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School leaders can significantly influence the conditions that affect teacher retention. Yet, leaders in rural and high-poverty schools often face limited opportunities to develop their abilities to enhance these conditions. In this case study, we examine how participating in a professional community supported school leaders' efforts to increase teacher retention and student learning outcomes.

We used case study methodology to study 14 leaders from rural, high-poverty or underperforming schools with greater-than-average levels of teacher turnover. The leaders were participating in a three-year research-practice partnership intended to assist them in using improvement science to address problems of practice related to teacher retention and student learning outcomes in their schools. We collected and analyzed data from interviews, exit surveys, artifacts and participant observations over a one-year period.

Participating in this professional community helped the leaders create the conditions for increased teacher retention and student learning outcomes by providing them with opportunities to collaborate with their peers, receive leadership coaching, exchange ideas and learn in a safe space.

These findings confirm and extend extant school leadership development research. A particularly interesting finding was the role of the professional community in reducing the leaders' feelings of isolation while providing them a safe space to learn. The findings also illustrate how universities and school districts can partner to provide professional learning opportunities that enhance school leaders' professional knowledge, leadership practices and well-being.

The authors tested the efficacy of a team-based instructional leadership intervention designed to increase middle school mathematics and science teachers' use of educational technologies for multiple representations of content to foster students' conceptual understandings. Each school's leadership team comprised an administrator, a technology instructional specialist role, and a mathematics and a science teacher leader.

The authors tested the intervention in a quasi-experimental design with five treatment and five matched comparison schools. Participants included 48 leadership team members and 100 grade 6–8 teachers and their students. The authors analyzed data using two-level, nested multiple regressions to determine the effect of treatment on leaders' practices; leaders' practices on teachers' learning and integration; and teachers' learning and integration on students' learning. Leaders and teachers completed monthly self-reports of practices; students completed pre- and post-tests of knowledge in science and math.

Significant treatment effects at the leader, teacher and student levels establish the efficacy of this team-based approach to school leadership of an educational technology integration innovation. Leaders at treatment schools participated in a significantly higher total frequency and a wider variety of leadership activities, with large effect sizes. Teachers participated in a significantly wider variety of learning modes focused on technology integration and integrated technology significantly more frequently, with a wider variety of technologies, all with moderate effect sizes. Students in treatment schools significantly outperformed students in comparison schools in terms of science achievement but not in mathematics.

The overall sample size is small and the approach to participant recruitment did not allow for randomized assignment to the treatment condition. The authors tested the influence of treatment on leader practices, on teacher practices, and on student achievement. Future work is needed to identify the core components of treatment that influence practice and investigate the causal relationships between specific leaders' practices, teacher practices and student achievement.

This study establishes the efficacy of a replicable approach to developing team-based instructional leaders addressing educational technology. It contributes to the knowledge base about how district leaders and leadership educators might foster school leaders' instructional leadership, and more specifically technology leadership capacity.

This chapter focuses on how leaders of learning and learners of leading are developed and prepared to address and advance powerful and equitable student learning. Discussion focuses on several areas identified in the literature as critical including: leading and learning in context (Knapp, Copland & Talbert, 2003); leaders’ response to changing expectations and learning agendas, and professional development of leaders of learning (Normore, 2004). Earlier research by Knapp, Copland, and Talbert (2003) and the socialization processes of leaders of learners (Browne-Ferrigno & Muth, 2004; Leithwood, Steinbach, & Begley, 1992; Normore, 2007, 2004) will serve as the foundation for several areas of action identified by these researchers including: establishing a focus on learning by persistently and publicly focusing leaders own attention and that of others on learning and teaching; professional and organizational socialization processes; what leading for learning looks like in practice (Darling-Hammond, LaPointe, Meyerson, Orr, & Cohen, 2007); professional development including pre-service preparation, field-based learning, and personal and professional formation (Daresh, 1997; Gross, 2009; Normore, 2004); and creating coherence by connecting student, professional, and system learning with one another and with learning goals (Knapp et al., 2003).

International experience (IE) has been acknowledged to be the most useful method for developing global leaders. However, not everyone benefits equally from IE. During the last two decades, our understanding of why this is the case and how global leaders learn from IE has rapidly increased. Several individual and organizational enablers facilitating global leader learning from IE have been identified in the literature, as have learning mechanisms that make such learning possible. However, the literature remains fragmented, and there is a great need to integrate the findings in the field. Therefore, the present paper systematically examines peer-reviewed studies on global leaders' learning from IE published between 1998 and 2019. The study contributes to the extant literature by identifying and integrating individual enablers, organizational enablers, and key learning mechanisms from global leaders' IE and by suggesting topics for future research.

The purpose of this paper is to explore what developing moral literacy for leaders in intercultural schools will mean.

Relevant literature on moral literacy, leadership, intercultural schools and social learning is brought together and integrated to develop an understanding of the intricacies of leading for moral literacy.

The foundation for developing moral literacy in intercultural schools requires leaders to become knowledgeable, cultivate moral virtues and develop moral imaginations as well as to possess moral reasoning skills. In intercultural settings these components focus on openly addressing, and indeed exposing, issues of class, culture and equity. The elements which form the basis for improved moral literacy are intimately connected with school life and community through learning. Leaders must simultaneously develop their own and their communities' moral literacy through promoting and structuring community‐wide learning through participatory moral dialogue. This may involve sharing purpose, asking hard questions and exposing and acknowledging identities.

