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This paper discusses how educational policies have shaped the development of large-scale educational data and reviews current practices on the educational data use in selected states. Our purposes are to: (1) analyze the common practice and use of educational data in postsecondary education institutions and identify challenges as the educational crossroads; (2) propose the concept of Data Literacy (DL) for teaching (Mandinach & Gummer, 2013a) and its relevance to researchers and stakeholders in postsecondary education; and (3) provide future implications for practices and research to increase educational DL among administrators, practitioners, and faculty in postsecondary education.

We used two guiding conceptual frameworks to analyze the common practice and use of educational data in postsecondary education institutions and identify challenges as the educational crossroads. First, we used the 4Vs of Big Data by Rajan (2012) to examine the misalignment between the policy mandate and the practices. The elements of the 4Vs of Big Data – volume, velocity, variety, and veracity – help us to depict how Big Data enables educators to organize, store, manage, and manipulate vast amounts of educational data at the right moment and at the right time. Second, we used the conceptual framework for DL proposed by Gummer and Mandinach (in press). They interpret DL “as the collection, examination, analysis, and interpretation of data to inform some sort of decision in an educational setting” (p. 1, in press).

Using the guiding frameworks, we identified four educational data crossroads as follows:

Crossroad 1: Unintended Increase in Workload Volume;

Crossroad 2: Unrealistic Expectations of Data Velocity;

Crossroad 3: Data Variety in Silos; and

Crossroad 4: Data Veracity and Policy Agenda Mismatch.

In this paper, we explain each of these crossroads in more detail with some examples.

Much of the existing body of literature, exemplary practices, as well as federal and state funding has been focused on K-12 education contexts. In this paper, we identify current practices and challenges of educational data in the institutions of higher education. Additionally, this paper presents the application of the exemplary practices of data literacy development in postsecondary education and implications for future practices of data literacy development in postsecondary education.

Educational change and innovation have been a clear priority in educational systems across Europe in recent years. In this chapter, we reflect on the role played by educational evidence in shaping school practices in the Catalan context. Situated at a crossroads between social cohesion and strong regulations, Catalan schools are navigating a hybrid system marked by increasing autonomy and the educational tradition with an increased interest in accountability and quality assessment through rigid standards and designs.

Despite the Catalan administration's recent promotion of several initiatives to engage schools and teachers with the use of evidence, this process is still irregular and fundamentally depends on decisions made by the school or teachers' commitment.

The factors shaping the teachers' engagement with evidence cover a wide spectrum: from teachers' and educational leaders' conception of the nature of evidence, to given teachers' willingness to use evidence and whether school environments are favourable (or not) to the use of evidence. Acknowledging these factors allows us to specify the direction of action at the system, organisational and class levels. At the system level, promoting a vision of practice based on evidence requires coherent and responsible actions among all actors. At the organisational level, the development of the capacity to use evidence requires leadership that is sensitive to research and favours a positive organisational culture. At the classroom level, teachers' motivation, individual orientation towards the use of evidences, research conception and the capacity to use it, are the key factors.

Due to the coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, primary and secondary schools worldwide are deploying online teaching/learning practices, fostering and thus innovation practices. The purpose of this study is to determine the degree to which practices reflecting educational innovation are implemented in the Greek public primary and secondary schools operating under conditions characterized by the COVID-19 pandemic. Determining the relationship among these educational innovation practices is also an aim of the present study.

A research study was conducted in the Greek public primary and secondary schools. 522 teachers fully completed a structured questionnaire. Descriptive statistics, exploratory factor analysis and structural equation modeling were applied to analyze the data.

The findings reveal that administration-related innovation practices, teaching-related innovation practices and online teaching/learning practices are implemented to some extent in primary and secondary schools in Greece, but there is still scope for continued development. The online teaching/learning practices set the foundations for further developing a culture of fully adopting other educational innovation practices in these schools to improve education.

Limited research concerning educational innovation practices has focused on primary and secondary schools. The need for more studies on teaching and learning innovations that have resulted from the COVID-19 crisis is highlighted by the literature. The results of this study support the fact that online teaching/learning implemented in primary and secondary schools is positively associated with administration-related and teaching-related innovation practices, concluding that this forced change in the educational process can act as a catalyst for more changes and innovative actions.

