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Promotes and justifies a stronger comparative emphasis in the study of educational administration and management. Addresses questions such as, why adopt a comparative approach to educational administration? Why ground a comparative approach in culture? and, why focus on school organisation, leadership and management as the baseline unit for comparison? In systematically addressing these questions, the paper begins by acknowledging that comparative educational administration has, at best, a weak knowledge base. It goes on to clarify the potential importance of a comparative dimension to the field, and in particular, a comparative approach reflecting a cross‐cultural perspective. Finally, the paper briefly addresses a number of key issues which, it is argued, could inform initiatives to create a robust cross‐cultural approach to comparative educational administration

Perhaps it is academically improper to base a conceptual model upon personal conviction. This article develops a conceptual terminology for the interaction between educational administration and the dynamics of culture‐change in the Third World, Melanesian context of the 1970's. It is also the product of a growing conviction that educational administration sees itself, far too often, as an area of knowledge, western‐based, but yet capable of application to non‐western and Third World countries. Some western educational administrators, both scholars and practitioners, seem guilty of a latter‐day cultural imposition reminiscent of the middle‐class. Christian imposition of earlier colonial education systems. The alternative philosophy is that educational administration should be promoted and evaluated not according to “absolute” criteria but according to its appropriateness or inappropriateness for a particular, different and dynamic cultural context. In what follows this philosophy of cultural relativism is tested by arguing the hypothesis that traditionalist educational policy is inappropriate for Melanesian schools whereas local educational policy is appropriate.

This issue is a selected bibliography covering the subject of leadership.

This study aims to examine the relationship between the different aspects of transformational leadership behaviours of school principals on school culture in the context of Pakistan. The findings from this study can provide an opportunity to understand the relationship between transformational leadership and school culture factors and the way these factors influence the school culture.

The quantitative research approach has been adopted to assess teachers’ perceptions of transformational leadership behaviours at government secondary schools of District Khairpur, Pakistan. The targeted sample size of this study was 300 teachers from five government secondary schools of district Khairpur. Data has been collected by using two survey instruments to assess the degree of transformational leadership style adopted by school principals as perceived by teachers to measure the effectiveness of school culture, whereas descriptive (mean and standard deviation) and inferential (Pearson correlation coefficient) statistical tests have been used through SPSS 23.0 software.

The findings revealed that there is a moderate positive relationship between transformational leadership behaviours and school culture whilst the Pearson correlation coefficient was (r = 0.624), which indicates that it is statistically significant. The demographic data explored that serving teachers were trained and highly qualified in such schools.

The study contributes to explain the transformational leadership practices in the context of secondary schools of Pakistan for a better understanding of educational organization culture. This study also contributes to the field of educational leadership by highlighting the organization culture through the perceptions of teachers. The Education and Literacy Department, policymakers, educational leaders and schoolteachers may be benefited from the findings of the current study for a better understanding of school culture in secondary schools. This study has also laid the foundation for future research studies in leadership practices in Pakistan and internationally.

Finally, this study contributed to the leadership literature in the context of Pakistan because there are very few studies that have examined the impact of transformational leadership behaviours in education organizations. In addition, this study suggests that the school principals should revisit their school vision and involve teachers in vision formation.

The study aims at exploring the perspective of three English as a Foreign Language teachers after their year-long involvement in the Lesson Study project in the context of Kazakhstan in order to capture and list any perceived changes in teachers’ educational beliefs over the period of the Lesson Study intervention. The main argument of the study suggests that the school-based Lesson Study initiative is conducive to triggering changes in teachers’ educational beliefs, and thus, might lead to positive changes in school culture in Kazakhstani schools. Shaped following Hill et al., (1982) in Swales, 1990 hour-glass model of a research project (Swales, 1990), the article reflects the third concluding part of the Ph.D. thesis focusing on the implementation of the Lesson Study methodology in Kazakhstan.

