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The aim of this paper is to discuss the views of black and ethnic minority school leaders about the Investing in Diversity program, a black‐led program developed in 2004 to address the underrepresentation of black leaders in the London schools. Major themes are identified from interviews with black and South Asian women graduates of the program and recommendations made for leadership development strategies to help aspiring and current black and global majority headteachers “bring who they are” to their leadership.

Qualitative case study data about the Investing in Diversity program include document analysis of curriculum modules and participant observation of the weekend residential, survey satisfaction data from several cohorts, and face‐to‐face interviews with a purposive sample of seven headteachers from African Caribbean, African, and South Asian backgrounds who completed the Investing in Diversity program six‐seven years ago. These semi‐structured individual interviews were conducted in the spring of 2012 during an all‐day visit to their schools and focused on barriers and supports in their career path, approach to leadership, and their views on their leadership preparation.

Participants identified black and ethnic minority headteachers as role models, the importance of mentoring and informal networks, and opportunities to lead as supports to their career path to headship. Many of their long‐term informal networks were established with other BME colleagues who attended Investing in Diversity. Barriers included subtle (and not so subtle) discrimination from parents, teachers, and administrators for some of the participants.

Observational studies and interview studies, which included a bigger sample of black and ethnic minority headteachers, would extend this research.

This study provides suggestions for schools and local authorities about leadership preparation strategies that make a difference for aspiring BME leaders.

There is a paucity of research on the views of British BME headteachers. This study adds to the research base on BME leadership development in Britain and contributes to international research on self‐defined black leadership perspectives.

The purpose of this study was to investigate how race and race relations influence school leadership practice.

This ethnographic study was conducted in a high‐poverty, high‐minority, urban high school in the Southeastern USA. The authors utilized an anthropological conceptual framework called a moiety, through which the school's leadership culture was conceived as two distinct racial leadership subcultures, one black and one white.

Findings suggested that the members of each of these leadership subcultures conceived of and enacted leadership in a different manner. Members of each subculture interacted with one another in a manner consistent with anthropological inquiry focused on moiety cultures.

Though under‐used in educational leadership research, the moiety approach seems to have potential for explaining certain (sub)cultural dynamics of leadership in organizations. In the context of this school, race and race relations had a tremendous influence on the ways school leaders interacted with non‐moiety members in terms of reciprocity, rivalry, antithesis, and complementarity.

These findings suggest that school leaders should understand how race and race relations within and between various school subcultures influence leadership practice.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate factors that contribute to black male school leaders’ career progression and sustenance within the teaching profession. This, because the progression of black and minority ethnic (BME) teachers in Britain has been the subject of much debate. Fewer BME teachers are in leadership roles in education, and there are only 230 BME headteachers of approximately 24,000 primary and secondary headteachers.

The headteachers’ professional lives are explored through the lenses of critical race theory and interpretivism. In doing so, it illuminates the journey towards and the realities of a group whose views are currently unrepresented in research on school leadership or that of the experiences of male BME teachers in England.

This study finds that whereas personal agency and determination are largely responsible for keeping these black headteachers in post, “White sanction” (Miller, 2016) has played a significant role in career entry and early career development. Furthermore, participants experience both limiting and facilitating structures as they negotiated their roles into headship and as headteachers. Limiting structures are those which constrain or hinder progression into leadership, whilst facilitating structures enabled participants to navigate and negotiate gendered racism, make progress in their careers and achieve success in their respective roles. Both limiting and facilitating structures include personal agency and contextual factors.

The paper also makes the point that more research is needed on current BME school leaders to examine the factors that motivate and enable them. Additionally, more research is needed on the limiting and facilitating structures identified in this study and on the potential generational differences that may exist between more established and newly appointed male BME school leaders. Studying generationally different school leaders may help to illuminate the salience of race and racism across an increasingly diverse population.

Furthermore, this paper also suggests that more BME school leaders are needed, thereby making the leadership teams of schools more representative, as well as raising aspirations and interest among BME teachers and therefore making black leadership sustainable.

This paper is an original piece of research that adds fresh insights into not only how black school leaders get into teaching and leadership but also significantly what keeps them there.

Seeks to shift the focus of the study of leadership from behavior to cognitions. Uses a set of leaders, 1,200 principals in six American states, and employs an earlier validated set of five leadership cognitions drawn from psychologists in educational administration. The consistency of these scales is determined by alpha scores and correlations to establish there was no influence on them from contextual factors like state, political culture, and school size. Then, regression analysis demonstrates these leadership cognitions do exist independently of many social and personal qualities around principals. Thus, they are independent of the local politics of schools, characteristics of the school population, and personal qualities. However, leadership cognitions are strongly predicted by a professional network (i.e. supportive superintendents and faculty, as well as hard work) and with the size of schools.

