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The purpose of this paper is to examine how Catholic district offices support school leaders’ instructional leadership practices at times of major reform.

The paper employs the theory of practice architectures as a lens through which to examine local site-based responses to system-wide reforms in two Australian Catholic secondary schools and their district offices. Data collection for these parallel case studies included semi-structured interviews, focus groups, teaching observations, classroom walkthroughs and coaching conversations.

Findings suggest that in the New South Wales case, arrangements of language and specialist discourses associated with a school improvement agenda were reinforced by district office imperatives. These imperatives made possible new kinds of know-how, ways of working and relating to district office, teachers and students when it came to instructional leading. In the Queensland case, the district office facilitated instructional leadership practices that actively sought and valued practitioners’ input and professional judgment.

The research focussed on two case studies of district offices supporting school leaders’ instructional leadership practices at times of major reform. The findings are not generalizable.

Practically, the studies suggest that for excellent pedagogical practice to be embedded and sustained over time, district offices need to work with principals to foster communicative spaces that promote explicit dialogue between teachers and leaders’ interpretive categories.

The paper contends that responding to the diversity of secondary school sites requires district office practices that reject a one size fits all formulas. Instead, district offices must foster site-based education development.

The paper adopts a practice theory approach to its study of district support for instructional leader’ practices. A practice approach rejects a one size fits all approach to educational change. Instead, it focusses on understanding how particular practices come to be in specific sites, and what kinds of conditions make their emergence possible. As such, it leads the authors to consider whether and how different practices such as district practices of educational reforming or principals’ instructional leading might be transformed, or conducted otherwise, under other conditions of possibility.

The purpose of this paper is to examine what school leadership practices are associated with a school’s level of instructional collaboration among school professionals and also investigates what school characteristics are linked to the level of instructional collaboration in a school.

This study drew data from the Comprehensive Assessment of Leadership for Learning (CALL) survey. CALL is a multi-source measure of distributed leadership, comprised of five domains of school leadership practices. Responses from 3,767 teachers and 167 administrators working at 129 schools were analyzed using ordinary least squares regression analysis.

The findings show that there are significant relationships between school leadership practices and the extent of instructional collaboration taking place within schools, both in terms of quantity and quality. In particular, school leadership practices that are closely related to facilitating instruction and allocating resources are associated with a school’s instructional collaboration, whereas a leadership practice related to environmental factors tends not to be significantly correlated with a school’s collaborative culture. This study also found that leadership perspectives on instructional collaboration are an important predictor of both quantity and quality of collaboration among school professionals.

This study clarifies the importance of school leadership in a collaborative culture and also provides empirical evidence of what specific practices of school leadership predict the frequencies of professional collaborative activities in school as well as their quality. In addition, this study demonstrates how schools’ contextual factors are related to the level of instructional collaboration among professionals.

This study tested a moderated mediation model of school leadership effects on teacher instructional practices. Specifically, the authors focused on the mediating effect of teacher professional communities and the moderating effect of instructional climate on the relationship between school leadership and teacher instructional practices.

The authors collected data from 958 teachers working in 72 middle and high schools in Türkiye and employed multilevel structural equation modelling (MSEM) with Bayesian estimation to predict structural links between the study variables.

Results affirmed a full mediation model where school leadership practices exerted indirect effects on teacher instructional practices through promoting teacher professional communities. The authors also found significant moderating role of instructional climate in the effect of school leadership on teacher professional communities and instructional practices.

This study illuminates the contextualized nature of school leadership by concluding that the effect of school leadership on teacher professional communities and instructional practices is closely tied to the extent to which a high-quality instructional climate is established in schools.

The purpose of this paper is to outline the findings from a small-scale, exploratory, study of principals’ instructional leadership practice in Malaysian primary schools. The dimensions and functions of instructional leadership, explicitly explored in this study, are those outlined in the Hallinger and Murphy’s (1985) model.

This study is part of a larger international, comparative research project that aims to identify the boundaries of the current knowledge base on instructional leadership practice and to develop a preliminary empirically based understanding of how principals conceive and enact their role as instructional leaders in Hong Kong, China, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand. Using a qualitative research design, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 30 primary school principals in Malaysia. The sample comprised principals from 14 Government National schools (SK), nine principals from Chinese schools (SJKC) and seven principals from Tamil schools (SJKT). The qualitative data were initially analysed inductively, and subsequently coded using ATLAS.ti to generate the findings and conclusions.