The study adopts the qualitative research design and follows the narrative inquiry methodology. The three narrative interviews (Bauer, 1996) are utilized as the main method of data collection. The data were analyzed as text following a general inductive approach (Thomas, 2003), where emerging themes were identified employing data reduction and further sub-categorized through the conceptual and theoretical lenses of the study. The emerged categories reflecting the perceived shifts in teachers’ educational beliefs were dialectically linked to implications for school culture in Kazakhstani schools.

As data suggest, the respondents’ active engagement in the Lesson Study professional learning community and exercising leadership through implementing changes in their classroom practice has made a positive impact on teachers’ rethinking their teaching practice, attitudes to students and their learning, collegiality, and professional self-identification. We conclude that, if organized properly, Lesson Study has enormous potential to facilitate changes of teachers’ educational beliefs: from direct transmission beliefs toward constructivist beliefs, from restricted professionals’ beliefs toward reflective practitioner beliefs and attitudes, toward beliefs in the power of student’s voice, and collaboration. Those shifts are linked to establishing a more positive, child-friendly and rights-based school culture with teachers’ shared visions and capacity for innovation.

We acknowledge that the abundance of the reported positive changes or perceived shifts in teachers’ thinking might not be the indicators of actual changes in their beliefs. We emphasize that the study was carried in a controlled context, i.e. the three ELF teachers were constantly supported, and the teacher talk was systematically guided by a trained facilitator. Warned by Giroux et al. (1999), we are aware of the major challenge of the fundamental assumption of critical pedagogy that teachers are willing and able to undertake “the practice of analyzing their practice” (p. 27) voluntarily. Thus, the question remains open: if the facilitator’s support is eliminated, will the results point to the occurrence of the disruption and disorientation as a necessary condition for the beliefs change?

Carried out in the largely overlooked by the academic literature context of the Reform at Scale (Wilson et al., 2013) in Kazakhstan and building on the original combination of conceptual and theoretical lenses, the research contributes to the academic literature by connecting teachers’ educational beliefs, Lesson Study and school culture. The findings might be of value for the school leaders, educators, teacher trainers, and policymakers to advocate Lesson Study as a systematic approach to the whole-school improvement, as a tool to facilitate positive changes in school culture, as well as give impetus to studies employing the school culture perspective in developing Lesson Study impact evaluation tools.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the impact of leadership on culture and on the structure of learning, and of these two constructs on the innovation capacity.

A quantitative study utilising a survey was carried out. By means of an ad hoc questionnaire, educational administrators were asked about some characteristics of their organisations. The authors have proven the model of research through a model of structural equations, that is, by means of the partial least squares technique.

The hypothesis is confirmed that leadership affects culture and learning structure, and both impact on the innovation capacity of schools.

This work addresses the role of three critical aspects in the management of educational organisations—leadership, culture and structure—in the development of innovation that is essential in improving organisational development.

The role of leadership in the development of favourable conditions for innovation is verified, as is the impact of these conditions on the innovation capacity of educational organisations.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of societal and cultural factors on the practices and perceptions of school principals in Kazakhstan.

The paper draws on empirical data collected in Kazakhstan over two years in the course of an international, collaborative, multi-stranded project.

The findings support the claim that educational policies and practice are deeply embedded in the national culture, which is an evolving mixture of traditional Kazakh, Russian and diverse ethnic, Soviet and paternalistic cultures. These various societal characteristics exemplify various aspects of the tensions between traditional forms of social organisation, the Soviet legacy, and the sort of educational development promoted by Western educational and international organisations, which now plays an important role in Kazakhstan.

The analysis, though limited in scope, has nevertheless yielded insights into important differences and similarities amongst rural and urban schools and explored the effects of societal cultural factors that shape the practices of school leaders on the periphery of the system.

The paper provides an empirically grounded illustration of the way in which societal culture and cultural norms shape the role of school principals, and how schools cope with a top-down policy in Kazakhstan. By contrasting the norms that shape both existing practice and the reform agenda, the paper offers some explanations for how cultural norms represent both strengths and weaknesses when applied to the process of change in a post-Soviet context.

