Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the micropolitical strategies principals use to influence school staffing within an urban school district. Design/methodology/approach: The author used a qualitative case study approach drawing upon 47 semi-structured participant interviews with 25 individual research participants, 80 hours of…

Purpose: Turning an education reform program into school reality greatly depends on the principal. In certain cases, principals choose to implement reform instructions only partially. The purpose of this paper is to explore school principals' considerations leading to their decisions not to fulfill a national reform's guidelines in a full and…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to outline the findings from a small-scale, exploratory, study of principals' instructional leadership practice in Malaysian primary schools. The dimensions and functions of instructional leadership, explicitly explored in this study, are those outlined in the Hallinger and Murphy's (1985) model.…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine first-year principals' sense-making about two potentially conflicting demands as they take over low-performing urban schools: the demand to exert control over their teachers' practice, and the need to build their teachers' trust, collegiality, and commitment. Design/methodology/approach: This study…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the leadership practice of an 11-member district team of educators assembled to respond to one of the most comprehensive bullying laws in the nation--the Massachusetts Anti-Bullying Law of 2010. This three-year case study provides school leaders and legislators with an in-depth, fine-grained…