The findings showed that the Malaysian principals, who were interviewed, understood and could describe their responsibilities relating to improving instructional practice. In particular, they talked about the supervision of teachers and outlined various ways in which they actively monitored the quality of teaching and learning in their schools. These data revealed that some of the duties and activities associated with being a principal in Malaysia are particularly congruent with instructional leadership practices. In particular, the supervision of teaching and learning along with leading professional learning were strongly represented in the data.

This is a small-scale, exploratory study involving 30 principals.

There is a clear policy aspiration, outlined in the Malaysian Education Blueprint, that principals should be instructional leaders. The evidence shows that principals are enacting some of the functions associated with being an instructional leader but not others.

The findings from this study provide some new insights into the principals’ instructional leadership practices in Malaysia. They also provide a basis for further, in-depth exploration that can enhance the knowledge base about principals’ instructional leadership practices in Malaysia.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of different dimensions of instructional leadership on student learning in Hong Kong secondary schools, whose broader institutional contexts are critically characterized by high accountability policy environments.

This study utilizes standardized test scores collected from (n=2,037) students in 42 secondary schools and data collected from key staff's perceptions of leadership practices, to investigate two dimensions of instructional leadership, which are conceptually interdependent but distinctive – i.e. instructional management and direct supervision of instruction. A cross‐level interaction analysis of hierarchical linear modeling was employed to investigate the effects of the two dimensions of instructional leadership on student learning.

Leadership practices focused on instructional management were found to enhance student learning by boosting the positive effect of students’ attachment to their school on academic achievement. In contrast, leadership practices related to direct supervision of instruction were found to undermine student learning by weakening the positive effect of student perceptions of school attachment on academic performance when other school‐ and student‐level characteristics are held constant.

The paper reveals the contrasting effects of instructional leadership as a multi‐dimensional construct which is central in the current education reform agenda, rooted in accountability‐oriented policy of Hong Kong. It draws a number of implications for principal instructional leadership in Hong Kong Schools as they deal with demands for external accountability.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of instructional leaders in promoting culturally responsive practice in ways that make schooling more inclusive and humanizing for minoritized students and communities.

The data pull from a six-month long case study of a mid-sized, Midwestern school district that was attempting to implement culturally responsive leadership practices. After axial coding, findings emerged from interview data and field notes.

Instructional leaders can play significant and useful roles in promoting culturally responsive teaching and pedagogy in schools. Districts can establish positions in which instructional leaders can work to strengthen the culturally responsive pedagogy of every teacher in a district.

This study has implications for both research and practice. Culturally responsive school leadership (CRSL) exists in multiple spaces and at various levels in a district. CRSL is not only a school-level function, but it can also be a district-level practice. Culturally responsive instructional leaders (in this case, not principals, but coaches) can have significant impact in promoting culturally relevant pedagogy.

This contribution moves beyond school leadership and examines how district leadership practices and decisions foster culturally relevant practices and the challenges in employing this equity work.

The purpose of the study was to provide an example of instructional coaching for inservice teachers within the context of community-engaged scholarship (CEP), involving professional learning communities (PLCs). This study seeks to encourage policymakers to allocate budgets for instructional coaches, as well as resources for schools.

An exploratory case study design was used to examine the factors that contributed to the partnership and how the PLC sessions impacted the inservice teachers' practices. Data sources included interviews, focus groups, written reflections, observations of grade-level teachers' meetings and administrative meetings.

The study uncovered important factors that impacted the community-engaged partnership (CEP) positively, such as partners having a unified agenda, a common focus on the school's needs and an understanding of the culture of the school. Principals are the gatekeepers in such partnerships.

This study yielded the description of a model of instructional coaching within a CEP that other universities around the world could replicate. The limitations of this study include the length of the study and the time frame in which the PLC content was planned. The study was conducted over 1 year to limited funding. The instructional coach developed the PLC content during the ongoing academic year and that impacted the teachers' initial perceptions and their commitment to the PLCs.

This study offers a new coaching model for CEPs that focuses on closing the gap between theory and practice by integrating PLCs, content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge and face-to-face visual support.

A number of empirical studies and evaluations in Norway and Sweden shows variabilities in the degree to which the municipalities succeed in their endeavors to support school principals’ instructional leadership practices. In response to this situation, the Norwegian and Swedish directorates of education have developed a joint collaborative design for practice learning of instructional leadership. Based on findings from two separate studies, the purpose of this paper is to contribute to theory development and improved practice for school district administrators and their subordinated school leaders.

The study draws on the data from participants who completed the program in June 2015, June 2016 and June 2017, respectively. The data are based on individual reflection documents from students on their learning and new leadership practices 4 months, 16 months and 28 months after the end of the program.