The purpose of this paper is to design a system deployment model that integrates case-based agent technique to develop an eco-responsibility decision support tool for greening educational institutions toward environmental responsibility.

Data were collected through questionnaires distributed among a statistical population that comprised practitioners across educational institutions in Malaysia that implement green practices. The questionnaire measured the feasibility of the developed tool based on factors derived from the literature. Accordingly, descriptive, exploratory and factor analysis approach using statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) was used to test the feasibility of the developed tool.

Results from descriptive analysis confirm the tool is feasible based on mean values that range from 4.1619 to 3.6508 on a five-point scale, indicating that the tool is effective in sustaining educational institutions going green. Besides, results from exploratory analysis verify the reliability of the tool based on the acceptable Cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficient score higher than 0.7 and Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin value being above 0.5. Finally, results from factor analysis reveal that the developed tool is usable, efficient, helpful, flexible and credible and supports educational institutions in going green at 88.44 per cent of the total variance, suggesting that the respondents are satisfied with the tool.

The sample population in this study comprises only practitioners from educational institutions in Malaysia. Theoretically, this research provides feasibility factors and associated items that can be used in evaluating developed information systems.

Practically, this study develops an eco-responsibility decision support tool to facilitate green strategies and provides information on how practitioners in educational institutions can improve green growth.

This study presents how case-oriented agents aid educational institutions in going green for environmental responsibility. Socially, this research provides the strategies for green practice improvement in educational institutions toward environmental responsibility.

The eco-responsibility decision support tool provides a Web-based platform for promoting ecological protection by supporting the measuring of practitioners’ current green practices for environmental responsibility. Thus, research findings from this study are expected to help decision-makers generate useful insights into environment-friendly strategies to be implemented in educational institutions. Lastly, the statistical tests adopted in this paper can be used to gauge the feasibility of information system application in future.

This chapter features leadership practices sourced from more than 25 Māori (Indigenous) and non-Māori women in Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ) who are leaders of schools where Māori-based best practices benefit Māori and other systemically underserved students (e.g., children in poverty, Pasifika [i.e., Samoan, Fijian, Cook Island, Tongan] descent). This study, by Auckland-based scholars of North American, Indigenous, and international descent (Māori, Latino, African American/American Indian [Choctaw], and East Indian immigrant) examines the expression of Applied Critical Leadership (ACL) in women leaders participating in Te Ara Hou or The Māori Achievement Collaboratives (MACS), an initiative aimed at challenging status quo leadership practices, which result in persistent inequitable educational outcomes for Māori learners. Based on an analysis of data, women leaders demonstrated leadership that mirrored and exemplified leadership practices suggested in ACL research. Qualitative stories evidenced from women leaders in MACS provided exemplars of authentic and appropriate pathways for implementing effective leadership practices aimed at promoting whānau (family), iwi (tribe), and hapū (subtribe) engagement, context-specific pedagogy, tikanga (cultural protocols), and whanaungatanga (relationships) within mainstream school contexts. These findings affirm and validate research on the benefits of critical and culturally appropriate leadership around the world in a number of diverse contexts.

This article seeks to report on a research inquiry that explored the educational praxis of ethical school leaders in Chile. Behaving ethically is an imperative for school leaders. Being an ethical educational leader is something different. It is not only about behaving according to standards, but also rather involves an ethical way of being that engages the leader holistically in their attempt to do the right thing for students.

A multiple case study design was employed to gain insight into the feelings, beliefs and thoughts of ethical school leaders in Chile regarding their educational experiences. To this end, semi‐structured interviews were conducted with eight identified ethical school leaders. The data focused on the commonalities and uniqueness within and across participants.

Six main themes that reflect the experience of being ethical as a school leader in Chile were identified and included: holding personal and professional ethics as inseparable; “consistently” inspiring practice; valuing others; sustaining a humane view of education; being sensitive to the complex local context; and leading as serving.

