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Middle leaders play an important role in the education landscape, first and foremost as teachers, and second as leaders. The purpose of this paper is to identify the expectations and challenges experienced by first-time middle leaders in New Zealand primary schools, and identify the leadership development and support they were provided with.

This was a small qualitative study designed to collect data from the perspectives of first-time middle leaders and principals in New Zealand primary schools. Three methods were employed. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with six middle leaders who had been in the role for one to three years. These participants were identified through an analysis of recent public appointment records and then e-mailed with an invitation. Four principals from a local principals’ association were invited to comprise a focus group and relevant documents were analysed.

The findings from this study are presented in three sections: expectations, challenges and leadership development and support. Whilst the principals described wide and varied role expectations the middle leaders highlighted the importance of their teaching role with leadership responsibilities as secondary. From both perspectives time to do the administrative work was an overwhelming difficulty. A key finding was related to a lack of confidence to undertake the role in spite of efforts to provide and receive support. Overall, there was agreement that further development for new middle leaders was essential.

This small, limited study highlights the central role that middle leaders play in leading learning and teaching, and the existence of a lack of confidence. Further research is needed to delve into conditions that would enable new middle leaders to manage the challenges of time and confidence.

The research recommends that practitioners who are new to a middle leadership role be allocated dedicated time for performing the administrative tasks and participating in an ongoing induction programme. The middle leaders themselves and their schools would benefit from efforts to strengthen middle leadership development.

Although a great deal has been written about middle leadership, there is only a small amount of research about primary schools. This research adds valuable new information in a primary school context and breaks new ground in researching early career, first-time middle leaders in this context.

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.

The aim of this paper is to bring together for the first time three studies of middle‐level leaders in secondary schools in Victoria, Australia. The studies span more than a decade and allow consideration of the progress in developing middle‐level leadership roles.

All studies followed a consistent approach using multiple perspective interviews of middle‐level curriculum and subject leadership in government and Catholic secondary schools in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Principals, senior leaders, middle‐level leaders and teachers were interviewed to gain their perceptions on middle‐level leadership. Interviews were supplemented with school document analysis.

The work of middle‐level leaders is heavily dependent on how their roles are constructed and the capacities, abilities and attitudes of the leaders. Some are expected to be leaders that influence teaching and learning, and they may be developed and supported to do so. Too often, however, teachers in these key roles have few expectations or opportunities to exercise leadership. Whilst many have the capacity to be leaders of teaching and learning, others are not sure about their ability to influence teaching and learning. Suggestions are made for how leadership might be structured in schools to emphasise the importance of middle‐level leaders, and how these leaders can be better prepared and supported.

Observational studies, studies of primary school contexts and cross‐country comparisons would extend this research.

Middle‐level school leaders need to be seen as key personnel in improving teaching and learning, school structures need to reflect this, and developing leadership capacity needs to be prioritised.

This paper highlights continuing issues with how the work of middle‐level school leaders is conceptualised and supported, and makes suggestions for leadership structure and the preparation and development of school leaders.

The importance of modeling digital leadership in quickly digitizing countries, like the United Arab Emirates (UAE), is inevitable for building leadership capabilities to lead, engage and motivate remote employees in the digital environment. Using Blake and Mouton Grid, the current study examines the behavioral approach used by the leaders from both public and private sectors while managing their workforce digitally in the period of the pandemic, when 70% of the workforce worked remotely for the first-time in the region.

An online survey was conducted by the managerial employees working in different firms using self-administered questionnaires and adopting the snowball sampling technique. In total, 476 respondents participated in the study from both the Emirates of Abu Dhabi and Dubai.

The analysis using IBM SPSS and Smart PLS software reported that 9 out of 10 leaders positioned their digital leadership style well above the middle-of-the-road management style (5,5) oriented towards team management (9,9); with 7 out of 9 displaying high team management leadership style, while managing remote workers. However, millennials displayed higher task orientation when compared to generation-x leaders, who concentrated more on their relations with the workers.

The findings have implications for practitioners in technology driven regions. Also the results highlighting the task-oriented approach of millennials digital leaders have implication for owners and board of directors of the firms that seniority is not the only credible approach for leadership positions.

The study reveals the behavioral styles beneficial for digital leaders to develop their leadership capabilities and increase their effectiveness while managing the workforce digitally. Black Mountain Grid and its two-dimensional leadership matrix has been found to be a useful conceptual approach for understanding digital leadership behaviors, and based on study findings, recommendations have been provided to effectively improve its utilization for leading teams. The findings have implications for practitioners in technology driven regions as well as digital leadership field scholars.

