School Leadership Literature Research Articles

Leadership as a challenging opportunity: Nepali secondary principals’ contextual understandings and perception of their roles

ABSTRACT This qualitative case study explores the perceptions of three Nepali secondary principals regarding their leadership roles, behaviors, and experiences. By employing semi-structured interviews in both physical and virtual school contexts, it emphasizes the importance of understanding the specific contexts, critically evaluating global leadership trends, and adopting approaches that enhance student wellbeing. The study highlights the influence of sociocultural structures shaped by societal values and beliefs. Spiritual attributes like humility, compassion, and connectedness are identified as contextual knowledge for Nepali principals. The research identifies a gap in Nepali school leadership literature, providing practical insights for their future career pathways.

Transformational school leadership and the COVID-19 pandemic: Perceptions of teachers in Cyprus

The role of contextual factors has been highlighted in the school leadership literature. This points to the importance of examining the extent to which leadership models apply to, or are useful in, specific contexts. The paper investigates the extent to which school leaders adopted transformational leadership behaviours and practices during the pandemic crisis based on the perceptions of teachers. Qualitative research was conducted with 30 primary school teachers in Cyprus. The findings of the research show that overall, school leaders used behaviours and practices associated with transformational leadership to a great extent. Of the five transformational leadership dimensions proposed by Bass and Avolio, teachers were more likely to report weaknesses in the area of individualised consideration. Moreover, the perceptions of teachers suggest that the behaviours and practices of school leaders during the pandemic crisis can be linked to different leadership conceptualisations and/or models. The paper provides implications regarding educational policy and practice.

The more the merrier? A network analysis of construct content validity in school leadership literature

School leadership research literature has a large number of widely used constructs. Could fewer constructs bring more clarity? This study evaluates construct content validity, defined as the extent to which a measure's items reflect a theoretical content domain, in school leadership literature. To do so, we reviewed 29 articles that used Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) as data sources to study school leadership, and developed a construct co-occurrence network in which nodes represented constructs in the 29 reviewed articles and ties connected a pair of constructs that used the same TALIS survey items. Among the 82 constructs, 43 constructs had overlapping measures with one another in the TALIS literature on school leadership. Results of network analysis suggest three problematic issues with constructs of TALIS literature on school leadership: (1) same measures for different constructs, (2) different measures for the same constructs, and (3) missing alignment between theoretical and operational definitions. To strive for construct clarity, we provide four recommendations for future research: (1) efforts to prevent construct proliferation, (2) alignment of theoretical and operational definitions, (3) rigorous evaluation of construct validity, and (4) following a fundamental principle of parsimony.

School Principals’ Work Intensification and Resilience: A Call for Structural Change

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, principals have taken on increased responsibilities. Principals who are thriving are praised for their resilience while those who are struggling are inundated with calls to build their resilience. In this conceptual article, we problematize the overemphasis on individual responsibility that is implicit in pro-resilience narratives. We reviewed the interdisciplinary literature and used an inductive approach to examine resilience narratives across historical and disciplinary arcs, with specific attention given to the school leadership literature. We argue that, within the context of this pro-resilience movement, if attention is not given to the structural conditions of work intensification, the education system is setting K–12 principals up to experience adverse unintended consequences. These consequences can worsen existing mental health issues, such as occupational burnout, or exacerbate mental health stigma. We conclude by suggesting that structural changes could disrupt this individualization of responsibility and overreliance on the personal resiliency of school principals.

Principals' role in teachers' knowledge-sharing beliefs, intention and behaviour in Iranian schools: exploring the impact of knowledge-sharing leadership

