Purpose: A school principal's ability to engage with external stakeholders is critical for achieving a range of school objectives such as involving parents, implementing policy mandates, and accessing resources from the school district. This study examines how novice school principals make sense of different external stakeholders' demands and…

Several social processes guide and shape how school actors engage with high stakes state and district policies relative to mandated curriculum and instruction. In this article, we use rhetorical argumentation analysis to explore how stakeholders mobilize resources through argumentation and rhetorical appeals (logical, emotional, and…

Purpose: This article aims to validate the Leadership Daily Practice (LDP) log, an instrument for conducting research on leadership in schools. Research Design: Using a combination of data sources--namely, a daily practice log, observations, and open-ended cognitive interviews--the authors evaluate the validity of the LDP log. Participants: Formal…

This paper examines two questions: What does it mean to take a distributed perspective on leadership in schools? What are the entailments of taking a distributed perspective for research on school leadership? Arguing that the practice of leadership should be a key concern in scholarship on school leadership, the authors explore the leader-plus and…