Using a narrative inquiry approach, the author examines how children, teachers, and parents benefit from the practice of parent engagement. She shares her first two years as a school leader, describing how she worked from a philosophy and pedagogy of parent engagement. School Leaders will learn how parent engagement has enhanced the school culture…

In line with the purpose of this special issue, we examine how school leaders can lead to create the vision and reality for schools and their communities to explicitly address forms of academic anxiety and emotional exclusion. We suggest how school leaders can work to engage parents in helping to remove acquired affective disability and 'emotional…

In this paper the author introduces a very practical model to guide school leaders/managers into supporting parental involvement and engagement in their schools. The model is called the Dual Navigation Approach (DNA). This rubric is based on six meta-analyses that he conducted over the last fifteen years. What is presented therefore is a…

The quality of leadership and the effectiveness of schools to deliver an appropriate education through quality teaching have been "hot" topics within education and more widely for several decades. This article provides a brief historical overview of developments in research and changing paradigms of Australian school leadership, followed…

There is no shared understanding of what school leaders are expected to do. Schools have many external as well as internal stakeholders and each of them has different expectations as to leadership practice. Thus school leadership is a "fluid signifier". This article first outlines external expectations that school leaders are faced with…

While there are significant differences between England and Scotland in the politics, the policy environment and the management of schools, leadership development both north and south of the border is charged with addressing what has been termed a recruitment and retention "crisis". An emerging phenomenon in both jurisdictions is that of…

This article identifies the major themes that emerge from the five selected articles in this special issue. Collectively, they demonstrate some trends occurring in the area of school leadership, but also show that individual countries are looking at these trends in different ways. It is an example of what might be called thinking globally but…

In this study we undertook to look at leadership issues specifically in relation to social inclusion, through a series of six case studies in three districts showing high levels of disadvantage. Findings indicated that schools' views on social inclusion could be typified as leaning towards three main orientations: (1) improving achievement and…

The importance of headship to the success of schools is widely acknowledged. This paper focuses on two related aspects, "transition to" and "development during" the first year in post, and identifies and compares research findings with some of the key literature on transition theory and the development of occupational identity. The paper is based…

Today's school principals face unprecedented challenges. This article proposes a school-based outline framework in which the principal is the primary agent of change aided by an external coach. In this framework, the principal receives coaching and guides the change process at the school through a variety of coaching practices involving the…

Principals are required by policy, regulation, legislation and democratic discourse to promote equity of outcomes. This integrated review investigates research on equity issues facing five student groups: special needs students; religious, cultural and racial minorities; groups disadvantaged by socioeconomic status; gender groups; and students…

The current study examines the mutual discrete emotions among superiors and their above- and below-average workers within a hierarchical organisation (school). Using a survey method within a random sample of 40 elementary schools in Northern Israel, each principal and four of his or her teachers (two who had been appraised as excellent and two who…

As part of a CfBT Education Trust funded study, we investigated the practical steps school leaders can take to ensure that self-evaluation of school performance led, through the effective staff development, to genuine school improvement. On the journey from self-evaluation to school improvement our research identified what schools did that worked,…

Preparation for school leadership has become a major global educational issue since the late 1990s. In Hong Kong, the establishment and implementation of school-based management in the 1990s have made significant demands on principals. In 1999, a leadership development and training programme for serving and aspiring principals was initiated by the…