The role of school leadership in educational reform has reached the status of a truism, and led to major changes in school leader recruitment, selection, training and appraisal. While similar policy trends are evident in East Asia, the empirical knowledge base underlying these measures is distorted and lacking in validation. This paper begins by…

Emerging research on instructional leadership is examined in this paper, with a focus on the new perspective on strategic thinking. The main theme is that research must address the reasoning that underlies the exercise of leadership rather than describe discrete behaviors of effective leaders. A computer simulation designed to facilitate the…

The five cross-sectional studies in this special issue are theoretically rich in their exploration of how principals exercise leadership that improves student performance. Notable improvements over earlier impact studies include a clear explication of theoretical constructs and models; use of multilevel, multivariate designs; more sophisticated…