This practitioner reflection examines the challenges inherent in middle leadership and explores how to overcome them. It posits that schools and middle leaders benefit from clearly defining roles and reporting lines and communicating effectively. The investment by schools in ensuring that middle leaders have sufficient time to perform their roles…

The COVID-19 pandemic is a health crisis and today's school principals are faced with more challenging circumstances than in any other time in our known history. The purpose of this paper is to explore school principals' management practices, their leadership styles, and the challenges they encounter in response to the coronavirus disease 2019…

In view of the growing emphasis by educational leadership and management (EDLM) scholars on diversifying the existing knowledge base in the field, this review of research analysed topics and conceptual models employed in 104 studies on school principals from the Arabian Gulf states published between 2000 and 2019. Systematic review methods were…

Geoff Barton was elected as General Secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) in Spring 2017. In the interview presented in this article, he talks to Chris Oates about how his career in education has shaped his thinking about leadership, his role at ASCL, and future aspirations for the organisation.

The nature of leadership and management in a school are key to achieving high-quality education for all pupils. Leadership theories and empirical research have sought to identify characteristics of leaders, aspects of the context in which they work and their relationships with others to identify features of successful school leadership. This…

This article considers the challenges encountered by a recently appointed assistant programme leader in establishing an identity as a leader of an EdD programme. In discussing literature on the development of the EdD, the article recognizes an existing concern with student identity but highlights a need to consider the development of the EdD…

Although participatory models of distributed leadership have gained traction across the higher education sector in the UK, it is also the case that forms of exclusion continue to defy aspirations for improving diversity in senior leadership across higher education. This article contends that an (undemocratic) participatory model of distributed…

Using intersectionality theory, the article presents constructions of successful leadership by three Black women school principals in three different contexts: England, South Africa and the United States. The article is premised on the overall shortage of literature on Black women in educational leadership, which leaves Black women's experiences…

Recent educational literature has produced a plethora of gendered experiences encountered by women working towards leadership positions in education. Gender plays a complex role that shapes the relationship between perceived ideals of womanhood and leadership. This paper focuses on the variations in leadership and management distributed in the…

To continue to fulfill their social and educational role, educational institutions must develop or adopt modern leadership trends based on solid theory and proven effectiveness. Shared leadership is a method of management that allows teachers to participate in decision making and share in the implementation of those decisions. A study sample of…

This article presents initial findings from a case study of the challenges facing newly appointed middle leaders in an independent school in the North West of England. The research approach has included interviews with twenty-five staff from within the school. It was observed that the skills set needed for middle leadership is different to that of…

This study explores leadership in high-need schools where social and economic issues collide with learning, preventing students and their families from receiving the level of education they deserve. Two Latina principals in primary schools identified as high-need schools answer these questions: (a) "How can high-need schools be…

With English primary schools being encouraged to be creative we need to ask what the practicalities are for school leaders. It is not a question of "creative leadership" but more to do with the leadership of creativity and creative colleagues.

The Department for Children, Schools and Families (now the Department for Education) and the National College for School Leadership (now the National College for Leadership of Schools and Children's Services) have been active participants in framing and shaping discourse in relation to leadership in schools in England. This paper is based upon…

Superintendents have the burden and the opportunity to exert leadership through the budget-building process. This article details a dozen tenets which can be implemented by practicing superintendents. Doing so increases the chances of building trust among the stakeholders of administrators, staff, community, and school board members. The district…