PurposeKnowledge-sharing is a valuable learning activity among teachers that leads to individual and collective professional development and contributes to students' learning outcomes and school effectiveness. However, teachers are generally weak at knowledge-sharing and are often professionally isolated from colleagues. Regardless of the general and context-specific reasons for this weakness, researchers believe that principals' knowledge-sharing leadership (KSL) can influence teachers' knowledge-sharing behaviours (KSB). Nevertheless, little is known about how it can exert its impact. In addition, given the precedence of teachers' beliefs and intentions over their behaviours, the mechanism of this impact has not yet been investigated based on this sequence. This study seeks to investigate and compare this impact in the form of two competing models, including the theory of reasoned action and planned behaviour. Both models consider KSB due to teachers' beliefs and intentions.Design/methodology/approachIn total, 445 teachers completed an online form comprising two scales, including KSL and the knowledge-sharing belief-intention-behaviour. Data were analysed using structural equation modelling (SEM).FindingsThe model hypothesising the impact of KSL on constructs of the theory of reasoned action had a better fit with the data. The direct and indirect relationships analysis showed that KSL directly affects two fundamental beliefs of teachers, including attitudes toward knowledge-sharing (ATKS) and subjective norms (SN). Also, these beliefs directly affected teachers' intentions and, ultimately, their KSB indirectly.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the school leadership literature. Further, it has supported the theory of reasoned action when the teacher's KSB is targeted. Although researchers previously have adopted this theory, they have focused more on containing constructs while neglecting principal-related external variables. Finally, this study provides insights into principals' training programs. While principals may try to be knowledge-sharing leaders through self-practising competencies, they should be purposefully trained.

Breaking down the walls of weak knowledge-sharing among Iranian teachers: Investigating a less-considered leadership role of principals

One of the common aspects of professional culture is that teachers share their knowledge and experience only occasionally. However, principals can significantly contribute to reducing this weakness by demonstrating knowledge-sharing in their leadership role. It is critical for Iranian principals to play this role because there is some weakness among teachers due to certain context-specific conditions. The existing knowledge about this vital role is very scarce and cannot provide a complete and clear picture. The purpose of this study is to investigate this less-considered role in the context of Iranian primary schools. To this end, a basic qualitative approach was adopted. Using constant comparative analysis of the data obtained from interviews with successful principals, seven categories of themes emerged for knowledge-sharing leadership. This study not only supports the assertion that the principal’s role in knowledge-sharing is indisputable but also contributes to the school leadership literature. Along with its implications for training programmes for principals, this study has several suggestions for theory and research.

The impact of teacher entrepreneurial behaviour: a timely investigation of an emerging phenomenon

PurposeThis study aims to understand of the role that teacher entrepreneurial behavior plays in developing teacher professional capital. The extant concepts around school leadership mostly encompass the transformative and instructional roles of school leaders in managing, mobilizing and supporting teachers for student achievement. However, school leadership has not focused strongly on promoting innovation and risk-taking for schools in a knowledge economy. As a timely promising response to the increasingly demanding and competitive school context, teacher entrepreneurial behaviour (TEB), which emphasizes teachers' willingness to take risks and be daring, has started to gain recognition in the school leadership literature, yet a nuanced understanding of TEB's potential impacts on schools is lacking.Design/methodology/approachBased on a combined consideration of institutionalized recognition and expert judgement, this study identified three innovative entrepreneurial teachers/teacher groups that had won the most competitive teaching award in Hong Kong. Employing a multiple-site case study design, this study conducted semi-structured interviews with 23 informants and collected supplementary school documents and records.FindingsThis study found that TEB enables the implementation of innovation and promotes cross-subject alignment. It cultivates trusting and coherent relationships among teachers. Teachers with TEB scaled up innovation among other teachers. Furthermore, entrepreneurial teachers enhance school attractiveness by creating competitive advantages.Originality/valueThis analysis showed that TEB enables formal and informal school leaders to bring forth critical school outcomes. This study elaborates how TEB enhances teachers' professional capital through building trusting and coherent relationships. It also adds to the research on school innovation by demonstrating that TEB fosters teachers' capacity for bottom-up innovation in the community.

Leading Inclusive Schools: Principal Perceptions, Practices, and Challenges to Meaningful Change

Background: For over 50 years, special education has been used as a tool to maintain racial segregation, particularly in schools located in low-income communities of color. This study utilized tenets found in disability critical race theory (DisCrit) and inclusive school leadership literature to examine the perceptions, practices, and challenges associated with meaningful change in inclusive schools. Purpose: The purpose of this article was to understand how six elementary school principals, identified as effective inclusive leaders, perceived students with disabilities within a low-income Mexican American immigrant community along the U.S.–Mexico border. Findings: Our study highlights the important role principals play in creating inclusive schools and the ways in which race, disability, family background, language, and immigration status effect principals in their efforts to promote inclusion. While each principal recognized the noted factors above and confronted a multitude of challenges, they differed in their beliefs and approaches to creating inclusive schools. Some leadership practices were aligned to research focused on effective school leadership while others more closely resembled social justice leadership practices. Conclusion: Findings suggest that principals must take into consideration a variety of factors to create inclusive schools and must draw upon a broad range of practices amid resistance and challenges to meaningful change.

