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Research on school leadership has confirmed that principals influence teacher and student learning by building an “academic-focused ethos” in their schools. In this study, our objective was to examine if and how the learning-centered leadership of principals influenced academic optimism of teachers and the resulting effects on their engagement in professional learning. More specifically, we examined this hypothesized set of leadership effects among teachers and principals in high schools located in Thailand.

The study was conducted with 1,763 teachers and 152 principals from 159 randomly selected, medium size secondary schools located in Thailand. The research employed multi-level structural equation modeling and bootstrapping analyses in order to test and explore these relationships in a mediation model of school leadership effects on teacher professional learning through academic optimism.

Results of this study reinforce prior research which has found that principal leadership can have significant direct and indirect effects on the professional learning of teachers. This finding is important because, as elaborated earlier, scholars believe that teacher professional learning is a key to sustainable improvement in schools. More specifically, our results extend prior research in two ways. First, as the first study to link Learning-Centered Leadership with Academic Optimism, this study extends findings that point to the role of school leadership in sustaining a culture of academic optimism in schools. Second, this study also established Academic Optimism as a mediator through which school leadership supports Teacher Professional Learning.

Although our results support a positive conclusion concerning the effects of school leadership and academic optimism on teacher learning, this was a cross-sectional study. Therefore, caution must be exercised before drawing causal attributions. For example, research has also found that teachers who work in schools that evidence features of a professional learning community are more likely to have a greater sense of collective teacher efficacy, a variable that is also associated with Academic Optimism. Therefore, although our study proposed Academic Optimism as the mediator and teacher professional learning as the dependent variable, it is also possible that this relationship could be reversed or reciprocal (i.e. mutually reinforcing). Future research should continue to examine these possibilities using longitudinal and/or experimental research designs that enable clearer delineation of causal relationships. We also suggest the utility of qualitative and mixed methods studies capable of exploring in greater depth the mechanisms through which school leadership contributes to productive teacher learning.

There is a need in Thailand, and elsewhere, to redefine the formal roles and professional standards of school leaders to include learning-centered practices. These standards should be embedded into the redesign of pre-service and in-service education programs for teachers and principals. We believe that, at present, relatively few school leaders in Thailand genuinely understand the meaningful impact they can have on teacher learning, and by extension, on student learning. Thus, there is a need for systemic change that recasts the nature of leadership expected from principals as well as the level of lifelong learning expected of teachers.

The findings from this research contribute to an evolving knowledge base on how school leaders influence teacher learning in different national contexts. The research also extends prior research by exploring the role of academic optimism as a mediator of school leadership effects on teacher learning.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between leadership and teacher professional learning considering two mediating variables – teacher trust and teacher agency.

The study utilized structural equation modeling in analyzing the responses from 1,654 secondary public teachers from 43 schools in the Philippines.

Leadership does not have a direct relationship with teacher professional learning. The established relationship of leadership and professional learning from literature exists through the mediation of teacher trust and teacher agency.

The results point out that school leaders must affect teacher trust and teacher agency to influence the engagement of teachers to professional learning. Contrary to what has been accepted in educational management that leaders can directly impact teachers, the findings of this study dictate that the full effects of leadership are coursed through mediating pathways.

In this chapter we discuss the content and process of the Learning-Centered Leadership Development Program for Practicing and Aspiring Principals. In terms of the content, based on extensive literature review the program focuses on seven dimensions of principal leadership associated with student achievement. In terms of process, one pair of practicing and aspiring principals from each school engage in five levels of learning – moving from (a) experiential, to (b) declarative, to (c) procedural, to (d) contextual, and to (e) evidential. The pair of practicing and aspiring principals works with two additional teacher leaders to develop sufficient leadership density in the school to plan and implement renewal activities along the seven dimensions to improve student achievement. We also reflect upon the lessons learned from implementing the program.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the ongoing dialog of whether and how instructional leadership is distinguished conceptually from general leadership notions, such as charisma, and to continue the ongoing psychometric research on the The Vanderbilt Assessment of Leadership in Education (VAL-ED) by examining its convergent and divergent validity. The authors hypothesize that the VAL-ED will be highly correlated with another measure of instructional leadership, but will be weakly correlated with more general measures of leadership that are rooted in personality theories. To test the convergent validity the authors implement the Hallinger and Murphy (1985) Instructional Management Behavior of Principals (IMBP) inventory, (Hallinger and Murphy, 1985; Hallinger, 2011). The authors use an instrument for emotional intelligence, Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire (TEIQue) as the divergent measure (Petrides et al., 2007). Results indicate that principals and teachers have different perceptions of leadership concepts.

