This article is framed in two ways. First, by an editorial concern regarding the Americentricity of a special issue for the "Journal of Research on Educational Leadership" on leadership preparation. And second, Jean-Marie, Normore, and Brooks' (2009) desire for a "new social order" for a "multinational dialogue" as…

In an effort to find best practices in enhancing teacher effectiveness, the Alliance for Excellent Education (Alliance) and the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education (SCOPE) looked abroad at education systems that appear to have well-developed and effective systems for recruiting, preparing, developing, and retaining teachers and…

Experienced or prospective school leaders know there is way more pressure to make sure all students are learning, but what specific actions will ensure that learning occurs, and where does one find the time to do this? This book answers those questions and provides the reader with a systematic way to more quickly create powerful, equitable…

This Wallace "Perspective" summarizes a decade of foundation research and work in school leadership to identify what it is that effective school principals do. It concludes that they carry out five key actions particularly well, including shaping a vision of academic success for all students and cultivating leadership in others. The…

Research shows that the role of the K-12 principal is a significant factor in school improvement. Principal preparation programs have been criticized for inadequately preparing their graduates for the challenges they must face in K-12 schools. Since higher education faculty members directly impact the success of their programs (Bartlett, 2003),…

In this article we investigate educational leadership as a site of practice, utilising the notion of "practice architectures" as our lens. The latter shifts Etienne Wenger's more individualising notion of 'learning architectures' to a broader study of the systems and organisations that prefigure educational practices and potentially,…

Policies adopted by legislators impact the future of public and higher education. Unfortunately, educators and legislators are often in disagreement about what constitutes best practices. The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of issues and challenges associated with governmental mandates and suggest an action agenda for educators…

The authors focus on the investment into school leadership in England during the New Labour governments from 1997, and through this they make a contribution to an ongoing scholarly conversation about leadership development. They are concerned to both understand and explain leadership as a policy intervention into the professional practice and…

Background: Research suggests that schools' capacity to successfully implement and sustain reform programs may rest, in part, with district-level facilitation. The importance of district leadership has been established for a variety of educational reforms, including school, family, and community partnerships. However, few studies have been…

This book will show principals how they can change daily practices to invest more time in the improvement of teaching and learning. It redirects leadership to effective practices in instructional leadership. Contents include an Introduction and the following chapters: (1) Why Change the Way I Lead?; (2) The Path to Effective School Leadership; (3)…

Most work on professional learning opportunities in education focuses on classroom teachers and school principals. In this paper the authors take a broader look at school leaders' opportunities to learn from a distributed perspective. Using one mid-sized urban school district as their case, they examine the opportunities to learn (OTL) of school…

The Leaders in Education Programme is a six-month full-time programme for specially selected vice-principals and ministry officers in Singapore to prepare them for school leadership. This paper describes and analyses the design of the programme and identifies the key underlying principle as that of knowledge construction, sharing and application…

There is no shortage of scholars that believe that traditional, top-down leadership is antithetical to facilitating the improvements that must be made to the American educational system if all children are to achieve academically. These scholars call for distributive, facilitative, and/or collaborative leadership, yet little is known about how…

This is a powerful critique of two decades of educational reform in New Zealand, from an educator who was deeply involved. It is also a provocative call for action. Bali Haque has been both a secondary school principal required to implement reform and a senior public servant in the New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA) tasked with pushing…

This article explores the changing context of school leadership in our nation, a context that requires education leaders who are skilled and knowledgeable with a new set of dispositions to lead complex, diverse, and innovative institutions. The article also discusses recent critiques of existing leadership preparation programs, with emphasis on…