Redefining leadership in schools: the Cheshire Cat as unconventional metaphor

ABSTRACT Moving away from the study of the principal as the central leader figure in schools, this article argues for an alternative narrative for school leadership. It draws on empirical data from a doctoral study to propose a new way of thinking about the school leader through the unusual metaphor of the Cheshire Cat. Examining the stories of 11 school leaders from one independent PK-12 Western Australian school, including middle leaders who are often absent in school leadership literature, this article provides insights into school leaders’ perceptions of themselves as leaders, and their private processes of decision making. These leader stories challenge the notion of school leadership as an archetypal story of a central figure, showing that it can instead be quiet, subtle, fluid, and even deliberately invisible. The visible-invisible Cheshire Cat school leader enacts collective vision, action, and transformation by acting as a deliberate and skilled collaborator in a complex, networked web. This reimagined school leader is one who makes careful decisions about how to best serve their communities, how to foster trust, and how to distribute power and agency, including when to appear and disappear, when to step forward and step back, when to direct and when to empower.

The Institutionalisation of Teacher Ethics in Tanzania’s Secondary Schools: A School Heads’ Perspective

teacher ethics in Tanzania’s secondary schools. It draws on qualitativedata, generated through in-depth face-to-face interviews and documentanalyses. Secondary school heads, teachers and students from IringaMunicipality were involved in the study. The findings demonstrate thatschool heads employed several strategies to institutionalise teacherethics, which include staff induction, allotment of weekly virtuepractices, supervising and counselling individual teachers, assemblingstaff meetings and posting ethics related placards on staff room noticeboards.The study has shown that most of the practices lacked a profoundimpact on shaping teachers’ professional conduct. The study addsknowledge to school leadership literature from Tanzania, particularly onthe aspect of teacher ethics. Accordingly, the study recommends thatschool heads should institute mentoring programmes where by earlycareerteachers are attached to veteran teachers to regularly enhance theirprofessional knowledge and behaviour. School heads should exemplifyethical conduct within and outside school premises by serving as rolemodels for the teachers to facilitate the promotion of teacher ethics.Furthermore, education officers at the regional and district level shouldprovide professional development programmes for school heads tofurther raise the awareness and confidence of school heads’ professionalobligations

Principal’s Coalition Building and Personal Traits Brings Success to a Struggling School in Malaysia

This paper presents findings from a single site case study of a school in a rural part of Malaysia. Based on data collected through semi-structured interviews of the principal, teachers, students and parents, and observations, document scanning and field notes, the study attempts to identify the context under which the school operates, the core practices of the school principal and the enactment of these core practices. The data analysis was carried out through data reduction resulting in initial themes which were further refined several times until consensus was achieved. The themes were then discussed under the light of theories resulting in the final categories. The findings reveal that personal traits of the principal and her strength of building strong coalitions enabled her to successfully meet her contextual challenges. In conclusion, we argue that leadership practices are multidimensional and although successful principals draw from the similar repertoire of core practices, they enact these core practices in response to their own unique contexts to bring success. The findings would provide important insights for principals and future researchers who might be interested in conducting similar studies to enrich the successful school leadership literature from Malaysian context.

The influence of typologies of school leaders on teacher retention

Purpose– While school leadership literature has searched for practices with the largest effect on outcomes, we know little about how these behaviors vary by context. Further, recent shifts to include teachers in leadership have prompted a need for purposeful distinction between teacher and principal perceptions and roles. Person-centered statistics offer a means to study differences in how teachers and principals perceive leadership by context, how these perceptions interact, and the extent to which this interaction influences teacher decisions, such as whether or not to remain at their current school. The paper aims to discuss these issues.Design/methodology/approach– This study applies a two-level latent class analysis (LCA) with a cross-level interaction to the 1999-2000 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS),n=35,560 teachers acrossn=7,310 US public schools. SASS includes a comprehensive set of leadership measures, not found in other surveys, collected when US schools restructured to include teachers in leadership. Multilevel LCA helps to identify different types of teachers and principals in leadership, the distribution of teacher types across principal types and to test the extent that these types predict teacher retention decisions.Findings– Teacher and principal types were best defined by the survey items that addressed their own role not the role of the other. The highest and lowest responding teacher types were evenly distributed across principal types. Teacher types who reported the lowest principal-directed leadership were more likely to leave their school regardless of principal type.Originality/value– This study provides evidence for how leadership differs across perceptions and context and, in turn, influences teacher retention.

