With the implementation of site-based decision-making occurring in schools, an understanding of the views of secondary school principals and of secondary school teachers would provide valuable information. In the study, six principals and six teachers, from either high performing or low performing schools, were purposefully selected for their…

Established in 1940, Lady Gowrie Child Centres in Australia provide integrated early childhood programs and develop and share project work, information, resources and training at local and national levels. While changes in social policy compromised their provision of integrated programs, the centre in Adelaide has made real strides towards moving…

Previous research into deinstitutionalization has largely ignored the perspective of people with intellectual disabilities, especially those with severe intellectual disabilities. This research aimed first to understand how women with severe intellectual disabilities experienced transition from a locked ward of an old long-stay hospital into other…

This article reports the results of a longitudinal study of 35 Swedish comprehensive schools involving interviews with teachers, school leaders, students, and parents carried out in 1980, 1982, 1985, and 2001. During the 35-year period covered by the study, the schools experienced significant reforms. The most important of these reforms involved a…

Observations were conducted in three county councils to find out whether the government's ambition to develop Learning Disability Partnership Boards (as expressed in the White Paper "Valuing people") are being realized. All the partnerships practiced various inclusive activities in order to involve people with learning disabilities in…

Following the initiation of educational reforms, this article reports on the different models of leadership that have emerged as being important for developing teacher professionalism in government primary schools in Karachi, Pakistan. The evidence from the case studies, reported in this article, illustrates that even within formalized government…

We examine the contemporary relationship between headship and leadership in England. This speaks to the current globalizing agenda promoting generic leadership within a modernizing agenda of restructuring and reculturing in public education. Thinking based on several research studies is used to stimulate perspectives on a range of complex tensions…

In his Places to Go column for a special issue on the Net Generation, Stephen Downes takes an unexpected trip--to Google. According to Downes, Google epitomizes the essence of the Net Generation. Infinitely searchable and adaptable, Google represents the spirit of a generation raised in the world of the Internet, a generation that adapts…

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.…

Using case studies of four schools in three districts, this article explores how leadership is distributed in districts and asks about the role of teacher leaders. It proposes that teacher leaders and districts can share three leadership tasks: procuring and distributing materials, monitoring improvement, and developing people. The district and…

In this essay, Gert Biesta provides a critical analysis of the idea of evidence-based practice and the ways in which it has been promoted and implemented in the field of education, focusing on the tension between scientific and democratic control over educational practice and research. Biesta examines three key assumptions of evidence-based…

The purpose of this study was to explore teacher leaders' and principals' perceptions of instructional leadership in a shared context. The multi-stage multiple-case study examined roles and relationships of teacher leaders and principal teams across four schools within a Midwestern urban school district engaging in what has been identified in…

Leadership expectations for school principals have dramatically changed since the 1983 report to Congress, "A Nation at Risk", inspired a renewed focus on the persistent educational underachievement of minority students in the United States. Today, school leaders must get out from behind the desk and actively empower an increasingly…

Often superintendents and boards of education employ an expert-based, school-centered, "decide and defend" decision making approach when dealing with critical school district issues. In the case presented here, involving what to do with an historic school building, it is an approach that did not yield the result the superintendent or board of…

This paper argues that, for both practical and philosophical reasons, high school activities ought to be managed by participatory principles. It further argues that the responsibility for bringing this about belongs to principals and activities directors through appropriate modeling and in-service education. In addition, obstacles to the…