The sample of schools in this study included 63 schools, 47 elementary, seven middle, and nine high schools from eight districts in six states in the US correlational analyses and regression are implemented.

The three sets of correlations from teacher responses about their principals among the three measures of the VAL-ED, TEIQue, and PIMRS (0.715, 0.686, and 0.642) are similar in size and all quite high. The picture is different for principals’ self-ratings, however. The VAL-ED is more strongly correlated (0.492) with PIMRS than with TEIQue (0.119), providing some evidence for convergent validity between learning-centered leadership and instructional management, and divergent validity when compared with emotional intelligence traits. The correlation between teachers and principals on the VAL-ED is only 0.17.

An interesting finding of this study is that principals can discriminate between instructional leadership measures and emotional traits when self rating, while teachers rate their principals similarly, and do not seem to discriminate between instructional leadership practices, as measured by the VAL-ED or PRIMS, and general traits associated with leadership effectiveness, as measured by the TEIQue. This paper discusses the theoretical and practical implications of these findings for both understanding the limitations of rating scales measuring instructional leadership, and their uses for evaluation purposes. Furthermore, teachers seem to perceive and understand these leadership traits differently than principals suggesting the need for training in how to use and interpret the results.

Educator accountability has placed principal evaluation and assessment at the forefront of reform debates. There is limited research on 360 degree evaluation systems. Rating scales of principals’ instructional leadership, are being used for assessing principals’ strengths and weaknesses in making decisions about tenure, merit pay, and ongoing professional development. Given the significance of these decisions it is important to ensure that principal evaluation instruments are valid.

Developing countries in many parts of the world have experienced a disturbing trend in the differential pace of economic development among urban and rural communities. These inequities have been observed in education systems in Asia, Africa, and Latin America where researchers have documented differences not only in resource allocation but also in the academic performance among students in urban and rural schools. Recently researchers have shifted their focus from examining financial and physical resources to investigating the nature and impact of differences in human resources. The purpose of this paper is to examine differences in school organization processes associated with learning-centered leadership and teacher learning among urban and rural primary schools in Thailand. Teacher trust and teacher agency were proposed as possible mediators of leadership effects on teacher learning.

This study employed a cross-sectional survey design. The authors collected survey data from 1,011 teachers and 60 principals in 30 urban and 30 rural primary schools in Thailand. Multi-group confirmatory factor analysis, structural equation modeling, and bootstrapping were used to analyze the proposed model of leadership and teacher professional learning. More specifically, data analysis was aimed at determining the nature of relationships among the constructs in the conceptual model and whether patterns of leadership and teacher learning differed in urban and rural primary schools.

The results affirmed a model whereby school leadership exerted significant indirect effects on teacher learning in both urban and rural primary schools. Data analyses determined that the path of leadership effects moved through trust to agency and then to teacher professional learning. Thus, while the authors found a strong direct effect of leadership on teacher trust, there were only small direct effects of leadership on teacher agency and no meaningful direct effects of leadership on teacher professional learning. Thus, the research affirmed a full mediation model of leadership effects on teacher learning. Finally, the study also affirmed that the measured variables were perceived as significantly stronger in the urban schools than in the rural schools.

The research expands on prior research on the “achievement gap” in Thailand by demonstrating the existence of a similar “human resource gap” when comparing urban and rural school leaders and teachers. This study implies that addressing the gap in student achievement will require action aimed at building the capacity of the principals and teachers who work with the rural pupils.

These results suggest differences in the quality of human resources between urban and rural primary schools in Thailand. There may be potential benefit to be gained from providing training focused on “learning-centered leadership” for principals and middle level leaders, as well as expanding access to quality professional development opportunities for rural teachers.

In this era of global education reform, teacher professional learning (TPL) has emerged as a key factor in efforts to create sustainable school improvement. The same holds in Mainland China where ambitious curriculum reforms have been undertaken since 2000. The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of learning-centered leadership (LCL) and teacher trust (TT) in fostering TPL in Chinese schools. More specifically, the authors examined two research questions: (1) What is the nature of the relationship of LCL to TT and professional learning?; and (2) How LCL practices influence TT and professional learning.

The study employed a cross-sectional survey design. The authors collected survey data from 1,259 teachers in 41 primary and secondary schools in three different Chinese provinces. The research employed confirmatory factor analysis to confirm the measurement model and structural equation modeling to examine interactions among the three main variables.

