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Parents’ collective involvement in their children’s education takes the form of holding leadership positions in schools. Employing the concept of liminality, which is used in anthropological and sociological approaches, the purpose of this paper is to explore the features of parent leadership in schools (PLS).

Interviews were conducted with 18 individuals: 11 chairpersons and 7 members of the parent leadership of 11 primary schools in Israel attended by students of high socioeconomic backgrounds.

Data analyses disclose PLS as a liminal framework, which constitutes both formal and informal dimensions, whether these be its in-school limited activities or out-of-school actions in introducing change and supporting the institutions. PLS’s functions are restricted by school principals, but simultaneously enhance school principals’ position.

The study’s findings carry implications for school collaboration with external entities. School principals need to support PLS and keep encouraging entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation. There is a need for acknowledging the value of PLS’s contributions whereas policy makers must provide more guidelines and support to parent leaders.

The study focuses on exploring the position of collective parental involvement in schools. This issue is of significance in a time where parents gain more responsibility over their children’s education and schools support more collaborative relationships with external agencies. The study highlights the benefits of parents in leadership positions for school benefits and for school principals’ legitimacy, from the approach of liminality.

Viewing school as a feminine bias workplace alongside being a field of power relations as argued by Bourdieu, this study examines (1) gender differences among teachers in different forms of capital (cultural, social, and feminine) and in their participation in decision-making (PDM) at school in three domains: managerial, administration, and teaching; (2) the relations between forms of capital and domains of PDM within each gender group.

The study was based on a random sample of 32 schools in Northern Israel that included 595 teachers (454 women; 141 men) who answered a questionnaire, which included background information; teachers' forms of capital; and PDM in managerial, administrative, and teaching domains. Multiple regression analysis was conducted.

Men tend to have an advantage in PDM in managerial issues, while women have an advantage in PDM in teaching. Further, women more than men perceived feminine capital and social capital as contributing to their work. It was also found that more types of capital are related to PDM among women as compared to men. For men, academic cultural capital predicts PDM in the teaching domain. For women, social capital predicts PDM in the three domains; academic cultural capital predicts PDM in the managerial domain; and feminine capital predicts PDM in teaching.

This study focuses simultaneously on different forms of capital, emphasizing the varying contribution of each capital to men and to women teachers. It also offers a set of resources that can demonstrate the complex factors that contribute to teachers' work.

The purpose of this paper is to probe the extent to which principals, as boundary spanners, manage with the influence of the local educational authority (LEA) and the superintendent over school matters.

The study is based on sequential quantitative→qualitative explanatory mixed research design. It is based on a sample of 161 Hebrew elementary school principals in two school districts in Israel who completed a questionnaire and on in-depth interviews with four school principals.

The findings indicated that school principals initiate assistance from the superintendent and the LEA depending on the influence they have in schools. However, they utilize their relations with each external agency differently. With the LEA, they established mutual exchange relations whereas school principals engage with the superintendent in order to negotiate more effectively with the LEA. By doing so, principals can control external agencies’ involvement in schools along with strengthening the power of the central educational authority.

The study makes a unique contribution to the literature on school principals’ role with external agencies by revealing their navigation and balancing among the various factors that influence schools. The study highlights the agential role of school principals.

Knowledge production in modern societies takes place in diverse arenas, such as corporations, research institutions, entrepreneurial agencies and universities. This last arena is embedded with disciplines and fields of study demarcated by institutional and scholarly boundaries within which intellectual work is conducted (Gunter, 2002). Each field (and discipline) has its own special interests, structured activities, rules of access, meanings and positions (Fitz, 1999) that provide ‘the intellectual lenses through which problems are defined and their solutions sought’ (English, 2001, p. 32).