Purpose: The purpose of this article is to outline how far the empirical evidence supports the centrality of leadership in the process of improving underperforming schools. Design/methodology/approach: This article draws on evidence from a contemporary, selected, review of the literature. Findings: The findings show that leadership is the critical…

Distributed leadership is one of the most influential and well-discussed ideas to emerge in the field of educational leadership. Prompted by the foundational and seminal work of Spillane et al. (2001) the idea of shared or 'stretched' leadership that incorporates both formal and informal leaders, has been of interest to researchers, policy-makers…

This article outlines the findings from a contemporary review of the evidence base on system leaders and system leadership. This article provides analysis, commentary, and insights about system leaders and system leadership based on a review of the current evidence. The review also includes insights from country experts and offers country-specific…

This article draws upon the educational leadership knowledge base to explore central concepts, questions, and issues of relevance to the contemporary policy context in Wales. The article is not a review of the leadership literature, but rather it explores the empirical evidence to address three key questions that are critical to school and system…

In 2008, the authors published an article in this journal entitled "Seven Strong Claims about Successful School Leadership" (Leithwood, Harris, and Hopkins 2008). The article was based on a major literature review that was summarised in a paper published by the National College for School Leadership in England. Both the National College…

This article explores the significance of context within the process of contemporary education reform and policy-making. It draws upon evidence from a comparative study of educational change and transformation in seven education systems: Australia, England, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Russia, and Singapore. The article focuses on school…

The challenges of securing educational change and transformation, at scale, remain considerable. While sustained progress has been made in some education systems (Fullan, 2009; Hargreaves & Shirley, 2009) generally, it remains the case that the pathway to large-scale, system improvement is far from easy or straightforward. While large-scale…

This article takes a contemporary look at distributed leadership in practice by drawing upon empirical evidence from a large-scale project in the USA. Initially, it considers the existing knowledge base on distributed leadership and questions some of the assertions and assumptions in recent accounts of the literature. The article also addresses…

Educational effectiveness research (EER) has accumulated much knowledge in the areas of school effectiveness research (SER), teacher effectiveness research (TER) and school/system improvement research (SSIR). Yet many schools and educational systems are not making enough use of the material and their insights. The article reviews evidence of…

Over the last 4 decades, the school effectiveness and school improvement research bases have gained prominence and recognition on the international stage. In both a theoretical and empirical sense, they have matured through a wide range of well-documented projects, interventions, and innovations across a range of countries, describing how efforts…

Around the world there is a preoccupation with improving the performance of schools and school systems. Comparisons made between countries through PISA and PERLs have led to a preoccupation, and in some cases, an obsession, with securing a high position in the international league tables. The minds of policy-makers and politicians alike are…

This article outlines the progress and impact of professional learning communities within, between and across schools, as part of the implementation of whole system reform in Wales. It describes the way in which professional learning communities are being developed to support improvement and change across the education system in Wales. The article…

This article outlines progress made towards education transformation in Wales. It explores the way in which tri-level reform is guiding system level change in Wales and looks at the implementation of the School Effectiveness Framework, which is at the heart of the reform process. It describes the way in which professional learning communities are…

Purpose: This paper aims to provide an overview of the literature concerning distributed leadership and organisational change. The main purpose of the paper is to consider the empirical evidence that highlights a relationship between distributed leadership and organisational outcomes. Design/methodological approach: The paper draws on several…

A distributed perspective offers a new and important theoretical lens through which leadership practice in schools can be reconfigured and re-conceptualized. However, contemporary discourse about distributed leadership theory remains a way of analysing rather than describing leadership practice. While the research suggests that distributed forms…