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Research, spanning half a century, points to the critical role of school administration and to the successful implementation of US government policies and programs. In part these findings reflect the times and a US educational governance system characterized by local control, a constitutionally‐constrained federal government, resource‐poor state governments, and an overall system of segment arrangements for governing education. However, the US education policy environment has changed dramatically over the past several decades, with standards and high stakes accountability becoming commonplace. The purpose of this paper is to examine the entailments of shifts in the policy environment for school administrative practice, focusing on how school leaders manage in the middle between this shifting external policy environment and classroom teachers.

The paper's focus is on how school administration manages the dual organizational imperatives of legitimacy and integrity in a changing institutional environment. This paper is an essay in which the authors reflect on the entailments of shifts in the education sector for school administration over the past quarter century in the USA.

While considerable change for school administrative practice is suggested, the authors argue that organizational legitimacy and organizational integrity are still central concerns for school leaders.

Although the paper's account is based entirely on the US education sector, several aspects of the framing may be relevant in other countries.

This paper is concerned with the epistemological and methodological challenges involved in studying the distribution of leadership across people within the school – the leader‐plus aspect of a distributed perspective, which it aims to investigate.

The paper examines the entailments of the distributed perspective for collecting and analyzing data on school leadership and management. It considers four different operationalizations of the leader‐plus aspect of the distributed perspective and examines the results obtained from these different operationalizations. The research reported in this paper is part of a larger study, an efficacy trial of a professional development program intended to prepare principals to improve their practice. The study involved a mixed method design. For the purpose of this paper a combination of qualitative and quantitative data, including an experience sampling method (ESM) principal log, a principal questionnaire (PQ), and a school staff questionnaire (SSQ) was used.

While acknowledging broad similarities among the various approaches, the different approaches also surfaced some divergence that has implications for thinking about the epistemological and methodological challenges in measuring leadership from a distributed perspective. Approaches that focus on the lived organization as distinct from the designed organization, for example, unearth the role of individuals with no formal leadership designations in leading and managing the school.

Limited by the data set, the paper focuses on only four operationalizations of the leader plus aspect of the distributed perspective rather than taking a more comprehensive look at how the leader plus aspect might be operationalized.

The primary value of this paper is that it will prompt scholars to think about the entailments of different ways of operationalizing the leader plus aspect when using a distributed perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to examine relationships among governmental organizations, non-governmental organizations and the organization and management of instruction in US public education, with the aim of raising issues for cross-national research among countries in which the involvement of non-governmental organizations is increasing.

The paper is structured in four parts: an historical analysis of the architecture and dynamics of US public education; an analysis of contemporary reform efforts seeking to improve quality and reduce inequities; an analysis of ways that legacy and reform dynamics manifest in two US public school districts; and a discussion of considerations for cross-national research.

In US public education, dependence on non-governmental organizations for instructional resources and services is anchored in deeply institutionalized social, political and economic values dating to the country’s founding and that continue to function as constraints on educational reform, such that new solutions always emerge in-and-from the same problematic conditions that they seek to redress. The consequence is that reform takes on an evolutionary (vs transformative) character.

The US case provides a foundation for framing issues for cross-national research comparing among macro-level educational infrastructures, patterns of instructional organization and classroom instruction.

Such research would move beyond reductionist approaches to cross-national research toward new approaches that examine how histories, legacy architectures, contemporary reforms and patterns of instructional organization and management interact to shape students’ day-to-day lives in classrooms.

The purpose of this paper is to show how school principals in France spend their work time and when and under what circumstances they deal with school improvement-related matters.

For the study presented in this paper, a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods was used. Five French collèges (secondary schools) from one school district were visited for a week each. Each principal was shadowed, his/her actions and the context were recorded and categorized. The shadowing was conducted using a structured observation approach derived from Mintzberg. In addition semi-structured interviews were conducted with all principals. The data were analyzed following a grounded theory approach.

The results show how principals spend their work time and as well as possible areas of improvement. Among other things, they reveal very fragmented workdays. Most principals put a low emphasis on school improvement and struggle with conflicting expectations (preservation vs innovation). Shared leadership was only observed in one case.

