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The extant literature on school leadership development is dominated by conceptual analysis, descriptive studies of current practice, critiques of current practice, and prescriptions for better ways to approach practice. Relatively few studies have examined impact of leadership development using experimental methods, among which even fewer studies have employed a cross‐cultural comparative perspective. The aim of this paper is to discuss the feasibility of using a computer simulation as tools for research in leadership development.

This is a methodology development paper. It discusses the feasibility of using a computer simulation as tools for research in leadership development. Exemplary research questions, research designs, and data analyses are used to illustrate the potential of this approach for addressing under‐explored issues in management education.

Three categories of cross‐cultural comparative research questions are proposed: comparative study of leadership expertise, comparative study of instructional approaches, and comparative study of leadership development processes. This study demonstrates the research potential of using the computer simulations to address complex issues in leadership development across cultures.

Although computer simulations have been used as training tools for several decades, few scholars have explored their potential for use in the collection of complex data in an efficient fashion. The current study not only demonstrates how a specific simulation has been adapted to collect data on leadership development in education, but also models the means by which computer simulations could be employed in a similar fashion in other domains of education and training.

This paper aims to present a research‐based model of leadership for learning. It argues that the field has made substantial progress over the past 40 years in identifying ways in which leadership contributes to learning and school improvement. Four specific dimensions of leading for learning are presented: values and beliefs, leadership focus, contexts for leadership, and sharing leadership.

The paper employs a review methodology but focuses especially on evidence from several recent empirical studies. While the author argues that progress has been made, limitations – especially with respect to linking leadership practice to different contexts – are noted.

The paper finds that significant progress has been made in identifying the means by which leadership impacts on learning.

The key limitation in this research lies in the difficulty in linking leadership to its context. While progress is also beginning to be made in this area, it remains a limiting factor in interpreting the findings from this body of research.

The above limitation means that individual school leaders must still apply the findings both with caution and with an understanding of their own particular school context.

The paper extends prior reviews by its inclusion of findings from a series of important studies that have emerged since 2008.

The purpose of this paper is to gain perspective on the extent to which the vision for knowledge production in East Asia set forth by Bajunid, Cheng, Hallinger, Walker, Dimmock and others almost 20 years ago has been fulfilled. The authors undertook an effort to map the terrain of knowledge production in educational leadership and management in East Asia since the year 2000. Their method of mapping this terrain involves the analysis of trends in publication of articles about and/or from East Asia in eight core educational leadership and management journals.

The authors’ methodology employed a descriptive, quantitative form of literature review. They identified a clearly delimited body of literature, comprised of all articles published about or from East Asia between 2000 and 2011 in eight core educational leadership and management journals. Then they employed a systematic search for information within that literature and analyzed trends across the studies. This allowed them to map the terrain of recent research on educational leadership and management within East Asia.

The volume of knowledge production from East Asia between 2000 and 2011 consisted of less than 6 per cent of total output in the relevant journals. Although there was a discernible increase in the annual rate of publication over the course of the 12‐year period, the authors treat the increase as relatively unimportant given the small volume. A substantial majority of the publications not only came from a few societies, but from a small number of universities. Citation analyses were highly consistent with all of the above trends, and reinforced a picture of limited impact.

The authors’ study focused on a clearly delimited region, East Asia. Although they believe that the study may have implications for other regions of the developing world, they do not speculate on the extent of relevance. The authors intentionally limited their definition of the corpus of knowledge to a specific set of international refereed journals that are published in English. This ignores the potential contributions of conference papers, books, book chapters, research handbooks, domestic journals, and even other international journals in which educational leadership scholars publish.

To the authors’ knowledge, there have been no efforts undertaken to understand the nature of knowledge production in educational leadership and management in East Asia. When approaching this review in 2012, the authors were not under the illusion that the regional knowledge base would be either overly dense in terms of the concentration of studies within particular areas or broad in scope. However, future scholarship may be aided by this systematic assessment of the current knowledge base on educational leadership in the region.

Over the past decade, studies of school leadership effects have increasingly aimed at identifying and validating the paths through which principal leadership impacts key teaching and learning processes in schools. A recent meta-analysis by Robinson and colleagues identified principal practices that shape teacher professional development experiences in schools as the highest impact path used by instructional leaders. The purpose of this paper is to examine relationships between principal leadership, dimensions of school capacity, and teacher professional learning in 32 Hong Kong primary schools.

The study employed a cross-sectional research design and quantitative methods to analyze teacher perceptions of principal leadership and key school conditions. The research employed hierarchical linear regression analysis to explore survey data collected from a sample of 970 teachers. The surveys covered a range of principal leadership and school capacity dimensions, as well as a measure of teacher professional learning.

