This article draws upon the educational leadership knowledge base to explore central concepts, questions, and issues of relevance to the contemporary policy context in Wales. The article is not a review of the leadership literature, but rather it explores the empirical evidence to address three key questions that are critical to school and system…

Principal preparation and training is generally viewed as an important contributor to school and system improvement. While the international evidence based on leadership and leadership development is extensive, contemporary accounts of principal preparation in a number of Asian countries are not widespread. This article outlines the findings from…

Over the last decade, the Russian education system has undergone significant transformation that has radically changed the expectations placed upon the school principals. This current reform process has placed far greater responsibilities and accountabilities upon principals to secure school effectiveness and improved student learning outcomes.…

The centrality of education in the pursuit of better economic and social prosperity is now well established. The dominance of human capital theory, which provides a strong argument for better education as a key factor in fuelling economic growth, has encouraged policy makers, in various countries, to focus on education reform as a key priority and…

Background: Around the globe, education policy borrowing remains pervasive and prevalent. The strategies, interventions and innovations of education systems that perform well, in international assessments, are enthusiastically borrowed and copied in the anticipation of similar educational performance and outcomes. Purpose: This purpose of the…

Distributed leadership is now widely known and variously enacted in schools and school systems. Distributed leadership implies a fundamental re-conceptualisation of leadership as practice and challenges conventional wisdom about the relationship between formal leadership and organisational performance. There has been much debate, speculation and…

This article looks at high-performing education systems in Asia through the lens of leadership and leadership development. It proposes that the top-performing education systems systematically build the leadership capacity for improvement and that this is part of an implementation science geared to maximizing performance. Drawing upon initial…

This article outlines progress made towards education transformation in Wales. It explores the way in which tri-level reform is guiding system level change in Wales and looks at the implementation of the School Effectiveness Framework, which is at the heart of the reform process. It describes the way in which professional learning communities are…

This article considers the ways in which distributed forms of leadership can positively influence school development and change. The article focuses on the findings from an initial evaluation and impact assessment of a leadership programme provided by the "Specialist Schools and Academies Trust" for teachers in their first five years of teaching.…

This article considers the challenges and issues facing school leaders in the implementation of Every Child Matters. It outlines the factors that contribute to the effective delivery of Every Child Matters and outlines some of the barriers that make the delivery of this agenda more difficult. The article concludes that school leaders play a…

This article provides a critical analysis of the teacher leadership literature. It considers teacher leadership within the context of contemporary leadership theory, focusing particularly upon distributed leadership. The article explores different interpretations and definitions of the term "teacher leadership" and considers the implications for…

Teacher leadership is a concept that is gaining increasing interest from both practitioners and researchers. This article presents findings from three case studies in the UK that can be characterized as exhibiting developed, emergent and restricted teacher leadership. Differences and similarities between the schools were examined, leading us to…

This article presents the findings from a review of literature on leadership in early childhood (EC). It identifies a paucity of research, despite a high potential for leadership activity in the early childhood field. It concludes that there is a clear need to identify what effective leadership practice is in terms of processes and outcomes within…

This book explores how teacher leadership is an intrinsic and important part of school and classroom improvement. It investigates teacher leadership in action and considers the roles, responsibilities and influence of teachers who lead. It considers the implications of teacher leadership for teachers' professional development and focuses on ways…