The purpose of this qualitative paper is to explore Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) centre managers' understanding of instructional leadership. Leadership skills are sometimes developed on the job. However, instructional leadership requires vision, a sound managerial style, relevant knowledge, skills, organisational acumen, and…

Grounded in Developmental Systems Theory, especially Ecological Systems Theory, and through the strength-based and whole child lenses, this study examines 15 interviews with Head Start professionals and explores alignment degree of their school readiness perception and practices. Adopting dual mapping, theme screening and in vivo coding, the…

In this study, the researcher wanted to answer the following research question: How do K-12 assistant principals and principals develop their leadership skills and practices on the job after their pre-service programs in various school contexts? The researcher used purposive sampling, gathering participants from a state association of school…

Leadership in educational settings, especially in schools, has a long history. Instructional leadership is a leadership style that is seen to increase school effectiveness. This study aims to map bibliographic data on instructional leadership over the past eight decades (1941-2022). The quantitative research approach to analyzing bibliographic…

Low-performing schools are attracting attention in many countries that are looking for ways to turn them around. According to the functional-structural approach, restructuring these schools' organization is imperative, and an organizational consultant can help in this task. In this study, we investigated the perspectives of organizational…

There has been a growing emphasis among education policymakers on coaching as an important aspect of professional learning for school leaders. This paper describes a qualitative study of long-term leadership coaching for school principals. The study aims to fill the gap in the literature on coaching for experienced leaders and, reflecting the 2019…

This paper explores the complex problem of project sustainability, focusing on the leadership of three primary school mathematics leaders. Using cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT), the leaders' efforts are reported, highlighting their contribution to project sustainability. The CHAT-informed research design supported the generation of…

This critical qualitative study focused on what are the factors that contribute to high learner performance at a public school in South Africa. Purposive sampling was used and the data was produced via interviews with the participants (the principal, ten teachers, five ex learners and two parents) as well as observations of various school…

Despite tremendous growth in the online delivery of leadership preparation, educational administration scholarship contains little empirical research measuring the impact of different delivery models, especially as that impact pertains to the career pathways of graduates. The LTEL SIG has well-established interests in determining the best…

Located within constructivist paradigm, this is a qualitative study that used a case study design. Qualitative data collection methods -- interviews, observations and document analysis -- were employed for this study. The sample comprised of 43 teachers and principals from four case study schools. This paper focuses on the experiences of primary…

A collective case study methodology is used to explore how high school turnaround principals leveraged the professional development of teachers to raise student achievement. The study also sought to capture the characteristics of the professional development programs principals implemented. Interview data were collected from five turnaround…

This study used interview and observation data to investigate how school principals approached both the promotion and implementation of lesson study. Using distributed leadership and sensemaking, the study found that the principals received a lack of formal guidance and they used prior knowledge to adapt the model. To capture buy-in, the…

Applying Organizational Routines Theory this study aims to better understand the role of the teamwork routine as a central link between leadership and school effectiveness. Looking for the internal structure of the routine, we employed a multi-case study approaches in five successful schools and four coasting schools. The findings show that while…

Research over the past 35 years consistently reveals that principals spend minimal amounts of time on instructional leadership activities. Similarly, we know very little about how principals might be trained to change their time allocation to focus more on instructional leadership tasks. The paper describes the implementation and the time use of…

Thirty primary classroom teachers quantified perceived changes in their practice and knowledge attributed to their school leaders' participation in a six-day course focused on leaders designing and implementing a whole-school reform of mathematics teaching and learning, and the school-based professional learning that followed. The project and…