This study explores how champions promote innovation in schools. The model examines the mediating role of champions' boundary activities (internal processes and external activities with the environment in which it operates) in the relationship between champion behavior and school innovation (creativity and innovation implementation). Eighty-six…

This article examines how school trustees (i.e., elected school-board members) conceive of their own leadership role and work with other levels of leadership within school districts. In a mixed-method study, a total of 121 school trustees were surveyed and 12 were interviewed across Ontario. A framework is proposed to better understand the tension…

In multicultural contexts, school principals and educators face unique challenges integrating disadvantaged and immigrant youth. We investigate how these leaders advocate, design and implement social justice pedagogies for inclusion. Drawing on an interdisciplinary literature and in-depth interviews with school principals in Melilla (Spain), we…

This special issue of "Leadership and Policy in Schools" expands knowledge about family-school-community engagement by exploring who is involved in education, in what ways, and for what purposes. This issue critically examines school-community partnerships that work to improve democratic decision-making, support public education,…

Grounded in critical policy theories and democratic conceptions of research, case studies of three community-based organizations, one in Canada and two in the U.S., were analyzed to determine if and how the groups engaged with research in their efforts to influence education policy. The findings demonstrate that the community-based organizations…

This article presents research relating to the experiences of union and community-based campaigns that have sought to challenge the establishment of academy and free schools in England. Such schools are removed from local government control and are seen as a defining element of the neoliberal restructuring of public education. The research draws…

This comparative study examines the historical development of race equality efforts during the 1970s and 1980s in two global cities--Toronto and London--and the role of African Canadian and Black British educators in longstanding school-community partnerships. I characterize the leadership stance of Black educators as boundary spanners and…

The underlying theoretical argument in this article views municipal school superintendents in the Nordic context as middle managers in organizational theory terminology. Empirical support for this discussion emerges from national data collected among Norwegian school superintendents in 2009. Findings show that the actual work and leadership…