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The primary purpose is to present empirical measures of variables relating to practices engaged in by site‐based teams, and then to use these variables to test a model predicting significant outcomes of site‐based decision making. The practice variables of site‐based management (SBM) teams are essential in promoting research within a distributed leadership framework.

A path model is computed to test the relationships between factors relating to the support received by site‐based teams; site team communication and decision‐making practice, and perceived outcomes of SBM. Measures are based on survey data collected from 367 team members in 50 schools from fifteen school districts in a northeastern state in the US.

Results show that different factors relating to the support provided to site‐based teams and practices employed by these teams emerge as statistically significant predictors of various outcomes. Results suggest that the resources provided to support site teams, e.g. the devolution of decision‐making power, results in enhanced stakeholder influence, but whether this influence results in better decisions or improvement in teaching and learning depends on the communication and decision‐making practices site teams employ within a distributed leadership framework.

This study sought to identify site team decision making and communication processes that reflect how site teams conduct their work, defining how members of site teams perceive the “rules of the game.” In doing so, it offers a new and different perspective on how such processes impact outcomes associated with shared decision‐making processes, and thus a better understanding of the complex dynamics of school‐site decision making and the distribution of leadership in schools.

Using sociolinguistic methods and ethnography, looks at the continuous and in process relationship between everyday talk and school leadership. Through close discourse analysis of three distinct situations, demonstrates how administrative talk shapes and is shaped by a school’s contexts, creating constant possibilities for educational leaders. Discusses implications for understanding how and why moral leadership is tenuous and problematic using Dewey’s notion of mortality as the nurturing of educational ideas: that is, in practice, moral leadership is not always reflexive or progressive.

School managerial control is derived from perceptions of behavioural interactions between teachers and administrators along two dimensions: regular patterns of formal and informal structures and rules; and discretionary behaviours reflecting the quality of managerial performance. Analyses the interactive effects of these two dimensions across processes of control labelled as standards, information processing, assessments and incentives – all within the task domain of curriculum and instruction. The discussion of structure and discretion is significant in terms of the relationship, seemingly contradictory, between uniform guidelines of administrative practice and qualitative discretion.

This book provides a deeper understanding of what it means to promote social justice and equity work in schools and communities around the world. Throughout this book, narratives describe how authors continue to reshape the agenda for educational reform. They remind us of the significance meaningful relationships play in promoting and sustaining reform efforts that address the injustices vulnerable populations face in school communities. Their voices represent the need for engaging with obstacles and barriers and a resistant world through a web of relationships, an intersubjective reality (see Ayers, 1996). As authors engaged in thinking about addressing injustices, they describe how their thoughts transformed into actions moving beyond, breaking through institutional structures, attempting to rebuild and make sense of their own situations (see Dewey, 1938).

This case study focuses on the perceptions of frontline educators, including social workers and settlement workers, across all levels of two Canadian school boards in Central and Southwest Ontario. These jurisdictions attracted significant numbers of Syrian newcomers since January, 2016, both those sponsored publicly and privately, but also directly among Syrians themselves who had heard about the ‘great reputations’ of these school boards. The case study describes how educators responded innovatively – on the fly – to meet new needs, through policies, structures, staffing, partnerships and curricular changes. We documented educators’ stories, hopefully capturing the optimism as well as the stress created by welcoming the newcomers. Our findings and implications remain tentative as in ‘too soon to tell’, thus the expressions of dilemmas in leadership and policy as we witnessed successes towards Syrian integration into schools, communities and Canadian society.