Future Leadership of Schools in Australia: Employee Perceptions of Taking on the Challenge

Educational systems are experiencing a global leadership crisis. The literature around school leadership paints a clear picture: school leaders are an ageing population and there is a lack of willingness from classroom teachers to take on school leadership roles. Anecdotal evidence would suggest this is also the case within Adventist Schools Australia (ASA), however, there is a lack of research that has explored the leadership intentions of current employees within this education system. Through a review of school leadership literature, and ASA employee survey responses on the topic of school leadership, this study explores the views of these respondents to taking on school leadership positions, including the influences on their decision to further explore school leadership roles.

Are two heads better than one? System school leadership explained and critiqued

ABSTRACT‘System leadership’, as applied to the running of schools, refers to a form of leadership that extends beyond a single institution, where headteachers work with establishments other than their own. This approach is predicated on certain beliefs about the role and purpose of collaborative school leadership and management in a marketised system of state schooling and the benefits of a distributed and networked approach to school improvement. But what are the potential benefits and limitations of school system leadership? What normative interpretations of the system are best suited for purpose? This paper explores these issues with reference to the English school system, where system leadership is actively promoted by government through education policy and school reform. In order to do this, use is made of Gunter, H., D. Hall, and J. Bragg (2013. “Distributed Leadership: A Study in Knowledge Production.” Education Management, Administration and Leadership 41 (4): 555–580.) framework of distributed leadership in schools. The framework identifies functionally normative, functionally descriptive, critical and socially critical positions in the school leadership literature. The paper concludes by putting forward potential alternatives to the largely functional policy narratives and solutions of recent decades, which are based on a broader understanding of ‘the system’.

School leadership for equity: lessons from the literature

Responding to Thrupp's [2003. “The School Leadership Literature in Managerialist Times: Exploring the Problem of Textual Apologism.” School Leadership & Management: Formerly School Organisation 23 (2): 169] call for writers on school leadership to offer ‘analyses which provide more critical messages about social inequality and neoliberal and managerialist policies’ we use Foucault's [2000. “The Subject and Power.” In Michel Foucault: Power, edited by J. D. Faubion, 326–348. London: Penguin Books] theory of power to ask what lessons we might learn from the literature on school leadership for equity. We begin by offering a definition of neoliberalism; new managerialism; leadership and equity, with the aim of revealing the relationship between the macropolitical discourse of neoliberalism and the actions of school leaders in the micropolitical arena of schools. In so doing, we examine some of the literature on school leadership for equity that post-dates Thrupp's [2003. “The School Leadership Literature in Managerialist Times: Exploring the Problem of Textual Apologism.” School Leadership & Management: Formerly School Organisation 23 (2): 149–172] analysis, seeking evidence of critical engagement with/resistance to neoliberal policy. We identify three approaches to leadership for equity that have been used to enhance equity in schools internationally: (i) critical reflection; (ii) the cultivation of a ‘common vision’ of equity and (iii) ‘transforming dialogue’. We consider if such initiatives avoid the hegemonic trap of neoliberalism, which captures and disarms would be opponents of new managerial policy. We conclude by arguing that, in spite of the dominance of neoliberalism, head teachers have the power to speak up, and speak out, against social injustice.

The relevance of ‘personal mastery’ to leadership: the case of school principals in Singapore

School leadership literature suggests that school effectiveness and ongoing improvement rely on school leaders and principals. Despite significant contributions made by principals towards teaching and learning in schools, there have been few studies that explore principals’ perceptions of the factors underpinning their successes and achievements. Drawing on one of Senge's disciplines, personal mastery, this research examines principals’ perceptions of some processes that enable their successes. A qualitative research project was undertaken in Singapore using in-depth interviews. Analysis was informed by movement between theoretical dimensions and emerging themes from participants’ discussions of their leadership experiences. The findings suggest that personal mastery has a positive influence upon principals and their ability to demonstrate effective school management.

