This study explores school leaders' and teachers' experiences of leadership in assessment during the Covid-19 lockdowns. A total of 148 school leaders and 582 teachers participated in a survey, and 15 school leaders from four schools also participated in focus group interviews. In Norway, the pandemic led to closed schools for long periods, from…

The aim of this study is to describe the actions carried out by school management to promote inclusion and the learning of all students, from the perspective of teaching staff (members of management teams and teachers), and to find out whether these initiatives are determined by the school environment, the educational stages taught, and the…

Building and sustaining capacity for organisational learning appears to be a prerequisite for organisational resilience. For schools, organisational learning in crisis situations, such as COVID-19, requires that they have certain learning capacities. Using quasi-longitudinal data, the paper analyses how schools' leadership capacity (as perceived…

Leading school mathematics is a complex task and the responsibilities and activities involved are not always clearly defined. School mathematics leaders (SML) in Australian schools are often expected to lead improvement in mathematics teaching and learning. Previous research typically focuses on the qualities of effective leaders rather than the…

Systemic disruptions and uncertainties resulting from the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic have put extraordinary pressure on system-level educational leadership worldwide. Despite often being seen as drivers of thinking and change, system leaders had few, if any, precedents to draw from on how to lead effectively through such crises. This paper…

In Australia, policy makers demand school leaders focus on raising student achievement levels when planning and implementing a school improvement (SI) plan. This paper explores the SI process for two Australian primary schools deemed to be underperforming and underwent a priority school support review (PSSR). In this study, 2 principals and…

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought new opportunities to tap into teachers' own reservoirs of experiences and knowledge to develop them as teacher leaders, while minimising the potential for conflict with their colleagues and reducing confusion about their responsibilities. In this article, we describe some key themes identified and lessons learned…

The article explored the characteristics of principals as leaders in schools in deprived socio-economic contexts in South Africa. The qualitative research was conducted in four provinces; four schools per province were purposefully sampled, and in each school, individual interviews were conducted with the principal, one member of the school…

Numerous studies have highlighted the important role played by school principals in improving the learning of their students, especially those at risk of social exclusion. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to analyse the pedagogical leadership exercised by the principals of disadvantaged schools in the Community of Madrid (Spain). To this end,…

Research to date is rich in its claim that practice development in schools, and the leadership and professional learning that it demands, requires relational trust. However, reasonings for, and understandings about, relational trust are described mainly in general terms, leaving its complexity and multidimensionality implicit. Much trust research…

The Welsh education system is engaging in a wide-ranging series of reforms and, as part of these reforms, is moving towards an accountability system that aims to work collaboratively with teachers and school leaders in a self-improving system. The aspiration is to move away from accountability structures that are built around high-stakes…

The public education system in Chile was reformed in 2017, introducing networking as a principle for governing and improving schools. Between 2018 and 2025, 70 Local Public Education Services (SLE) will replace 345 municipalities as the intermediate level of the new system. SLEs are mandated to lead the formation of networks to support the…

A challenge to support school networks in Chile is the competitive culture promoted by market-oriented educational policies that have harmed school leaders' capacities to work and learn together. This is an empirical research about a Collaborative Inquiry Networks (CIN) strategy to support the development of networked leadership capacities of…

Assessment leadership has often been associated with school leaders (SL), comprising principals and vice-principals. This study aimed to examine the under-researched assessment leadership role of Middle Leaders (ML) instead. Data was drawn from a larger, mixed-methods project that involved a self-report questionnaire administered to principals,…

Although research generally attests to the beneficial role of transformational leadership (TL) for school effectiveness, little empirical work has distinguished individual- from group-focused dimensions of TL and analysed their relationships with target variables at the individual and group level of followers simultaneously. Using a dual effects…