Purpose: This paper aims to describe the levels and type of contingency faced by school principals in Chile and the way certain aspects of the Chilean school system result in a greater or lesser presence of these contingencies. Design/methodology/approach: The results reported here are based on the application of a structured questionnaire to 381…

Purpose: Diocesan systems of Catholic schools in the USA have been trying to make urban elementary schools more sustainable in an era of declining enrollment. This paper sought to better understand how system and school leaders conceptualize what it takes to "sustain the legacy" of these schools. Design/methodology/approach: We conducted…

Purpose: This article details findings on how leaders of deeper learning schools establish, maintain, and propel unique teaching and learning environments. In this case study, the authors present findings from data collected through interviews with 30 leaders of self-proclaimed deeper learning initiatives and site visits to those elementary and…

Purpose: School principals are increasingly responsible for acting as instructional leaders, but research on data teams typically considers principals as secondary players responsible for ensuring that meetings occur but not necessarily for their quality. We investigated how elementary school principals in one district committed to data use…

Purpose: Instructional leadership is a school leadership approach that places great emphasis on enhancing the quality of teaching and learning. This study explored the enabling factors of instructional leadership in subject coordinators. Design/methodology/approach: The participants in this qualitative study were 24 subject coordinators in…

Purpose: In response to the proliferation of neoliberal reforms and a "new professionalism" (Evetts, 2009, 2011), researchers argue that school leaders, like teachers, have experienced a form of "de-professionalization" (Keddie, 2017) and that the principalship may even be an "emergent profession" (Stone-Johnson and…

Purpose: Most education systems were not initially designed to include students with disabilities. However, over the past 25 years, great strives have been taken to ensure students with disabilities have access to the general education classroom and to important social, emotional and academic opportunities. Within the USA, researchers have begun…

Purpose: Previous studies found that principals must be involved in both instructional leadership and organizational management, yet they did not explain how the former supports the latter. To narrow this gap in the available research-based knowledge, the current study explored the contribution of organizational management to instructional…

Purpose: Relying on the principles of the social exchange theory, the current study is aimed at investigating the impact of team-member exchange relationships (TMX) among school management team (SMT) members on school outcomes (organizational citizenship behavior [OCB], job satisfaction and innovation) via the mediating role of leader-member…

Purpose: This study aims to explore how educational leaders in South Korea adopted equity mindsets and how they organized changes to support students' deeper learning during COVID-19. Design/methodology/approach: The authors developed a comprehensive framework of Equity Leadership for Deeper Learning, by revising the existing model…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to offer insight into school leaders' and teachers' perspectives on leadership behaviour and its impact on their mutual relationships. Research papers that include perspectives from both school leaders and teachers are relatively scarce in the field of education. However, it is important to take account of…

Purpose: This paper aims to highlight how a group of novice principals in Connecticut and New York used relational, dispositional and situational factors to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. The study aims to support new principals and educational leaders. Design/methodology/approach: Using Mutch's (2015) dispositional, relational and…

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine the nature of socially distributed leadership in Denmark and the USA, specifically teacher and staff leadership practices distributed in schools. Design/methodology/approach: This study used a confirmatory factor analysis and a second-order factor analysis to examine elementary USA and 0-9 Danish…

Purpose: Today's educational complexities require principals to adopt a more systemic perspective toward school management. Although research has emphasized the benefits associated with the holistic perspective of systems thinking, research in the educational field has been limited. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the mediating role of…

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine how a school leadership team in a rural, high-poverty elementary school learned to lead continuous school improvement in a research-practice partnership. Design/methodology/approach: This case study draws on qualitative research methods, improvement science and Deming's notion of a system of…