This special issue set out to explore "Leadership Stories" and in particular "Unlocking the Path to Social Justice Leadership" in various countries around the world. All stories reported by the participants involved in the social justice strand of the International School Leadership Development Network (ISLDN), which defines…

Being a social justice leader makes significant demands on the individual headteacher/principal particularly where there may be conflict, competing demands and significant resistance both within the school and the wider community. There is a question then about what motivates some headteachers to commit to pursuing social justice and equity in…

This paper reports on a study that investigated the appraisal of middle leaders in three New Zealand secondary schools in order to determine what constituted effective performance appraisal and how this practice could be improved from the perspective of this middle tier of leadership. Overall, appraisal was variably practised and seen as a…