This study emerged due to the introduction of the 60 per cent pass policy to increases the pass rate of the students in the secondary school completion examination in the Maldives. As an essential part of this policy, the Ministry of Education developed an action plan, in which principal leadership was recognized as one of the key factors that can…

Digital technologies are transforming the job market and pose new challenges to education, yet there is little research that specifically examines how school principals' goals and leadership styles influence digital development in upper secondary schools. The present study explores how their ambitions and educational goals affect their approaches…

Leadership for Learning (LFL) recently emerged as a comprehensive framework integrating aspects of theories thus far applied in school leadership research. LFL provides the principles for practice believed to effectively deal with the increasing complexity and expectations in education. Via semi-structured interviews this paper seeks to deepen our…

National Blue Ribbon Schools (NBRS) are a select group of US schools, identified annually, in recognition for their success at either (a) overall student achievement or (b) achievement gap closing. The first purpose of this qualitative study was to examine teacher leadership in a sample of US NBRS for alignment with contemporary standards for…

In this paper, we investigate how professional cultures and situated, material and external contexts relate to dynamic low- and underperforming schools in Scandinavia, particularly how the leadership is constructed through the leader, the followers and the situation. The first school studied was a low-performing school in Norway called…

This article provides insight into digitized school leadership practices in Irish schools, and the making of the school leader in mediations with the sociomaterial relations emerging from these practices. Drawing on actor-network theory, the study illustrates how school leaders' subjectivities emerge through relations and attachments to VSware, a…

This study examines the leadership characteristics and skills of school principals who work within the franchise model framework. This model consists of a successful flagship school principal who is given the charge to be the principal of nearby schools while attempting to align practices and structures of the newly adopted schools to that of the…

The way in which school leaders implement professional learning communities (PLCs) is important for realizing sustainable school improvement. The assumption is that school leaders act based on their interpretation of the PLC, which is based on their underlying educational beliefs. In this study, we explored these latter aspects by interviewing six…

The move toward more shared and participatory approaches to leadership is gaining momentum in South African schools. This move is underpinned by the supreme law of the country -- the Constitution which informs all laws including education law. Specifically, the National Education Policy Act No.27 of 1996 fosters democracy and wider participation…

This article deepens the knowledge of practices within school cultures and their dynamics in relation to improvement work. It investigates: Which practices can be identified in school improvement among principals at upper secondary school level? How are these practices shaped? How do they promote or prevent the improvement work of the principals?…

Inclusive education is a useful policy for giving all persons access to education. However, the effectiveness of practice at the school level depends on the commitment of the educators to promote learning for all students. Although teachers are the actual implementers of inclusive education, school leaders are the main drivers of policy practices…

This article presents findings from a case study that examined how internationalization at one Swedish upper secondary school could be understood in relation to building internal capacities for school improvement. This article used a case study methodology in which aspects of capacity building, and internal capacities constituted the theoretical…

This study investigates the relationship between "Principal Change Leadership Competencies," "Teacher Change Beliefs" and "Teacher Attitudes toward Change." A total of 936 teachers from 47 High Performing Secondary Schools in Malaysia completed the survey. Structural equation modelling was applied to test the models.…

This paper investigates the evolution of leadership for learning that has occurred in four secondary schools located in disadvantaged contexts in the province of Granada (Spain) over a period of 2 years, performing a comparative analysis on the values, qualities and strategies that characterize their principals during the academic years 2013-2014…

This paper reports data from a study investigating distributed leadership (DL) and its relationship to social justice and democratic values. The research comprised a case study of a UK secondary school, which describes itself as having a finely distributed leadership culture, and involved teaching staff, non-teaching staff, senior leaders and…