This qualitative study explores the early implementation of a university school leadership preparation program and school district collaborative effort to develop school leaders and sustain leadership capacity in nine rural school districts. Emerging findings drawn from survey, focus-group, and participant observation data include (a) the…

School leadership is a critical factor in school improvement. The Delaware Department of Education (DDOE) and Region 4 Comprehensive Center (R4CC) have strengthened school leadership through implementation of the Delaware Leadership Network and the Delaware Principal Supervisor Leadership Program. These two major efforts, collaboratively designed…

In the ESSA Leadership Learning Community (ELLC), education agency leaders, community organization leaders, and others have together taken on challenges facing schools and school leaders in their states. They have produced advice to state agencies on policy design and rollout, for example on official definitions of equity, on requirements for…

Multiple researchers have described walkthroughs as effective ways for instructional leaders (commonly principals, but also various other roles like assistant principals and teacher coaches) to play an active role in generating focused, qualitative data to inform schoolwide improvement efforts (Bole & Farizo, 2013; Starrett, 2015). In addition…

The purpose of this study was to investigate leadership practice of school principals and cluster supervisors in implementing continuous professional development (CPD) program. School principals (14) and cluster supervisors (4) were included in the study using comprehensive sampling techniques. A total of 305 teachers were selected from 14…

Students with special needs deserve a free and appropriate education. The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological research study was to explore factors responsible for creating a sustainable literacy initiative in special education schools and in addition, to analyze the effectiveness of instructional leadership in 10 special education…

Under both No Child Left Behind and the Every Student Succeeds Act, school leaders have been mandated to employ data-driven decision-making (DDDM) to diagnose student needs, implement targeted supports, and design school improvements. However, district administrators tasked with developing principals' DDDM capacity face a tough road. The authors…

The pilot of SELFIE for work-based learning (SELFIE WBL) in Montenegro is part of a multi-country initiative. SELFIE WBL is a self-reflection tool for schools seeking to improve their digital capacity. It has been developed by the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC). The JRC has organised the overall pan-European pilot of SELFIE WBL,…

The Self-reflection on Effective Learning by Fostering the use of Innovative Educational technologies (SELFIE) tool has been implemented in Georgia since 2018. In 2020 the Ministry of Education, Science, (MoES) expressed its interest in piloting the SELFIE Work-Based Learning (WBL) tool designed specifically for the WBL context in Vocational…

The Self-reflection on Effective Learning by Fostering the use of Innovative Educational technologies (SELFIE) tool was piloted in the Republic of Serbia (hereafter Serbia) in 2017 and scaled up in early 2019. At the beginning of 2020, the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) developed a new version of SELFIE specifically focusing on…

The SELFIE WBL pilot project started in Turkey in July 2020. SELFIE WBL is a new SELFIE module for VET schools that involves in-company trainers. It provides a self-reflection tool for VET schools to improve their digital capacity. Aggregate data obtained from the tool can also be used to inform the Ministry of National Education's (MoNE's)…

The Intercultural Development Research Association (IDRA) was awarded an Education Innovation and Research (EIR) Early Phase grant from the U.S. Department of Education in 2017 to develop, implement, and test a promising program to improve student achievement and educational progress for high-need students: Reenergizing Leadership to Achieve…

Education and training systems need the right tools and processes to plan and develop their digital capacity. SELFIE for work-based learning (SELFIE WBL) provides one such tool. SELFIE stands for self-reflection on effective learning by fostering the use of innovative educational technologies. SELFIE WBL is a self-reflection tool for vocational…

Intercultural education (ICE) is a priority for schools and schooling systems worldwide. While extensive policy and academic literature exists that describes how ICE should be done in schools, relatively little has been published about the pragmatics of implementing and enacting ICE, despite evidence that principals, teachers and schools feel ill…

This policy implementation study examines the experiences of four elementary school principals using photomethods. We employ Rancière and Merleau-Ponty's theorizations on "democracy" and "making sense" to understand the lived policy experiences of school principals and these individual's potential for practicing democratic…