School leaders could see all their students ascend to new heights of academic achievement and find their jobs de-stressed and joyful--if they focused on only the one or two most urgently needed instructional initiatives. Schmoker makes the "case for less" and notes that if school leaders applied strict criteria to select the initiative…

This paper seeks a deeper understanding of how principals strive for instructional leadership with organisational management strategies in China today. Drawing from 116 interviews of district supervisors and school principals from two regions, we first conduct qualitative analysis to map the dimensions and sub-dimensions of Chinese principal…

International research has highlighted teacher leadership as a means to improve teaching and learning by distributing instructional (learning-centered) leadership to teacher leaders. Simultaneously, there has been an increase and alteration of teacher leaders in schools. One example is the 'first teacher' position in Sweden implemented in 2013.…

Despite growing interest in social justice leadership and awareness of the need to include this focus in leadership preparation and development, little is understood of practices used to support such commitment. In this article, Bacchi's (2012a) Foucaldian approach is drawn from, to provide a specific means of critically analysing what problem(s)…

This study focuses on identifying the barriers and obstruction factors of Research-Based Learning (RBL) which was implemented in the schools under "Pohpanpanya" Youth Researcher Development Research Program. RBL consists of three domains: Contemplative Education (CE), System Thinking (ST) and Professional Learning Community (PLC). Those…

A principal's job is complex, demanding, and multi-faceted. Effective principals shape a school's academic vision and foster a climate for learning. In addition, they develop leadership capacity in teachers and staff, promote sound instructional practices, and use resources and data to drive school improvement (Mendels, 2012). Given these…

The current study reported here is one within a research project aimed at the identification of enabling and constraining factors in a two-year school-development project at a large secondary school in Sweden, where all teaching staff were involved in improving the quality of instruction through collaborative analyses. In this project a…

Since the late 1980s, standards for students and teachers began to be the focus of education, creating demands and pressures on school leaders to become more than managers of a school. This change of focus expanded to include principals and required school leaders to possess instructional leadership qualities beyond managerial skills. In 2010, the…

Instructional coaching is one method of job-embedded professional development approach that provides teachers an opportunity to build teacher expertise, raise student achievement, and advance school reform. The problem that was addressed in this qualitative case study was that few principals' understand the process of instructional coaching as…

Student engagement in learning is critical to the development of lifelong learners. Many research studies have found that student engagement is congruent with teacher student interaction, school culture, and student achievement. However, in the research literature, little has been documented about the role of the school leader in ensuring teachers…

This embedded case study examines the leadership practices of eleven teacher leaders in three urban schools to identify how these teacher leaders attempt to change the teaching practice of their colleagues while working as professional learning community leaders and as mentors for new teachers. Using a theoretical framework integrating complex…

Today's teachers and administrators are caught in a squeeze of conflicting demands. And evaluation guru Charlotte Danielson fears that teacher evaluation, as it's often implemented today, is making things worse. In schools where teacher evaluation has become simply a matter of numbers, ratings, and rankings, it may be undermining the very…

This case focuses on the complexity of change and improvement within schools with a particular emphasis on the role of the principal and a science teacher leader. Although current rhetoric suggests that school improvement should happen quickly and consistently, research indicates that it is difficult, context specific, and incremental. In fact,…

As the limitations of individual leadership have become evident, distributed leadership has attracted increased interest. Since the early 1980s, school principals in Sweden have distributed responsibility for improving pedagogical practices to teacher leaders, and the legal scope for such delegation has further expanded since 2010. Nevertheless,…

The purpose of this study is to examine a principal's leadership actions while attempting to improve primary student outcomes in reading in a Dual Language (English/Spanish) neighborhood school by supporting teachers in implementing a balanced literacy approach to teaching reading in Spanish. The principal as researcher noticed at the end of the…