Purpose: Research on school leadership has confirmed that principals influence teacher and student learning by building an "academic-focused ethos" in their schools. In this study, our objective was to examine if and how the learning-centered leadership of principals influenced academic optimism of teachers and the resulting effects on…

Teacher professional learning plays a critical role in education reform by enabling teachers to refine their professional skills and keep up with changing content knowledge, pedagogy, and trends in schooling. This study examines how and under what conditions principal instructional leadership contributes to teachers' professional learning in…

Background: Empirical evidence increasingly suggests that leadership which motivates, supports, and sustains the professional learning of teachers has a knock-on effect for both student learning and school improvement. The current study was conducted in China, where the workplace learning of teachers is embedded in a strong tradition of…

This research explored the relationship of principal leadership and teacher professional learning in China and Thailand. The authors tested a conceptual model in which teacher trust and agency were proposed as mediators of the effects of the principal's learning-centered leadership on teacher professional learning. Common survey measures had been…

This study examined if and how the learning-centred leadership of rural school principals in China impacted teachers' trust and agency, as well as their engagement in professional learning. In contrast to prior research, however, this mixed methods study sought to illuminate the impact of ineffective leadership on teachers and school improvement.…

This study tests mediated principal leadership effects on teacher professional learning through collegial trust, communication and collaboration in Hong Kong primary schools. It is based on a series of single mediator studies, and uses the same convenience sample of 970 teachers from 32 local primary schools. It also adopts regression-based…

This study attempted to identify effects of trust between principal leadership and teacher professional learning in Hong Kong primary schools. To verify the potential mediating effects of trust as a component of school capacity, survey data with a sample of 970 teachers from 32 local primary schools was used. Two questionnaires were combined to…

This study addressed the research question: How do Vietnamese principals lead the professional learning of teachers? The research was comprised of a multiple-site case study of leadership and teacher learning in four Vietnamese schools. Qualitative data analysis aimed at identifying modal practices adopted by these Vietnamese principals to lead…

Purpose: Developing countries in many parts of the world have experienced a disturbing trend in the differential pace of economic development among urban and rural communities. These inequities have been observed in education systems in Asia, Africa, and Latin America where researchers have documented differences not only in resource allocation…

Purpose: Over the past decade, studies of school leadership effects have increasingly aimed at identifying and validating the paths through which principal leadership impacts key teaching and learning processes in schools. A recent meta-analysis by Robinson and colleagues identified principal practices that shape teacher professional development…

School leader training has become a critical strategy in educational reform. However, in China, there still exists a big gap in terms of how to transfer leadership knowledge into practice. Thus, tools that can integrate formal knowledge into practice are called for urgently in school leader training. This paper presents the results of a research…

Purpose: Worldwide interest in principal instructional leadership has led to global dissemination of related research findings despite their concentration in a limited set of western cultural contexts. An urgent challenge in educational leadership and management lies in expanding the range of national settings for investigations of instructional…

Purpose: In this era of global education reform, teacher professional learning (TPL) has emerged as a key factor in efforts to create sustainable school improvement. The same holds in Mainland China where ambitious curriculum reforms have been undertaken since 2000. The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of learning-centered leadership…

The past two decades have been a period of active education reform throughout much of the world, and East Asia is no exception. This paper synthesizes findings from a series of empirical studies of educational reform in Thailand where an ambitious educational reform law was adopted in 1999. The purpose is to identify lessons learned about…

Over the past 30 years, school principals have been exhorted to articulate a clear vision as a key tool for stimulating the improvement of teaching and learning in their schools. Over the past decade, as school systems have sought to distribute leadership more broadly within schools, the same imperative has applied to middle-level leaders. Indeed,…