Educational Management Administration & Leadership

Bush, Tony

doi: 10.1177/1741143214563455pmid: N/A

Hallinger, Philip; Chen, Junjun

doi: 10.1177/1741143214535744pmid: N/A

Over the past two decades scholars have called for a more concerted effort to develop an empirically grounded literature on educational leadership outside of mainstream “Western” contexts. This paper reports the results of a review of research topics and methods that comprise the literature on educational leadership and management in Asia between 1995 and 2012. The review of research employed a quantitative descriptive form of systematic review of 478 articles published in eight “core” international journals in educational leadership and management over this period. The review examined trends in publication volume and impact, as well as research topics and methods used by scholars studying educational leadership and management in Asia. The study concluded that Asian scholarship in educational leadership and management remains in the early stages of development. Knowledge production is highly uneven across the continent, with only a few pockets of research excellence. Significant growth trends were observed in terms of scholarly interest in studying leadership in K-12 schools, school change, effects and improvement, and organizational behavior in education. Although qualitative research methods were more popular in this literature prior to 2006, the use of quantitative research methods has increased sharply during the past six years.

Lumby, Jacky

doi: 10.1177/1741143214556088pmid: N/A

This article analyses interview data from 54 women school principals in South Africa to explore how women position their identities in relation to their gender, ethnicity and other characteristics. While grounded in their own context, the women’s strategies resonate with those of women in many parts of the world. Five strategies are discerned: transforming the value of low-status identities, asserting a valued identity, negating stigmatised characteristics, denying disadvantage, and accepting women's inferiority. It is suggested that each may bring benefit to the individual but may also further embed disadvantage: that women are caught in a web of discrimination. It is argued that we do not sufficiently understand the complexity and balance of positive and negative effects of individual positioning on principals’ lives and on wider structural change. The impact of action may not be captured by simplistic cause and effect analysis but appears to be both embedding sexism further and leveraging limited gains.

Chapman, Christopher

doi: 10.1177/1741143213494883pmid: N/A

School-to-school collaboration has been central to many improvement efforts over recent decades. In an attempt to promote both improvement and equity current developments in England have included changing formal governance arrangements to promote collaboration for improvement through ‘federations’ and ‘chains’ of schools. However, federations and school chains remain a relatively under-explored area and there is a noticeable absence of research exploring the impact of such arrangements on student outcomes. This paper draws on a programme of research including the national evaluation of federations, the first quantitative study of the impact of federations on student outcomes and a longitudinal qualitative study of the development of federations to consider two key questions: What is a federation? And do federations make a difference? In order to achieve this, the paper provides an overview of the key characteristics of federations and considers their contribution to improvement efforts. In conclusion the paper reflects on a number of issues and implications associated with developing a federated school system.

Swaffield, Sue

doi: 10.1177/1741143213494884pmid: N/A

For three years from 2008 every school in England had a designated school improvement partner (SIP), portrayed as a critical friend, whose role was to support and challenge the headteacher. A mixed-methods study involving a national survey and face-to-face interviews evaluated the enactment of the national policy from the perspective of the direct recipients – the headteachers/school principals. Headteachers’ perceptions of their school improvement partners, and their experiences of the support and challenge provided by SIPs, varied. Much seemed to depend on individual SIP’s expertise and conduct. The SIPs’ prescribed agenda was seen as too focused on data rather than discussions about learning and teaching, and requirements for SIPs to report to the local authority and governors were in tension with trustful relationships with headteachers. The SIP programme could be interpreted as a commitment to the entitlement of headteachers to support and challenge, or as a mechanism for surveillance and discipline. Lessons are drawn for the ‘national’ and ‘local leaders of education’ who have replaced SIPs, and for anyone internationally concerned with support and challenge for school principals.

