Global education agendas and scholarly literature are increasingly focused on systems change in education, in part stemming from a concern around student learning. But there is less attention in the literature about cultural change, meaning the everyday narratives, norms, values, and purposes that get enacted and reshaped within education systems.…

Educational innovation has received significant attention in contemporary policy debates. Many countries and regions have initiated comprehensive reforms to reshape teaching methods and link innovative practices with improved equity and performance outcomes. In Catalonia (Spain), a clear example of this phenomenon, recent policy developments have…

Leading and managing schools across the globe requires accountability for the utilisation of resources entrusted to schools for improving the quality of teaching and learning in schools. Little, however, is known about the school managers' effectiveness in accounting for the schools quality teaching and learning. This paper explored school…

U.S. federal policies No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top resulted in a policy overlap that created unique challenges and opportunities for administrators. This study examined principals' perceptions of an overlapping accountability-innovation policy context and their sense of how the policies affected their role as leaders. Primary data for…

Providing an in-depth look at the processes, pitfalls, and successes that can emerge from major education reform efforts at the state level, this volume covers the full policy change cycle in the development and transformation of the Illinois principal preparation program. Offering perspectives from the major stakeholder groups involved in…

In Australia, school leadership is influenced by neoliberal discourses of accountability and performativity. Many schools seek to balance systemic pressures that narrow outcome expectations with a desire to deliver schooling in the broad interests of the students and communities that they serve. In this case, the principal was appointed to a…

In the face of ongoing school budget cuts, increasing student numbers and national educational policy environments that demand more from schools, like it or not, school leaders are being forced to be much more market-oriented in their thinking and ways of being than at any other time before. A school is an important site for social development,…

In new generation schooling contexts, the interaction of human activity, space, and objects, co- produce spatialised practices. There is the fluid use and continuous re-design of learning spaces, where dynamic socio-material practices support the ongoing and negotiated development of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. Links are forged in this…

This study examined the facilitators and barriers to the implementation of an innovative, whole-school reform model, Expeditionary Learning, within the context of the high-stakes accountability policy environment. Twenty-four teachers and four principals were interviewed across four schools, two of which were high poverty and two of which were low…

This analysis plan proposes the specifications for analysis for various studies using the third cycle of the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS 2018) data. It serves as a link between the "TALIS 2018 Conceptual Framework" and the reporting plan. After a brief introduction in Section 1, Sections 2 and 3 suggest analyses for…

Principal leadership is the key to successful implementation of mandated, high-accountability, teacher evaluation systems. Given the magnitude and complexity of change at the school level, understanding principals' perceptions, responses, and concerns is essential for effective change and support during implementation. Thus, research that…

Some of the most promising reforms are happening where school leaders are thinking differently about how to get the strongest student outcomes from the limited resources available. But even principals who use their autonomy to aggressively reallocate resources say that persistent district, state, and federal barriers prohibit them from doing more.…

Internationally, Intercultural Understanding (ICU) is increasingly prevalent in the field of education. The recent evidence base includes a growing academic literature and examples of specified education policy and curricula. In regards to leveraging ICU, research suggests a multi-level and longitudinal approach is needed to ensure effective and…

The Israeli Ministry of Education has recently initiated a program of reform in the training of public school principals that aims to expand state licensing regulations for educational leaders. This article suggests that the principals' training and licensing (PTL) reform should be linked to the attempt by Israeli policy makers to institutionalize…

Policy implementation at school level is often recognised as transformative enactment. Positioning school leaders as gatekeepers in this enactment is limiting. This study of one Australian school explores the complex contextualised agency of school leaders showing that their role, far more than gatekeeping, can be enabling and transformative.…