The specificity of the sample limits the possible ranges of interpretation and generalization. Also, it remains unclear whether one week of observation per school is enough to get a reliable estimate of a principal's daily work. There is a need for further empirical studies of the matter.

This paper offers rare insights into the day-to-day work of French school principals. It contributes to the understanding of school leadership practice as well as to the transcultural understanding of school leadership.

This study aims to investigate antecedent conditions that lead to the development of distributed leadership (DL). The authors examine how the emergence of DL is affected by empowerment and internal context, which consists of shared purpose, social support and voice. The moderating effects of training are also investigated.

To test the hypotheses, this empirical analysis of the relationship between the variables was based on the results of a questionnaire survey on 62 teams in high-tech enterprises of mainland China.

Results indicate that empowerment and internal context in the team significantly predict the extent of DL and that training has positive moderating effects on the relationships.

The results imply that firms must carefully analyze specific team conditions to ensure shared purpose, social support and voice in each team. This study also suggests the importance of empowerment. Moreover, enterprises can use training, a human resource tool, to enhance the positive effects of internal context and empowerment on DL.

By building on upper echelons theory and integrating insights from contingency theory, this study extends prior research by examining the direct effects of both empowerment managerial system and internal context on DL and the moderating effect of training.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between perceived distributed leadership and job satisfaction among nurses. Leadership is central to improving quality care. Reports following investigations of poor care standards, identified inadequate leadership as a contributory factor and called for a new kind of leadership. One alternative is distributed leadership. Evidence suggests associations between leadership and job satisfaction but, there is a paucity of research examining associations between distributed leadership and job satisfaction: the purpose of this study was to address this gap.

A cross-sectional survey design was used and data collected via questionnaires. Using census sampling, 350 nurses in a hospital in Malta were selected. A response rate of 50% (n = 176) was achieved. Data were analysed using Spearman’s correlation coefficient and multiple regression. Ethical approval was obtained from relevant committees/individuals.

Results indicated a moderate application of perceived distributed leadership and application of all components of distributed leadership could be improved. Nurses were neither satisfied nor dissatisfied with their jobs. Correlation analysis showed a positive relationship between distributed leadership and job satisfaction. Multiple regression showed that commitment and participative decision-making were major predictors of job satisfaction while supervision by managers had a negative effect.

Improving distributed leadership is a priority in the nursing profession.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to show that distributed leadership has a positive effect on job satisfaction among nurses. Supervision, a constituent of distributed leadership, was associated with reduced job satisfaction, therefore reducing this is paramount.

This article aims to propose a critical review of James G. March’s research in and particular its consistency with its epistemological and psychological underpinnings.

The paper proposes a textual and conceptual analysis of James G. March’s study.

The article argues first that March’s study exemplifies the “physics envy” typical of management and organisation studies scholars since the early 1960s. Second, evidence is presented that March’s conclusions, irrespective of their legacy on management and organisation studies, were not developed along and were not consistent with the foundations that March espoused and advocated during most of his career. As a result, the implications of his conclusions are uncertain. To his credit, however, there are reasons to believe that, towards the end of his career, March came to recognise the limitations of his scholarship. Further, he indicated an alternative avenue for organisation studies which eschews the shortcomings of positivist and post-modern research.

Although centred on March’s work, the argument presented is relevant to psychology, organisations, choice, the nature of knowledge, the limitations of positivism and post-modernism.

The paper balances the perspective offered by recent celebratory reviews of March’s study.

The paper focuses on lesson study, which generally engages the collaborative work of a group of teachers, as implemented with a primary school art teacher who had limited opportunities for collaboration. Through lesson study, the teacher worked closely with a lesson study facilitator and an art education expert to plan a research lesson. The study explores how this collaboration generated cognitive conflicts and eventually teacher change.

This paper presents a case study using a thematic approach to data analysis. The lesson study involved weekly face-to-face meetings and daily online communications over a period of eight weeks. In an attempt to reflect upon and resolve conflicts, the teacher kept a journal in which the teacher wrote down lengthy accounts of the discussions with knowledgeable others, the teacher’s struggles and ways of resolving these. Data were complemented by the different lesson plan versions, the post-lesson discussions and a detailed report documenting the lesson study process.

