This narrative study examines a failed attempt to unionise an urban charter school. To investigate why this effort failed, I construct two competing 'stories of the school' -- the discursive narratives each side told about how the school operates, who it serves, and how it fits into a larger battle for educational, racial, and economic justice. I…

The articulation of school autonomy into practice nationally, regionally and locally is highly situated in terms of what it enables or impedes with regard to the professional autonomy of principals and teachers. Principal autonomy does not necessarily mean greater teacher professional autonomy. In this paper, we draw on a three-year qualitative…

This paper aims to conceptualise the changing nature of work within Higher Education that continues in response to a number of drivers, not least the impact of neo-liberal ideas. One important aspect of the discourse on changing work practices is the blurring of historic boundaries between academics and administrators as universities search for…

Co-teaching has been brought forth as an inclusive teaching approach in research and in the Finnish core curriculum. The realisation of co-teaching at the school level puts great demands on teachers, but also on school leaders (SLs) who are expected to lead educational change. The aim of the study was to examine how SLs in Finnish schools were…

This article examines the crucial role of early childhood teachers in China's ongoing curriculum reforms by addressing two key questions: (1) how teachers interact with the curriculum reform cycle, and (2) what specific roles they play within the reforms. We synthesize literature on early childhood teachers' involvement in China's curriculum…

This research presents the results of studies designed to observe the effects of school leadership and school culture as mechanisms of change in the context of a large-scale educational reform in Bosnia and Herzegovina. A mixed-methods approach was employed to illuminate how institutional context either activates or deactivates leadership and…

Coach and ASCD author Cathy Toll knows that principals can face resistance and competing priorities when trying to make changes in schools. "Whole-staff coaching" is one tool to get all educators on the same page by putting teachers in control of planning, implementing, and evaluating change--and principals in charge of facilitating it.

Educational reforms fail again and again. One reason for the failure is that educational reform stops just outside the classroom door. During the last 25 years, the dominant educational reform initiatives in the US have operated under the misguided conventional wisdom that the educational system is loosely coupled. With this model in mind, decades…

Systemic disruptions and uncertainties resulting from the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic have put extraordinary pressure on system-level educational leadership worldwide. Despite often being seen as drivers of thinking and change, system leaders had few, if any, precedents to draw from on how to lead effectively through such crises. This paper…

Purpose: Teachers' organisational identification is crucial for the success of educational reform in the change process. This study investigates how and under what conditions authentic principal leadership contributes to teachers' organisational identification. Design/methodology/approach: Data collected from 7907 public high school teachers…

Leadership development in higher education remains lacking, with most leadership development the result of learning on-the-job. Understanding and navigating the leadership challenges of increasingly complex higher education environments is even more demanding in colleges of education facing unprecedented pressures from outside and inside the…

In this article, we aim to extend the existing literature on the theory of transformational school leadership through a neo-Daoist lens. Focussing on the writings of the third-century Chinese philosopher Wang Bi, we make three arguments. First, his ideas promote a transformational leader who effects change through ziran (spontaneity or natural…

The culture of a school influences how people think, feel, and act -- whether that be expressed as positive or negative behavior (Barth, 2002; Peterson, 2002). Research shows that teachers are more inspired to instruct and students are more motivated to learn in schools that foster a positive culture (Barth, 2002). Conversely, schools with…

School leaders need to understand how to implement change through leadership as shifts in grading reform support student learning. The problem was educational leaders and school districts face many challenges transitioning from traditional report cards and grading systems to standards-based grading and reporting at the middle school level. A gap…

Schools are remarkably resilient institutions, with the core of instruction and the dynamics between teachers, students, and school leaders remaining largely unchanged despite a churn of reforms efforts. To move away from "tinkering" around the edges of the system, reach deeper into classrooms, and mitigate the effects of policy churn,…