This qualitative study explores school principals' perceptions and enactments of shared sense-making processes during a generally-outlined pedagogical reform, i.e. "a broad-policy reform allowing educators to exercise their discretion in meeting its pedagogical goals," aiming to inquire what makes such processes critical to schools'…

Educators are key in advising doctors and parents on whether to medicate pupils with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Here, using a semi-structured in-depth interview and grounded theory, we ask how 138 Israeli teachers and headmasters perceive their role in parents' decisions to medicate. Generally, teachers refrain from…

Purpose: Perceptual inhibitors to instructional leadership are based on disagreements with the premises of instructional leadership. This study explored how the paradoxical approach, which advocates "both/and" approach to conflicting demands, may moderate the influence of the perceptual inhibitors of instructional leadership.…

Purpose: It has been suggested that coherency between primary stakeholders involved in an educational reform is a key determinant of its success. The "Meaningful Learning Reform" is defined as an open reform, serving as a bottom-up solution to promote school autonomy. This reform allows school leaders to exercise considerable discretion…

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic undermined basic routines and typical conduct of schools, introducing uncertainty and instability to an extent that schools had never encountered in the last decades. The current study focuses on leaders' coping strategies while struggling to maintain school stability and on the extent to which these extreme…

The Corona pandemic has engendered drastic change throughout the world and schools in most countries have, relatively quickly, been required to transfer from frontal traditional learning to online learning. The research investigated the relationship between transformational leadership style and teaching mediated by school communications and…

The instructional leadership approach expects school leaders to give top priority to ongoing improvement of teaching quality and academic outcomes. Researchers have found that despite the top-down pressures to assume an instructional leadership role, school principals demonstrate limited direct involvement in such leadership. The current…

This qualitative study explores how 60 Israeli high school principals vary in their perceptions and enactments of shared sense-making processes while engaging in strategic activities to gain teachers' support during a national reform implementation. Data analysis has yielded three major themes: (a) a common language; (b) a collaborative learning…

The current study traced the principal's own interpretation of loneliness in the workplace throughout various career stages in the principal's career cycle. The study posed two questions: (1) How do school principals explain the personal and organisational factors that influence their loneliness experience as it relates to different contexts? (2)…

Purpose: In times of reform and consequential changes, school superintendents act as mediators between government policies and those who implement them in the field. This article explores the perceptions of school superintendents in Israel concerning their professional development (PD) process, especially during the implementation of Israeli…

In this research, we examine strategies school principals have used to assist struggling teachers. In an open-ended questionnaire designed for this study, we asked 219 school principals to describe a successful intervention they held. The results show that principals prefer supportive assistance to organizational changes (such as moving the…

The aim of this study is to explore the effects of professional factors (academic rank and academic-administrative role) and home-unit-related factors (affiliation and number of faculty members in the faculty) on faculty members' research output, measured by number of citations. Research literature on operations research in the academia reflects a…

Purpose: Instructional leadership has been identified as a key responsibility of principals who achieve promising results for school improvement. This study investigated how the national context has influenced the adoption of instructional leadership as a defining role responsibility for Israeli principals. Research Methods: Participants in this…

Learning communities regarding teaching/learning issues are a core organizational feature in special education schoolwork. This study explored the principal's role in developing and sustaining a professional learning community (PLC) in a public special education secondary school for pupils with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in central Israel. The…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present the successful school and principal (SSP) model, which has developed over 13 years of Israeli involvement in the ISSPP study. Design/methodology/approach: This is a conceptual paper summarizing the findings of more than 20 case studies of successful, coasting and low-performing schools and their…