Local education reforms are increasingly driven by demands to develop the capacity of citizens to participate in the global economy. Informed by the convergence of schooling practices around the world and internationally recognized standardized measures of student performance, local and national policy makers are participating in educational borrowing and lending more and more. To make sense of how schools implement education reforms aimed at internationalizing school management, teaching practices, and student learning outcomes, this qualitative, holistic, multiple-case study of public primary and secondary schools in a South China mega-city reports how leadership team members enact organizational systems and processes that contribute to implementing education reforms at the school level. Findings indicate schools with exemplary outcomes exhibited a strong orientation toward organizational learning, specifically, interfacing with a broad range of internal and external stakeholders to collect new information, taking action and engaging in reflection to generate new, contextually-specific goal reference knowledge, enacting structures that support the dissemination and diffusion of good professional practice, and embracing multiple identities within their job roles such as leaders, learners, researchers, and collaborators. Similarly, leadership teams at both schools displayed alignment with the literature on collaborative and distributed leadership. This is a significant finding because it demonstrates the existence of collaborative and distributed leadership practices not previously presented in the literature in Chinese or Asian contexts. Findings at both case study sites were analytically robust and rooted in semi-structured interviews, document analysis, and a review of artifacts. Future research is recommended to better understand the relationship between school leadership teams and education bureau officials during the policy formulation phase. Future research is also recommended to explore how teachers, students, and parents experience education reforms in primary and secondary schools in China. While findings from this multiple case study are not statistically generalizable, the leadership team processes and structures presented in these exemplary cases may be transferable to other schools. Finally, the qualitative, holistic, multiple-case study design allows for literal replication at other sites for further theory building and comparative analysis. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]