This study aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the various leadership models applied in the education sector, analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of each approach. The models of administrative/managerial, instructional, transformational, distributed, transactional, ethical, contingent and participative leadership are presented, focusing…

Background and Purpose: Distributed leadership is about practice rather than people and formal roles. Although there is no unanimous agreement on a definition of the term, Tian et al. (2016) identify two schools of research around distributed leadership: (a) the descriptive-analytical paradigm and (b) the prescriptive-normative paradigm, which…

Purpose: This study is primarily interested in the operational evidence of distributed leadership using large-scale and multicountry data. Specifically, this study investigates (a) how three position-based human units--the principal, the management team, and teachers--could lead nine school leadership functions together and (b) how the country and…

In this study of high-poverty schools in Trinidad and Tobago, we (1) identified recurring patterns and generative mechanisms for successful principal leadership and (2) explored the utility of transformational, shared, and instructional leadership models. We argued that situational and country context are central to understanding school leadership…

This study aimed to explore the principal's perceptions about, and strategies for, increasing students' active participation in the day-to-day affairs and decision-making at a secondary school located in a rural, mountainous region of Pakistan. By exploring the principal's leadership practices, this study aims to answer the question, 'how can…

Purpose: Over the past years "leadership for learning" (LFL) has become popular among educational scholars. LFL refers to the idea that effective leaders demonstrate a contextually contingent mix of instructional, transformational, and shared leadership practices that may have differential effects at various organizational levels. These…

The purpose of this study is to identify different types of school leadership as perceived by teachers and to test the extent that these types predict teacher retention. School leadership varies by perception, context, and may influence a teacher's decision to leave their current school or the profession. Four statistically different types of…

The concept of distributed leadership articulates principals need to develop a shared vision and empower the teachers with expertise to build strong organizational capacity. Though empirical evidence grows steadily, there still lacks the complete evidence on how each of the school leadership responsibilities is actually distributed among the…

Distributed leadership is a dynamic process and reciprocal interaction of the leader, the subordinates and the situation. This research was inspired by the theoretical framework of Spillane in order to contextualize distributed leadership and compare the variations using the Teaching and Learning International Survey 2013 data. The two-level…

This study aims at building a theoretical base for continuous change in education and using this base to test the mediating roles of two key contextual variables, knowledge sharing and trust, in the relationship between the distributed leadership perceptions and continuous change behaviours of teachers. Data were collected from 687 public school…

Purpose: Effective styles of principal leadership can help address multiple issues in struggling schools, such as low student achievement and high rates of teacher attrition. Although the literature has nominated certain "idealized" leadership styles as being more or less effective, such as transformational, instructional, and shared…

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to uncover what scholars know and do not know about instructional leadership, paying particular attention to what they have learned about how this work is done and where knowledge falls short. The author takes a first step at integrating three distinct literatures: (a) the traditional instructional…

This case study examines the leadership practices and actions of an urban high school principal who faced many challenges, but worked diligently to improve student achievement and school climate over a 3-year period. Significant improvements were made by using elements of Distributed Leadership, Professional Learning Communities, and Social…

In this study we analyze the extent to which policy documents that include standards and expectations for the preparation of school principals (i.e., head teachers) influence democratic practices. This comparative research examines educational policies that influence the work of principals both in Sweden and in the U.S., the state of Texas asking:…

This paper attempts to identify the leadership practices and qualities of school principals engaged in implementing a curriculum reform in Hong Kong. Based on interview data of school principals, this paper shows that the types of instructional leadership practices that school principals adopt and the contextual conditions in which these practices…