The results affirmed a positive association between LCL and TPL, and highlighted TT as a significant mediator in this relationship. Additional analyses distinguished between the effects of different dimensions of LCL on TT and TPL. Although the results of these analyses were broadly consistent with prior findings reported in the literature, divergent findings also emerged. More specifically, there was a limited use and no significant impact of “leadership modeling” on either TT or professional learning.

The authors suggest that this pattern of leadership practice is linked with features of China’s institutional cum socio-cultural context. The authors recommend the use of qualitative and mixed methods studies capable of gaining further insight into relationships.

These findings in Mainland China reaffirm the efficacy of school-level leadership that builds a safe, trusting but focussed environment for teacher learning in the workplace. This is a potentially significant finding in a society where the use of top-down directives and reliance on legitimate authority by leaders can rob teachers of the motivation and initiative that undergirds sustainable professional learning. The findings, in concert with those of other scholars, suggest that “building trust” represents a useful strategy for principals who seek to establish productive learning environments for their teachers.

The value of this study lies in two areas. First, this is one of a growing but still limited set of quantitative empirical studies of school leadership in Mainland China. Second, the study tests the nature of mediation in the relationship between leadership, trust and TPL, a topic of relatively recent vintage in the educational leadership literature.

The purpose of this paper is to select a theoretical framework for effective school leadership that is connected with research, standards and current practices in the USA, and examine its validity and generalizability cross-culturally.

The paper uses both qualitative and quantitative methods through expert panel evaluation, cognitive interviews, and field testing of the instrument. The author asks: How well does the Learning-Centered Leadership (LCL) framework align with the professional standards and current practices of principals in urban Chinese schools in the opinion of the experts? Is there evidence that its leadership assessment instrument has construct validity in Chinese urban schools based on the re-examination of its content and measurement criteria? And is there evidence that the instrument is yielding consistent results when taken by the intended participants? How effective are the analytic strategies employed by this study in detecting the equivalences and discrepancies in how educational leadership is defined and evaluated, between two vastly different educational systems?

The paper finds evidences that give support to the claim that there is strong cross-cultural alignment on the overarching goal of improving student learning. However, the US framework and assessment will need to be modified to reflect the Chinese reform priorities that emphasize the balance between academic and social learning.

The belief that there are common elements in contemporary international educational policy has brought growing interest in sharing leadership theories and successful models cross-culturally. This paper addresses the challenges in understanding the complexity of cross-cultural translation of theories and applications, and explores viable solutions to meaningful adaptation.

This study explores a conceptual framework that addresses a school principal's self-regulated learning (SPSRL) as well as possible avenues for future conceptualization of, and research into this issue.

The conceptual framework of SPSRL is based on an extensive literature review of the research on student’s and teacher’s self-regulated learning models.

A novel conceptual and practical SPSRL framework for planning, performing, monitoring and self-reflection is elaborated.

This novel SPSRL conceptual framework provides school principals with a means to shape and develop processes, strategies and structures to monitor and evaluate their learning, enabling them to react effectively in uncertain and dynamic environments. This framework may open the way to future research into possible contributions of the SPSRL construct with other variables related to principal effectiveness. The suggested framework should be examined empirically in various sociocultural contexts, possibly substantiating its conceptual validity.

The SPSRL conceptual framework can improve school learning, which might connect the individual (the school principal) and organizational (teachers) learning levels.

In this study the authors use longitudinal data from a randomized experiment to investigate the impact of a feedback and coaching intervention on principals’ leadership behaviors. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

In total, 52 elementary and middle school principals (26 receiving teacher feedback, 26 receiving feedback and coaching) were randomized into a year-long feedback and coaching study. Measures of leadership actions were collected from principals and teachers during the fall, winter, and spring. The authors use instrumental variables approach to examine the impact of treatment.

Behavioral change may take longer than is presented in this study, which implies that these findings represent a lower-bound. As an intervention leadership coaching is costly and this research does not explore alternatives to help principals make feedback data actionable.

It is unlikely that providing school leaders with feedback alone will induce behavioral change. Other systems and supports – such as leadership coaching – are needed to help principals make sense of feedback data and translate data into actionable behaviors.

Few leadership studies use exogenous variation in treatment conditions to examine leadership outcomes. This study builds upon our causal knowledge of leadership behaviors and presents a viable intervention to improve school leadership.