School leadership plays a crucial role to quality education. Social changes have led to an increase in school principals' competencies, responsibilities, and demands. There are significant gaps in the literature on school leadership and limitations in the study of principals' responsibilities. This study aimed to analyse whether principals…

Principals in Sweden face leadership challenges as pedagogical leaders of School-age educare Centers (SAECs). This study examines how principals identify both professional development needs as well as challenges they face in supporting the SAEC teachers. The empirical data is based on reflections from 29 principals and vice-principals from four…

One of the biggest challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic was to integrate ICT (Information and Communication Technology) into remote teaching. As managers, school leaders play a principal role in deciding how to overcome this challenge. This study aims to identify how school leaders support ICT integration at schools. To do so, the authors…

Growing evidence suggests that the effectiveness of a school's operations is determined not by a single leader, but by a community of leaders. Middle managers can coordinate processes in formal positions and lead informal groups, facilitating the realisation of leadership goals. This study utilises a large-scale survey to analyse middle managers'…

The sudden closure of educational institutions amid the pandemic compelled school administrators to manage the crisis with little reaction time. Despite the stringent and exigent predicament, school principals had to amend and modify their leadership technique by adapting to varying levels of academic, technological, operational, and personal…

Using data from a national study on principals' responses to the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, we describe crisis leadership as boundary spanning -- managing up, down, and outwards to lead the response. School leaders had to manage outside expectations to ensure their schools responded to the crisis in ways that allowed for…

The role of the Heads of Departments (HoDs) in the school structure is to provide middle leadership. They assist the principals on the day to day leadership of the schools. They are responsible for ensuring the achievement of their departmental and school vision and mission. This study sought to explore the nature of the challenges faced by the…

The work of principals has become increasingly challenging and complex, as they are expected to lead school improvement, manage a host of competing demands, and attend to the needs of diverse stakeholders. However, the emotions related to principals' work, particularly in relation to educational reform, has been understudied in recent years. This…

Responsible leadership (RL) has gained increasing attention in recent years as organisations face growing pressure to address social and environmental challenges. RL involves leading with a sense of purpose and responsibility towards stakeholders, society, and the environment beyond the interests of shareholders and profit maximisation. This…

Beginning in 2009, the United States (US) federal government spearheaded a nationwide teacher evaluation reform effort, encouraging states to change their process of evaluating teachers. School principals, the primary evaluators of teacher performance, act as middle leaders in the sense they must attempt to balance messages from federal, state,…

This article reports on research for The Literacy Policy project. The focus is the micro-politics of policy enactment, sited in the literacy policy of a multi-academy trust (MAT). A semi-structured interview was conducted with the CEO of a MAT to ascertain what literacy policy means to them. The contribution is to add to existing literature on the…

As COVID-19 unfurled around the world in early 2020, it triggered volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA) for school leaders. This study explores the experiences of four school leaders, working in inner Melbourne, Australia, through a VUCA lens, and identifies their perceptions of such contextual disruption. Data were collected…

The purpose of this article is to explore novice principals' attempts to make sense of their new organisational roles, challenges and discrepancies. To frame our work, we focused on new comer sense-making perspective of job socialisation. Sense-making is a relevant conceptual perspective through which novice principals come to discover, interpret…

The instructional leadership approach expects school leaders to give top priority to ongoing improvement of teaching quality and academic outcomes. Researchers have found that despite the top-down pressures to assume an instructional leadership role, school principals demonstrate limited direct involvement in such leadership. The current…

Rationalising school activities through principles of standards, testing and accountability has taken a strong hold and continues to be the dominant logic for educational reform in England. This article examines the ways in which three principals of English academies understand and respond to accountability policies as required by their…