Purpose: Principal instructional leadership and teacher participation in decision-making are conceptualized as shared instructional leadership (SIL) -- a management philosophy that positively impacts student academic performance. However, the statistically meaningful relationship between SIL and student performance remains controversial as SIL…

Purpose: In an era of increased autonomy and accountability in education, school principals have been given the responsibility for many tasks that used to be centralized, such as hiring and managing personnel, ensuring that the curriculum is followed and that the development of the school is on the right path. In this study an exploration is…

Purpose: Increased school autonomy and accountability have been a common denominator of national reforms in otherwise heterogeneous governance systems in Europe and the USA. The paper argues that because schools serving disadvantaged communities (SSDCs) often have lower average performance, they are more often sanctioned or under closer scrutiny,…