The focus of this chapter lies with women middle-level leaders. It reports on themes from women in leadership programmes designed and delivered by Barbara Watterston, through the lens of a programme especially developed for the Association of Independent Schools of South Australia (AISSA). This chapter begins by profiling a description of the programme. The main aim was providing women leaders with an opportunity to take stock of their careers, consider ongoing challenges impeding their work as school leaders, and identify options for the future. After the programme finished, volunteers were invited to write a narrative encapsulating their career journey. Three women leaders volunteered, and their insightful reflections regarding their career trajectories constitute a significant portion of this chapter. The final part of this chapter identifies three common themes that emerged from their stories, resonating with ideas which are frequently illuminated in similar programmes and research. These include the importance of ongoing professional learning to be a successful leader, gender-based barriers that caused the women to doubt their abilities and readiness for leadership, and the deep appreciation the women expressed from learning with and from like-minded other women leaders.

This study employs Stein Rokkan's methodological approach to analyse state formation in the Greater Middle East. It develops a conceptual framework distinguishing colonial, populist and democratic pacts, suitable for analysis of state formation and nation-building through to the present period. The framework relies on historical institutionalism. The methodology, however, is Rokkan's. The initial conceptual analysis also specifies differences between European and the Middle Eastern state formation processes. It is followed by a brief and selective discussion of historical preconditions. Next, the method of plotting singular cases into conceptual-typological maps is applied to 20 cases in the Greater Middle East (including Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey). For reasons of space, the empirical analysis is limited to the colonial period (1870s to the end of World War 1). Three typologies are combined into one conceptual-typological map of this period. The vertical left-hand axis provides a composite typology that clarifies cultural-territorial preconditions. The horizontal axis specifies transformations of the region's agrarian class structures since the mid-19th century reforms. The right-hand vertical axis provides a four-layered typology of processes of external intervention. A final section presents selected comparative case reconstructions. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first time such a Rokkan-style conceptual-typological map has been constructed for a non-European region.

This book is a policy proposal aimed at the democratic left. It is concerned with gradual but radical reform of the socio‐economic system. An integrated policy of industrial and economic democracy, which centres around the establishment of a new sector of employee‐controlled enterprises, is presented. The proposal would retain the mix‐ed economy, but transform it into a much better “mixture”, with increased employee‐power in all sectors. While there is much of enduring value in our liberal western way of life, gross inequalities of wealth and power persist in our society.

This chapter focuses on South Korea’s newly found regional leadership, as the emergent middle power of East Asia, in order to advance regional integration and institution-building. Policy leadership is observed and analyzed from an international lens, linked to the literature of middle powers. The chapter first conceptualizes middle powers in connection with the issue of international leadership, since such states often play important roles in promoting cooperation. The chapter looks especially into South Korea’s foreign policy behavior toward East Asian regional processes and how it has manifested innovative and capable leadership. More specifically, the last three presidencies of Kim Dae-jung (1998–2002), Roh Moo-hyun (2003–2008), and Lee Myung-bak (2008–2013) are scrutinized in the hope of underscoring how their particular administrations, political leadership, and strategic approaches to foreign policy toward the region influenced South Korea’s regional leadership attempts and middle power status.

The authors demonstrate the usage of data visualization for conveying educational administration research, with a specific focus on differential principal turnover. They model when and how principals move, over time, between six categories of turnover.

The authors construct several easy-to-interpret alluvial diagrams that reveal the patterns of differential turnover among 1,113 first-time Texas principals. Furthermore, the authors investigate how these patterns differ across educator characteristics (i.e. race and sex) and school contexts (i.e. school level and campus urbanicity).

Half of all first-time principals turn over within two years. Most principals who stay in leadership roles leave the district where they were first entered the principalship. Men are promoted more and women turn over less. In a connected finding, the authors conclude that elementary principals turn over less, and middle and high school principals are promoted more often. Principals of color are demoted more often than White principals. Urban school principals exit the system at a greater rate than rural principals.

The significance of this study lies in its direct response to two problems facing the administrator turnover knowledge base – a lack of methodological accessibility and the underutilization of data visualization. The authors’ is the first study to contain visualization of differential turnover outcomes over time. Second, the authors’ study provides a blueprint for data visualization that not only creates new knowledge but also speaks to a wider variety of education stakeholders by presenting complex data in a visual format.

On 1 April 1978, the Israeli peace movement burst into world consciousness when an estimated 25,000 Israelis demonstrated in Tel Aviv to urge the administration of Prime Minister Menachem Begin to continue peace negotiations with Egypt. A grassroots group called Peace Now is credited with organizing and leading that demonstration. Today, the “peace camp” refers to left‐wing political parties and organizations that hold dovish positions on the Arab‐Israeli conflict and the Palestinian issue. While some figures in the Labor Party view themselves as the peace movement's natural leader, political parties further to the left like the Citizens Rights Movement (CRM) and Mapam are more dovish. In the last 10 years, many grassroots peace organizations have, like Peace Now, formed outside the political party system, with the goal of influencing public opinion and eventually having an impact on policy makers. Peace Now is still the largest, most visible and influential of those organizations.