The project subjected to this study, labeled “Benchlearning,” involved learning from experiences of others, observational learning, dialogic group learning and in the final round translating what is learnt into the social and cultural context in which the individual school principal’s school is situated. When participating school principals experience observation-based learning together with trusted colleagues, followed by vicarious learning from these experiences in their schools, the authors see some facilitating factors to be of particular importance: learning infrastructure, digital tools, compulsory tasks associated with preparation and subsequent experiments with their teachers. Emerging from the analysis was a systematic balancing act of autonomy and structure running through the various learning activities. Finally, a strong evidence was found that developing core competence in digital learning and formative assessment among teaching staff required enhanced distributed leadership across the whole school organization. By sharing leadership tasks on instructional issues with teachers and other non-leaders, principals succeeded in leveling up instructional leadership significantly.

The implications of the study can be summed up in the following four principles. First, policy makers should take into accounts the fact that principals’ motivation and willingness to initiate change processes can be created in a synergy between structured school visits and engagement in learning groups based on a sound theoretical foundation. Second, within a socially contracted practice in a well-designed learning group, it is possible to raise principals’ level of self-efficacy. Third, a systematic reflection process on authentic practice is an example of how principals can develop their metacognitive capacity and how knowledge can be transformed into new practice. Finally, educators should be trained to be process leaders in order to create a balance between demand and support in promoting principals’ learning of new instructional leadership practices.

School district administrators should take into accounts the fact that changing practices will be supported by sense-making processes involving discussions about how new instructional practices are justified. Specifically, shifts in talk and actions will also involve shifts in the ways people relate to each other and how they relate to their internal context. Further, leadership programs should include trying out new practices as the focal learning mode, accompanied by individual and collective reflective activities.

The findings of the study underscore the mutual interdependence of distributed leadership and student-centered focus accompanied with the school’s learning capacity as enabling conditions for principals’ practice learning in the field of instructional leadership.

This study aims to explore the instructional leadership practices implemented by academic professionals and leaders to enhance the curriculum of Islamic economics and finance (IEF) in two public universities in Saudi Arabia.

This study used a qualitative approach, using a case study methodology that focused on two meticulously chosen universities in Saudi Arabia. A total of 21 academics from two public universities in Saudi Arabia who worked in IEF schools were selected for semi-structured interviews.

The findings showed that two universities in Saudi Arabia that offer degrees in IEF exhibited limited instructional leadership. The findings indicate four apparent barriers that may explain the lack of involvement in instructional leadership and fair practices in the IEF curriculum at Saudi Arabian universities. According to this study, a positive collegial climate in Saudi universities’ IEF promotes shared instructional leadership.

The use of a limited qualitative method and small sample of respondents in this study may not provide enough evidence to generalise the findings to all universities and higher education schools in Saudi Arabia. Although a case study was used to describe IEF curriculum management and implementation at the two universities, caution should be exercised when applying these findings to other institutions.

IEF schools in Saudi universities need to leverage their positive, collaborative and relationship-building environments to develop activities that promote shared instructional leadership.

The research findings can offer valuable insights and examples for school leaders to develop instructional activities and promote the concept of “shared instructional leadership”. This approach involves delegating responsibilities and actions to others to enhance the IEF curriculum’s quality. Policymakers and university officials can use these findings to enhance strategic policies.

The purpose of this paper is to understand what the principal and principal supervisor each bring and contribute to their collaborative work that is consequential for the principal’s learning and development as an instructional leader.

Multiple case study methodology is used to gather data from 12 principal supervisor/principal partnerships over a 16 month period in one Mid-Atlantic school district. Data sources included interviews, observational data and documents provided by participants in the study.

In productive principal supervisor/principal partnerships, findings demonstrated that the principal supervisor and the principal each brought specific antecedent characteristics to their partnership and each made contributions to the development of a productive partnership during their collaborative work. When these partnership qualities were present, principal supervisors and principals engaged in joint work, leading to robust changes in principals’ instructional leadership practice.

This study examined the work of principals and principal supervisors in one large Mid-Atlantic school district.

Findings from this study have implications for districts’ assignments of principal supervisors, principal supervisor/principal selection and professional development of principal supervisors. Further, districts should create the conditions for principal supervisors and principals to establish learning-focused professional partnerships in three stages, culminating in the engagement of joint work for improvement to facilitate principals’ changes in instructional leadership practice.

Findings from this study illustrate the value of establishing a learning-focused partnership between principal supervisors and principals in three stages to facilitate robust stages in principals’ instructional leadership practice. A new conceptual framework displays the stages of partnership development that occur in productive principal/principal supervisor partnerships.