This article attempts to apply moral literacy to leading in intercultural schools and suggests that learning holds the key to moral development.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how the actions of leaders influence teachers’ perceptions of risk and sensemaking during professional learning (PL).

A qualitative case study primarily involving semi-structured interviews was utilized to collect teacher-perception data. In total, 21 teachers across three New Zealand schools were interviewed as they participated in the first year of a school-wide PL initiative. Data were analyzed using a risk perception lens focused on uncertainty.

Teachers’ perceptions of risk were influenced by leaders’ actions. Leaders built supportive relationships by knowing the teacher as a learner; showing empathy and respect; providing support; and engendering trust. Teachers reported that the quality of relationships combined with their own state of knowledge influenced their perceptions of risk and learning.

Leaders are reminded that learning is inherently uncertain and uncomfortable and that they have an important role to ensure an environment that is safe and supportive for teacher risk taking and change. A risk lens enables leaders and PL facilitators to consider their influence on teachers’ uncertainty and feelings of vulnerability and take action to reduce these where possible so that both teacher and student learning may be maximized.

This research advances the conceptualization of perceived risk in professional learning, emphasizing the importance of leadership in supporting teacher learning. It adds further detail to our understanding of trust, vulnerability, identity and risk in the development of professional capital and community and their connection to the professional and emotional lives of teachers.

In view of the expanding global interest in leadership learning and development programmes for centre leaders, this study aims to investigate how an early childhood education leadership programme can enhance Norwegian centre leaders’ learning and development as a network professional learning community (PLC) by way of Schön’s reflective model, the hall of mirrors.

In this qualitative case study, we interviewed four centre leaders, the owner of the centres and a facilitator and/or coach from the local work and competence centre for inclusive work who was leading the leadership programme.

The findings demonstrate three aspects of the hall of mirrors that enhanced the centre leaders as a network PLC: engaging in collective inquiry towards shared visions and values, enhancing professionalism through distributed leadership and cultivating a trusting learning climate.

Data were collected in a single smaller municipality in Norway and therefore may not be generalisable to other areas.

The findings can be used to further discuss how early childhood education and care (ECEC) leadership development programmes can be employed to establish and sustain professional leadership teams and professional learning communities.

As there are parallels between the leadership programme and the workplace and the programme promoted a network PLC, this study contributes to existing knowledge by offering a transformative reflective model for leadership learning and change through the reconceptualisation of the hall of mirrors.

Globalization requires business leaders who can manage effectively in multicultural environments. Although many organizations assume leaders will enhance their multicultural skills through international assignments, it is unclear how leaders translate these international experiences into knowledge and skills that enhance their effectiveness. Based on experiential learning theory (ELT), we propose that cultural intelligence (CQ) is an essential learning capability that leaders can use to translate their international experiences into effective experiential learning in culturally diverse contexts.

The paper seeks to capture leadership tacit knowledge mechanisms built throughout leaders' careers. Learning to be a leader involves developing the tacit knowledge to give confidence in one's decisions. Most of the knowledge required cannot be acquired from explicit documents – rather, it is built through action, experience and reflection. This research focuses on leadership in the innovation context where learning potentially occurs through a variety of knowledge building processes.

Narratives from 31 leaders who have achieved success in innovation leadership were collected piloting a tacit knowledge articulation methodology. From the narratives, a model is proposed which is embedded in the leadership career pathways of these innovation leaders.

The findings suggest that leadership tacit knowledge mechanisms evolve with organisations' life cycle. A bi‐focal (developmental and “locus of knowledge“ factors) model was assembled to explain how successful leadership involves balancing “locus of learning” from internal and external sources and facilitating mind‐shifts (e.g. collaboration and communication paradigms underlying relationship and networking processes).

The study sample size was relatively small – further replications with a larger number of subjects and in different contexts are planned or under way.

This research has implications relevant to both leaders interested in bringing their organizations to their next developmental level and to practitioners because leverage points are identified at which interventions designed to share the lessons learned from successful leaders will be most effective.

Tacit leadership knowledge is not easily transferred into explicit “how‐to” instructions for consumption by a prospective innovation leader, yet it is a major source of competitive advantage. It is more appropriate to view innovation leadership development as a tacit knowledge building process in individuals and groups, rather than a knowledge transfer from knowledgeable leaders to wannabe leaders. A developmental model is proposed that integrates the changes occurring in learning patterns while firms expand their loci of knowledge.

To meet the needs of under-resourced, rural schools where teacher attrition is high, this case study examined how a school–university partnership strengthened teacher and leader abilities to support deeper learning for students.

This research focused on a 17-year collaborative partnership between one rural school district and a university research and outreach organization to develop deeper learning experiences for students through shared and supportive leadership and learning of teachers and leaders. The researchers utilized documents, field notes and interviews with administrators to validate the data.

The study’s findings suggest that participation in authentic, researched-based professional development through the partnership improved the skills of leaders and teachers to support deeper learning for students. This partnership heightened teacher and leader capacity to promote and support continued change and sustainability.

This case study explored how one university center collaboratively engaged with a district by sharing research and strategies to support the development of leaders and teachers to create deeper learning for students. Through these experiences, the district evolved its deeper learning system and improved its organizational effectiveness, leadership development and learning for all.