Ethical leaders in education have been shown to influence educational contexts from a moral imperative that is grounded in a critical and humanistic concern that deeply affirms “others” as a common good. Becoming and being an ethical leader is indeed an experiential journey that integrates the leader's personal and professional way of being. The findings provide key elements of ethical leadership within a Chilean school context that can influence current and future school leaders' practices and professional development.

The purpose of this paper is to reconceptualize the theory-practice gap in educational leadership, not as a deficit, but as a necessity for legitimacy within institutional contexts.

This paper draws on institutional theory to reframe the theory-practice gap, which is often seen as a deficit of leaders or preparation programs.

Three vignettes illustrate how aspiring and current educational leaders engage with theory and practice within specific contexts and in relation to specific aspects of leadership. Importantly, the vignettes show that when school leaders decouple theory from practice, they may be doing so to function as legitimate providers of K-12 educational leadership.

The theory-practice gap, while often perceived as something negative, can have certain benefits within particular contexts. Scholars interested in the interconnections of theory and practice would benefit from considering why and how school leaders engage theory and practice.

Implications for leadership preparation programs highlight developing more complex views of the challenges that leaders face in tightly coupling theory and practice. To support future and current leaders, leadership preparation programs need to ensure that their students understand their institutional contexts and the reasons that leaders may decouple theory from action in various ways.

Instead of viewing the theory/practice gap as a deficit, this paper argues for a new way to consider why school leaders and leadership candidates may engage with theory and practice in different ways.

Currently, the world is experiencing the highest levels of displaced peoples ever recorded by The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (Australian Human Rights Commission, 2016). Consequently, greater numbers of refugees and asylum-seekers are being resettled in host nations in Anglophone and some European nations. An increasing body of literature is examining the consequences for educational systems as this new and increasingly diverse cohort of students enters various education sectors – preschools, schools, universities and adult education. Despite a surge of interest in this area, however, the practical and theoretical implications for school leaders’ practices and praxis remain under-examined and under-theorized. Moreover, scholarship on leadership for diversity fails to capture the complex nature of leading learning for refugee students who too frequently are homogenized and essentialized under the umbrella of immigrant or culturally diverse students. This chapter contributes to filling a critical gap in our knowledge in these areas.

This paper has a twofold purpose: (1) to demonstrate, largely with historical evidence, that, contrary to what some have argued, thinking about educational research articulated at the start of the twenty-first century was not really “new wine in new bottles” but, rather, a continuation of the so-called paradigm wars about, ultimately, unresolvable methodological and epistemological issues that occurred during the twentieth century; (2) to suggest a way members of the educational administration field might transcend, or at least circumvent, time-consuming and distracting battles about unresolvable methodological and epistemological issues in the future while keeping their focus on issues of practice.

This is a quasi-historical essay that uses influential literature during the historical periods focused on as evidence to support the essay's arguments.

The paper demonstrates that twentieth century philosophical disagreements about research methods and the role that educational research can play in policy and practice decision making were not resolved but, rather, were largely reenacted during the first decade of the twenty-first century, again without a resolution. The paper proposes a way that administrators, policymakers and researchers can manage this situation and still use research to make policy and practice decisions.

The paper suggests a new role for both school administrators and policymakers to play. If administrators/policymakers play this role successfully, all types of research can inform decision making about policy and practice, and researchers can concentrate on doing their research rather than engaging in unresolvable philosophical disputes.

Although a great deal has been written about the twentieth century's theory movement and paradigm wars and the twenty-first century's so-called science wars, the link between these phenomena has not been discussed in the literature. In addition, there have been few attempts to articulate an operational strategy for managing unresolvable philosophical disputes about research methods and the role that research can play in decision making. This paper tackles both matters.

In many countries concerns have been expressed about the merits of educational research. This paper reports on the outcomes of a review of reviews of such research in Australia and the UK. Taken at face value, the latest round of reviews are largely critical in the UK (where they have generated much debate) and mainly favourable in Australia (where they have not). In accounting for this difference the paper suggests that it might be explained in part as a function of how the reviews were conducted. In the UK reviews have tended to begin with the research and work forward to practice whereas in Australia they have been inclined to begin with practice and work back to the research. It is suggested that policy makers, practitioners and researchers in Australia and the UK have much to learn from each other's experience, as have those in other countries planning similar reviews.