Hulme, Rob; McKay, Jane; Cracknell, David

doi: 10.1177/1741143213494886pmid: N/A

This article explores the impact of changing policy priorities on the role of director of children’s services, before and after the economic crisis of 2008 and the election of the coalition government. The role of director of children’s services from 2003 to 2010 was driven by the New Labour imperative to deliver regionally based integrated services, as called for in Every Child Matters (Department for Education and Skills, 2003). Changing political and economic priorities since the election of 2010 have recast the notion of ‘integrated services’. The Conservative-led coalition has instead emphasised the importance of localised decision-making at institutional level in education and social services. This article reflects on the perceptions of directors, drawing on empirical data gathered from two sets of interviews conducted with directors of children’s services in North-West England between 2007 and 2012. Concerns are expressed about this changing political and economic landscape which has left the role of director of children’s services open to question. Recent reforms in education and health have devolved responsibility for coordinating public services to institutions, potentially marginalising broader agendas about welfare, rights, and so on for children and young people.

Dale, Di; James, Chris

doi: 10.1177/1741143213494885pmid: N/A

Educational change can call up a range of feelings that can pose a number of problems for those experiencing and/or organizing it. This article analyses the processes of educational change from a psychodynamic standpoint. In particular it explores affective containment, which enables feelings to be fully experienced and to be used productively. an aspect of organizing during educational change, known as affective containment, that enables feelings to be fully experienced and to be used productively. In the article, we first review some important and relevant concepts, which include the nature of social affects, projection, introjection, projective identification, and splitting and projection, before considering affect and educational change and the notion of affective containment. We then describe and interpret a case that illustrates what can happen when affective containment processes are not securely in place during educational change. We discuss some of the main issues to emerge, which include: the nature of affective containment at individual and group/organizational levels that can support educational change; the importance of ensuring that boundaries between student and staff systems are secure during educational change; the reparation processes that can be a feature of educational change and their impact on the change process; and the leadership responsibility for providing affective containment during educational change.

Branson, Christopher M; Baig, Sharifullah; Begum, Abida

doi: 10.1177/1741143213510505pmid: N/A

Although there is growing research evidence to support the view that the leadership practice of the school principal is the second-most important influence on student learning behind classroom teaching, there is no clarity about what, exactly, the principal is meant to do to ensure this outcome. Hence, Leithwood et al. (2010) propose that one of the principal’s important influences on student learning is the ‘rational’ path, which includes the issue of school-wide disciplinary climate. This argues that the principal plays a pivotal role in establishing the school-wide disciplinary climate that aids student learning. This article reports upon research conducted in Pakistan that focuses on the disciplinary climate aspect of school leadership by exploring how the personal values of principals are made manifest in student behaviour. Data from this research infers that the establishment of an appropriate school-wide disciplinary climate for improving student learning is influenced by two important factors. First, there needs to be an alignment between personal and organizational values and behaviour throughout the school. Secondly, the consistency of alignment between the values and behaviour of the principal, in particular, is the cornerstone in creating a beneficial school-wide disciplinary climate.

Miller, Catherine M; Martin, Barbara N

doi: 10.1177/1741143213513185pmid: N/A

This multi-case study sought to construct meaning using a cultural capital lens in relation to educational leadership preparation programs building the capacities of social justice leaders in demographically changing schools. Data revealed principals’ perceptions about preparation, expectations and general beliefs and assumptions related to leadership for social justice emphasizing contradictions between principals’ equity-oriented rhetoric and their underlying beliefs and assumptions affecting their diverse school populations. The implications for research and practice include opportunities that principals and principal preparation programs have to implement to keep leadership for social justice at the forefront of the charge to equitably educate all children.

Liljenberg, Mette

doi: 10.1177/1741143213513187pmid: N/A

Leadership is considered to be significant for creating a developing and learning school organisation. In Sweden, distributed leadership and teacher teams are an ‘institutionalised practice’; despite this, sustainable school improvement is difficult to achieve. This article presents findings from a case study of three schools that examined the influence of distributed leadership when establishing developing and learning school organisations in the Swedish context. The study investigated the differences and similarities in the organisations and highlighted the emerging tensions. The article argues that support from the school’s principal is vital and that teacher leaders must focus on development instead of management, learning instead of quick solutions and be challenging instead of confirming. But above all, for a developing and learning school organisation to be created collaboration needs to be expanded and a professional attitude firmly adopted. This article provides in-depth descriptions of how leadership is distributed in ‘natural school contexts’ and its impact on school improvement outside the Anglo-Saxon school setting.