Principals play a critical role in creating inclusive schools for students with disabilities, but few studies focus on how principals foster meaningful engagement for parents of children with disabilities, especially within Individualized Education Program (IEP) meetings where important education decisions are made. Research focused on principal…

Susan Moore Johnson, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and leading scholar on school staffing, highlights research from the Project on the Next Generation of Teachers showing the importance of inclusive leadership and team-based structures in improving teacher recruitment and retention. School context is key in determining…

Mantua Township is a small rural town located in southern New Jersey, about 30 minutes outside of Philadelphia. Students in the township attend one of three neighborhood schools, pre-K through sixth grade. Sewell School educates students in grades pre-K to K, Centre City School educates students in Grades 1 to 3, and J. Mason Tomlin School…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to know the extent to which a decision-making framework assists in providing holistic, comprehensive descriptions of strategies used by school leaders engaging with distributed leadership practices. The process by which principals and other education leaders interact various school-based actors to arrive at a…

Schools are communities of learning, where learning goes beyond academic work and includes a clear focus on communication, collaboration, and empowerment.

To best train and support school leaders in their evolving roles, they require high-quality preparation and in-service pipelines that both address the changing demands on their positions and acknowledge the cascading effects that well-prepared leaders have on both student outcomes and in school culture and retention. Including school leaders in…

The authors share insights from interviews with a dozen innovative principals who have instilled a collaborative ethos that deepens learning, engages students, and supports the teaching staff.

Educational reform implementation in today's fast changing world requires a critical transition from individual to school sense-making processes. Managing expectations from above (e.g. external demands) and below (e.g. internal school goals) while performing within multiple overlapping contexts, principals seem pulled in many different directions…

As a principal, Sarah E. Fiarman learned that developing teacher leadership requires more than merely soliciting teacher input. "School leaders," she writes, "need to create a culture in which each professional feels an urgent responsibility to influence the achievement of all students." To promote such a schoolwide leadership…

This article describes the school personnel and leadership collaboration (SPLC) model, a shared-responsibility framework for faculty, staff, and administrators. Prior research consistently demonstrates the need for (a) administrative support for teachers and other school personnel and (b) collegial support among staff. The SPLC model represents an…

There are not many teachers who would argue against effective leadership for learning as a fundamental skill, necessary to ensure that all students are provided with high-quality teaching and learning. In this article, the author discusses the impact of shared leadership in primary science and how the practice was developed in her school setting.

Servant leadership remains as one of the most effective models of leadership today. School principals who embody this leadership paradigm encourage and enable teachers, and demonstrate a desire to build school community. Teachers' effectiveness increases as they are honoured and served by their principal, thereby impacting students, colleagues,…

In 2012 there were approximately 80 million millennials and about 70 million baby boomers (Schawbel, 2012). Schawbel estimates that by 2025 three of four workers will be of the millennial generation. By 2041, which is during the lifetime of most millennials, America's population is projected to become majority Brown and Black (Kundu, 2014).…

This paper presents how some Australian schools are changing their approaches to leading the teaching and learning in their diverse and multi-characteristic contexts. Experiences of these schools shows that the development of a school wide approach to pedagogy and its implementation needs to be firmly embedded in the leadership of learning.…

Trust is a key element in improving learning and teaching. Reviewing research on the topic of establishing trust by school leaders illuminates actions needed to make a positive difference in the culture of a school. Using the concept of mindfulness, the instructional leader was able to regain the trust of the community, parents, faculty, and…