This article analyses how school leaders depict their autonomy and how they make sense of the relationship between autonomy and control. Attention is drawn to three leadership focuses: the pedagogical direction of the school, decision-making over the internal organisation, and school improvement work. The article integrates survey data on Swedish…

There is a prevailing trend of distributed leadership in the West as it balances the weaknesses and combines the capabilities of different individuals in knowledge-based societies. Conversely, there is still a lack of understanding and literature on distributed leadership in Chinese universities. We know little about how faculty members in Chinese…

In this article, Jason Margolis draws from complexity theory to explore the twenty-year negotiation between formal and informal teacher leadership in research and practice, making the case that there has been a drift toward a conception of semiformal teacher leadership in the field. Through both theory and examples, he illustrates how semiformal…

Since the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, more organizations have recognized a need to create more inclusive and antiracist environments. While anti-racism continues to be a highly contested value, for some, it has become an en vogue purpose. How do equity-focused school leaders, who are truly committed to constructing more justice-oriented…

Existing distributed leadership (DL) theories tend to focus on distributing financial, material and human resources in order to enhance school performance. However, their impact appears controversial. Critical scholars assert that using DL to promote trust and democracy can be a self-fulfilling prophecy orchestrated by few formal leaders. When…

This qualitative case study investigated the processes by which an elementary school principal uses Distributed Leadership to accomplish leadership tasks and progress toward organizational goals. It aimed to provide a thick description of the practices, behaviors, perspectives, and experiences of the participants of Distributed Leadership. The…

This essay argues for the utility of a sociohistorical theoretical perspective on culture and agency in the analysis of context-specific educational leadership. First, we review literature that addressed the importance of context, frameworks that richly described context, and we discuss research that purposefully documented principals'…

This article is a case study describing the University College of the North's (UCN) response to the COVID-19 pandemic, outlining pandemic planning and management processes at UCN from March 11, 2020, to September 30, 2021. UCN's planning processes evolved from a top-down approach led by administration to an approach that saw greater shared…

This paper shares findings from case study research into how school principals respond to ethical dilemmas. Preliminary research instigated a criteriological inquiry into the nature of schools as systems and findings of that inquiry conclude that schools are complex adaptive social systems rather than the open complicated systems they are…

American schools have been dealt a blow that included a pandemic, economic crisis, as well as racial unrest, initiating an energized charge for social justice advocacy. Our superintendents are currently facing an unprecedented challenge in ensuring that the campus community lives in a fair, inclusive, and opportunity-rich society. However, school…

This case study of development in a technical university situates distributed leadership in higher education in an organizational perspective. Analysis of documentation from development programs and interviews with 10 faculty members showed that leadership practices were related to different institutional logics prominent in four key activities in…

This continuous research within Nordic engineering institutions targets the contexts and possibilities for leadership among engineering education program directors. The IFP-model, developed based on analysis of interviews with program leaders in these institutions, visualizes the program director's informal and formal power. The model is presented…

Leadership matters. Principals are the primary drivers of school improvement and the best long-term investment to ensure effective teaching and learning at scale. Principals are central to State efforts to implement new college and career-ready standards, execute teacher evaluation and support systems and turn around low-performing schools. These…

New categories of leadership are continually being invented. Because the ways we think are productive of the ways in which we act, it is important to hold these rhetorical innovations to account. This paper focuses on the latest of these categories--creative leadership. Mobilising a Foucauldian notion of "discourse" I deconstruct the…

Research has indicated that schools should be developed as inclusive learning communities that would support collaborative learning and problem solving in order to address learner diversity more effectively. This article explores school leadership as one determining factor which either affords or constrains collaborative teacher learning for…