The purpose of this paper is to present an analytical review of the educational innovation field in the USA. It outlines classification of innovations, discusses the hurdles to innovation, and offers ways to increase the scale and rate of innovation-based transformations in the education system.

The paper is based on a literature survey and author research.

US education badly needs effective innovations of scale that can help produce the needed high-quality learning outcomes across the system. The primary focus of educational innovations should be on teaching and learning theory and practice, as well as on the learner, parents, community, society, and its culture. Technology applications need a solid theoretical foundation based on purposeful, systemic research, and a sound pedagogy. One of the critical areas of research and innovation can be cost and time efficiency of the learning.

Several practical recommendations stem out of this paper: how to create a base for large-scale innovations and their implementation; how to increase effectiveness of technology innovations in education, particularly online learning; how to raise time and cost efficiency of education.

Innovations in education are regarded, along with the education system, within the context of a societal supersystem demonstrating their interrelations and interdependencies at all levels. Raising the quality and scale of innovations in education will positively affect education itself and benefit the whole society.

Originality is in the systemic approach to education and educational innovations, in offering a comprehensive classification of innovations; in exposing the hurdles to innovations, in new arguments about effectiveness of technology applications, and in time efficiency of education.

The paper seeks to explore educational objectives and attitudes to assessment methods between Chinese and New Zealand European students.

A conceptual framework developed from the literature and feedback from the pilot study, explains the impact of factors on curriculum development in this study. This conceptual framework was designed to give preliminary insights into the subject area and form the basis of the research. Curriculum development and teaching style are seen as the product of cultural impact. The cultural impact is made up of factor inputs from demands made on the educational system. The prime data collection method was a self‐completion questionnaire. The population group was postgraduate management students at the Albany Campus of Massey University in New Zealand.

The responses from 110 postgraduate students in management studies at the Albany Campus of Massey University in Auckland, New Zealand, suggest that there is a relationship between culture and education. The study shows that the two student groups have different educational objectives and prefer different assessment methods.

Since this research is exploratory in nature and is restricted by sample size, the analysis of the research data was restricted to univariate analysis. In developing teaching styles and assessment methods at tertiary educational institutions where there are students from other cultural backgrounds, it is necessary to understand the reasons why these students enrol in various courses. To develop assessment methods without taking into consideration the learning styles of a changing student population will limit the extent to which expected knowledge transfer takes place.

This study shows that postgraduate students in management studies from different cultural backgrounds, ethnicities and nationalities may respond to educational styles differently. To force students into an existing mould is problematic and does not serve well in a globalisation process that is now imposed on all nations.

The quality of postgraduate management courses rests in part on the diversity of the student population, which in turn enriches the educational contribution of students generally. It is left to the teaching staff and the tertiary institutions to decide how to harness this variation. Educational paradigm shifts in technologies, methods and perceptions are needed if changes in education styles are to take place. Re‐allocation of resources to postgraduate education, in line with a dynamic and changing environment, is equally important.

The purpose of the paper is to discuss and examine the development of frameworks and models to guide future research into studies of women's paths to educational leadership worldwide.

A grounded theory approach to the development of a model of the factors and their interaction that determine the path to educational leadership for women is adopted, drawing on existing research for world‐wide studies.

Past studies in this field have focused on identifying barriers and opportunities that are gender sensitive. With an increasing interest in developing educational preparation programs that are context and gender specific, there is a need to provide research frameworks to allow for meaningful comparisons between contexts to identify commonalities and differences, and for models to predict the likely outcomes of interventions in current procedures for drawing women into educational leadership. The model presented in the paper allows for the identification of those factors in any given context that influence the success of women aspiring to leadership.

Understanding the culturally determined interaction of social and institutional factors that create unique contexts for career building is a prerequisite of developing leadership preparation for women designed to increase their successful entry into, and practice of, school leadership and to rectify their under‐representation in this field worldwide.

Conceptualizing educational leadership for women at an international level is a newly emerging theme that this paper hopes to advance.