How school leaders perceive the leadership role of middle leaders in Singapore primary schools?

Middle leaders are ‘recognised as a significant source in ensuring that quality education reaches out to pupils’ (Low and Lim 1997, p. 77) for they are ‘the human link between national education policy as manifested in school-level strategic planning … and the teaching staff whose ‘field tactics’ are used to implement such strategies’ (Chew 2008, p. 135). This study investigated the leadership role of middle leaders in Singaporean primary schools, as seen from the perspectives of principals and vice principals. Principals’ perceptions are important as they are the ‘ultimate school leader’ (Hammersley-Fletcher and Brundrett 2008, p. 13) and ‘the extent of the middle leadership remit is delimited by the range and extent of tasks on offer and this is controlled by the head teacher’ (Hammersley-Fletcher and Strain 2009, p. 5). This study used a hermeneutic phenomenological methodology (van Manen 1997) to examine the leadership role of middle leaders in Singapore primary schools. Semi-structured one-on-one interviews were used to collect data from 12 principals and vice principals. The interview data were analysed using an interpretational analysis system adapted from in Tesch (1990, pp. 92–96). The purpose of this paper is to provide a rich description of the leadership role of middle leaders as perceived by the school leaders. Seven major themes were identified: (1) teaching and learning; (2) building vision and setting directions; (3) leading and managing teachers; (4) communicating; (5) continuing leadership development; (6) changing role; and (7) challenges. The findings reported in this paper corroborated with the findings presented in other studies of middle leadership (e.g. Adey and Jones 1998; Blandford 1997; Busher 2005; Busher and Harris 1999; Glover et al. 1999) and illustrated the complexity of the leadership role within the middle of the school hierarchy. The paper concludes with a discussion on the connections with the broader successful school leadership literature.

Multicultural leadership, sustainable total school environment

Banks (2002) stated that to implement multicultural education successfully, we must think of the school as a social system. Therefore, if educational equity and excellence are to be provided to all students, a systemic Total School Environment [Banks (2001) Cultural diversity and education: Foundations curriculum and teaching, 4th ed. Allyn and Boston p.51] has to be structured and permeate every aspect of the schooling enterprise, i.e. (1) content integration, (2) the knowledge construction process, (3) prejudice reduction, (4) equity pedagogy, and (5) an empowering school culture and social structure. The Total School Environment is consistent with the educational change literatures discussed by Senge [(1990) The fifth discipline. Currency doubleday, NY]. This article is framed conceptually on a review of literature and the discussion is drawn from the case studies of innovative pedagogical practices using technology collected in the two research projects of the Center for Information Technology in Education (CITE), The University of Hong Kong during 2004–2006. With referencing to multiple school leadership literature and practices, the readers have an opportunity to explore the possible formation of the “total school environment” from one of the cases, but why not in another school? At the end of this article, it is concluded that school innovation requires a moral, systemic, integrative and emergent distributed leadership to build a scalable, sustainable learning community in a multicultural school environment.

Building Bridges, Building Community: Transformational Leadership in a Challenging Urban Context

Few empirical studies have been undertaken concerning successful leadership practices within challenging urban schools. Given that much of the school leadership literature relies on principals as the source of evidence for school improvement, this article explores, through multiperspective case study methodology, how one failing urban elementary school has become successful largely as a result of the transformative leadership of the principal. Our findings support more recent school-derived iterations of transformational leadership theory, in which principals stress support, care, trust, participation, facilitation, and the building of consensus. However, our data also draw attention to how this particular successful principal transcends the administrative immediacy of short-term innovation, by paying considerable attention to longer term, socially transformative, and morally grounded principles, rooted in democracy, equity, and social justice.

Leading from the Chalk-face: An Overview of School Leadership

This article offers an overview of the school leadership literature by outlining the main theoretical perspectives that currently dominate much of the writing and research in this area. Its main purpose is to provide a commentary on the dominant theoretical positions that characterize the contemporary leadership field and to explore the empirical foundation of these different theoretical traditions. The article does not claim to be the definitive word on school leadership; instead it aims to provide an overview of the main theoretical perspectives on school leadership that, firstly, have a theoretical and empirical base and, secondly, offer some insight into the relationship between leadership practice and organizational change and improvement.