Using life notes methodology (Dillard, 2006; Simmons, 2007), an earlier-career, Black female scholar in educational leadership chronicles her journey through obtaining her doctorate and transitioning to the professoriate at a Research I institution. In doing so, she highlights three “academic star” role models, shares her personal challenges, and offers three lessons about family, fit, and moving forward for other tenure-track faculty.

Desegregation still remains a pressing issue of many of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) in the United States. This chapter provides a historical narrative of the history of desegregation in the United States, and how legal ruling impacts recruitment and retention of non-Black students at HBCUs. In addition, this chapter will examine landmark desegregation court cases and current challenges imposed upon historically black colleges. Finally, implications will be provided for administrators at public HBCUs.

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).

This paper aims to explore developments over the past 25 years in the knowledge base on instruction-oriented middle leadership in schools. The authors document the trends in the literature since middle leadership began to attract scholarly interest in the late 1990s and explore the shifting structural and content patterns in the knowledge base.

The authors use a topographic methodology to analyse both structural elements and major results drawing from 147 peer-reviewed journal articles.

The authors draw on the review's outcomes to propose a model that frames a core set of middle leaders' instructional leadership practices. They also identify the personal, departmental, organizational and external influences shaping middle leadership practices and identify a lack of research conducted outside Anglo–American societies. This gap in the literature suggests the need for the increased study of middle leadership in different national settings and systems and how these influence the practice and enactment of middle leaders around instruction. There is also a need to employ a greater range of methodologies to understand middle leaders' instructional roles.

The paper lays a foundation for the future development of middle leadership for instruction and highlights signposts to guide future inquiry.

The paper contributes to the middle leader knowledge base by focussing on their enactment of instructional leadership.

Aims to explore the role of Principals in producing outstanding education outcomes in Years 7 to 10 in New South Wales (Australia) government schools.

Sites where “outstanding” educational outcomes were believed to be occurring were selected using a variety of data including performance in standardised tests, public examinations, various value added measures and nominations from various stakeholders. Sites were of two types: subject departments responsible for teaching certain subjects and teams responsible for cross‐school programs in Years 7 to 10. Sites were selected to be broadly representative. Some schools had more than one site, e.g. Mathematics and Student Welfare. A total of 50 sites across NSW from 38 secondary schools were studied.

With both subject departments and teams responsible for cross‐school programs, leadership was found to be a key factor in the achievement of outstanding educational outcomes. Often, this leadership was exercised by the Principal, but additional key personnel included Head Teachers (heads of faculties/departments), Deputy Principals, and teachers playing leading roles in faculties and programs. Analysis of data revealed certain attributes and practices of the Principals of these schools, which are explored, central to which is a focus on students and their learning.

Principals were those of secondary schools from one educational system. Other papers will explore the role of leaders such as Heads of Department, Deputy Principals and teacher leaders.

This article has implications for principal selection, training, appraisal and professional development.

Detailed case studies have provided an examination of leadership effectiveness in a wide range of contexts, which much commonality confirmed.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of the secondary Head of Department (HoD) in leading teams producing exceptional education outcomes in Years 7‐10 in New South Wales (NSW, Australia) government schools.

Sites where exceptional educational outcomes were believed to be occurring were selected using a variety of data including performance in standardised tests, public examinations, various value added measures and nominations from various stakeholders. Sites were of two types: subject departments responsible for teaching certain subjects and teams responsible for cross‐school programmes in Years 7‐10. Sites were selected to be broadly representative. Some schools had more than one site, e.g. Mathematics and Student Welfare. A total of 50 sites across NSW from 38 secondary schools were studied.

With both subject departments and teams responsible for cross‐school programmes, leadership was found to be a key factor in the achievement of exceptional educational outcomes. Analysis of data revealed certain qualities, attributes and practices of the HoD of these schools, which are explored, central to which is a focus on students and their learning.

HoDs were those of secondary schools from one state educational system.

Despite the pressures of the secondary HoD role, the HoDs studied had been able to lead and facilitate teams that were thriving when others struggle to perform. Whilst innate, personal qualities are important, much of what these HoDs possessed and demonstrated had been learned from others.

Detailed case studies have provided an examination of HoD leadership effectiveness in a wide range of contexts, with much commonality revealed. Thus, the study can inform future professional learning for secondary HoDs and possibly other middle managers in education. It may also have value for HoD selection.