The paper provides insights into the role that cognitive conflicts play for teacher change. Through ongoing communication, reflection and support to resolve conflicts, the teacher recognised more collaborative opportunities for professional development, freed from rigid lesson planning practices and reported a new conceptualisation to teaching.

Drawing on the literature about effective teacher professional learning, the paper offers implications for supporting teacher change.

This paper provides insights into how lesson study may provide conditions that enable teachers' cognitive conflict and facilitate their consequent resolution.

The purpose of this paper is to know the extent to which a decision-making framework assists in providing holistic, comprehensive descriptions of strategies used by school leaders engaging with distributed leadership practices. The process by which principals and other education leaders interact various school-based actors to arrive at a distributed decision-making process is addressed through this paper. The position taken suggests that leadership does not reside solely with principals or other education leaders, but sustains the view that the actions of various actors within a school setting contribute to fuller and more comprehensive accounts of distributed leadership.

While the application of rational/analytical approaches to organizational problems or issues can lead to effective decisions, dilemmas faced by principals are often messy, complex, ill-defined and not easily resolved through algorithmic reason or by the application of rules, as evidenced by the two stories provided by Agnes, a third-year principal in a small countryside elementary school in a small northeastern community, and by John, a novice principal in a suburb of a large Southwestern metropolitan area.

The value of the objective knowledge growth framework (OKGF) process is found in its ability to focus Agnes’s attention on things that she may have overlooked, such as options she might have ignored or information that she might have resisted or accepted, as well as innumerable preparations she might have neglected had she not involved all the teachers in her school.

The implementation of the OKGF may appear, occasionally, to introduce unnecessary points along this route and may not be laboriously applied to all decision-making situations. However, the instinctively pragmatic solutions provided by this framework will often produce effective results. Therefore, in order to reduce potentially irrational outcomes, the systematic approach employed by the OKGF is preferable. The OKGF must be managed, implemented and sustained locally if it is to provide maximum benefits to educational decision makers.

Given the principals’ changing roles, it is abundantly clear that leadership practice can no longer involve just one person, by necessity, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to imagine how things could have been accomplished otherwise. Expecting the principal to single-handedly lead efforts to improve instruction is impractical, particularly when leadership may be portrayed as what school principals do, especially when other potential sources of leadership have been ignored or treated as secondary or unimportant because that leadership has not emanated from the principal’s office (Spillane, 2006). In this paper, the authors have striven to reveal how a perspective of distributed leadership, when used in conjunction with the objective knowledge growth framework, can be effective in assisting principals in resolving problems of practice.

Different school leaders of varying status within the educative organization benefit from obtaining different answers to similar issues, as evidenced by John’s and Agnes’s leadership tangles. Lumby and English (2009) differentiate between “routinization” and “ritualization.” They argue, “They are not the same. The former erases the need for human agency while the latter requires it” (p. 112). The OKGF process, therefore, cannot provide school leaders with the “right” answers to their educative quandaries, simply because any two school leaders, facing the same issues, may utilize differing theories, solutions, choices or options which may satisfy their issues in response to their own individual contextual factors. Similarly, in a busy day or week, school leaders may be inclined to take the shortest distance between two points in the decision-making process; problem identification to problem resolution.

Should the OKGF process empower decision makers to obtain sound resolutions to their educative issues by assisting them in distancing themselves from emotions or confirmation biases that may distract them from resolving school problems, its use will have been worthwhile.

This article examines the loosely coupled nature of the US educational system and explores recent systemic reform initiatives designed to improve education through more tightly coupled education policy and practice. The utility and limitations of loose coupling as an organizational construct are examined and critiqued. A number of significant forces are exerting ever‐greater pressure on policymakers to more tightly couple US education, including environmental pressures, the emergence of powerful new institutional actors, an emergent institutional capacity, and institutional isomorphism. After reviewing the effectiveness of systemic reform initiatives in several states, the article concludes that education in the USA is moving toward a system of fragmented centralization in which policymakers have greater opportunity to craft more coherent, systemic education policy amidst competing demands for limited resources.