In 2008, the authors published an article in this journal entitled "Seven Strong Claims about Successful School Leadership" (Leithwood, Harris, and Hopkins 2008). The article was based on a major literature review that was summarised in a paper published by the National College for School Leadership in England. Both the National College…

This article examines how novice principals think about and understand their new leadership role, exploring the ways in which their understanding enables or constrains taking a distributed perspective to school leadership. The article analyses the work of the school principal through the eyes of the novice principal, identifying aspects of their…

Distributed leadership is now widely known and variously enacted in schools and school systems. Distributed leadership implies a fundamental re-conceptualisation of leadership as practice and challenges conventional wisdom about the relationship between formal leadership and organisational performance. There has been much debate, speculation and…

This article looks at high-performing education systems in Asia through the lens of leadership and leadership development. It proposes that the top-performing education systems systematically build the leadership capacity for improvement and that this is part of an implementation science geared to maximizing performance. Drawing upon initial…

This article outlines progress made towards education transformation in Wales. It explores the way in which tri-level reform is guiding system level change in Wales and looks at the implementation of the School Effectiveness Framework, which is at the heart of the reform process. It describes the way in which professional learning communities are…

This article aims to address and explain the conceptual ambiguity surrounding distributed leadership. The author argues that there are three different frames for understanding distributed leadership that are being applied simultaneously, but which need to be considered separately. These frames are the theoretical, the empirical and the normative.…

This article presents the findings from a review of literature on leadership in early childhood (EC). It identifies a paucity of research, despite a high potential for leadership activity in the early childhood field. It concludes that there is a clear need to identify what effective leadership practice is in terms of processes and outcomes within…

Outlines findings from study funded by the National College for School Leadership that explored effective leadership in a group of secondary schools in challenging circumstances. Highlights the key characteristics and features of leadership approaches adopted, and argues that the heads in the study operated a shared or distributed model of…

There has been a strong increase in interest in leadership development in recent years, not least in the learning and skills sector. However, little research exists on the relationship between leadership development and actual leadership behaviours in the sector. This study is an attempt to help fill this gap by looking at leadership, leadership…

This report examines the nature and practice of effective leadership in schools in England and Wales in the 1990s. It is based on a study that explored how existing theories of effective leadership--purposeful leadership, transformational leadership, or moral leadership--compared to the practices of successful head teachers in times of change. The…

This article considers the relationship between distributed leadership and school improvement. Drawing upon empirical evidence from two contemporary studies of successful school leadership and recent studies of school improvement, it explores the extent to which distributed forms of leadership can contribute to school improvement. The article…