Results indicated that multiple dimensions of principal leadership made significant contributions to both school capacity and teacher professional learning. The presence of cooperation, trust, communication, support for students, and alignment, coherence, and structure in schools also affected teacher professional learning.

These findings contribute to the global discourse on leadership for learning. The study addresses the need established by multiple scholars (e.g. Leithwood, Hallinger, Heck, Robinson, Witziers) for research that further illuminates “paths” and “intermediate targets” through which leadership impacts teaching and learning. The findings elaborate on the means by which leadership can enhance school capacities that directly impact teacher classroom practice and student learning. Consistent with other scholarly research (e.g. Bryk and Schneider, Louis and colleagues, Sahphier and King) the findings also point toward the importance of establishing selected workplace conditions (e.g. trust, cooperation, communication) as a foundation for fostering teacher professional learning.

The study reinforces the finding from other studies that it is productive for principals to foster an environment aimed at enhancing teacher professionalism. The study also highlights the potentially dysfunctional consequences that can arise from competing system-level initiatives aimed at increasing monitoring and teacher accountability and fostering teacher professionalism.

The study contributes to a small but growing body of leadership effects research conducted in non-Western societies. As such the study offers insights with relevance for understanding leadership processes in other Asian and non-Western cultures.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how instructional leadership, a concept imported from Western scholarship, has been conceptualized in the Taiwanese context and how principal instructional leadership is realized in schools. The development trajectory of principal instructional leadership is delineated by examining empirical studies in the past two decades.

This paper adopts an exploratory approach to review the Taiwanese empirical literature on principal instructional leadership. A total of 80 studies were systematically analyzed and common themes were identified.

This paper finds that a hybrid model of the conceptualization of instructional leadership has been developed in Taiwan. Principals performed more indirect than direct leadership behaviors. A gap exists between the ideal instructional leader and the reality.

The development of a formal theory of instructional leadership is expected as various substantive theories are developed and more data are accumulated. To yield the desired outcome of knowledge acceleration, the coordination of research efforts across scholars and institutions is a must.

The articles reviewed suggest less effort spent by principals on the teachers. Yet with a national promotion of teacher learning community, as well as cooperative and collaborative learning in recent years, principal instructional leadership behaviors are expected to rise in terms of ensuring instruction quality and professional development.

This paper is an attempt to accumulate knowledge about principal instructional leadership in Taiwan. It is a contribution to the exploration of indigenous perspectives and practices and the understanding and building of educational leadership in Asia.

Like other nations in Asia, mainland China has undergone continuous reforms in its economic, political and social institutions over the past two decades. These changes are also reflected in its education system, which has been both the target of government reforms and an agent for social change. In this context, China's Ministry of Education has cast school principals as key actors in leading and managing change in schools at the local level throughout the country. The purpose of this paper is to explore how Chinese school leaders successfully respond to the implementation of educational reform.

In this paper the authors explore how school leaders in one city in South China perceive their roles and actions in fostering successful change. The study employed extensive literature review with qualitative interviews of five school principals who had demonstrated success at leading change in their schools.

The findings of both the literature review and interview study unexpectedly found more similarities than differences between how leaders contribute to successful change in China as compared with the Western literature.

The research findings are limited by two main features. First, the sources analyzed in the literature review were of highly varying quality. Moreover, relatively few employed replicable analytical methods capable of generalization. These limitations of the literature mean that the results of the review can only be interpreted as suggestive rather than conclusive. Second, the interview study was framed as an effort to further explore the trends of the literature review. Although the findings from the small-scale interview study were consistent with the broader Chinese literature, the research design suffers form the same limitations as the general literature. Therefore, these findings must also be treated as emergent rather than explanatory.

The paper identifies directions for future research and discusses implications for school leaders in implementing educational change in China.

The originality of this study lies in its attempt to synthesize a previously inaccessible literature on change leadership in Chinese schools. Despite China's rising role as a global leader, the literature in educational leadership and management remains sparse and largely unknown to Western scholars. Therefore, the study's limitations are balanced by the need to provide better descriptions of current practices employed by leaders as they attempt to improve China's schools.

The global expansion of higher education has brought about more ambitious educational goals that require new approaches to curriculum, teaching, and learning. While higher education in East Asia is no exception to this trend, it has been observed that both teachers and learners in the region have adhered to a strong tradition of lecture‐based instruction. An underlying research question concerned the responsiveness of East Asian students to learner‐centered education. The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which learner‐centered education can be implemented successfully in the East Asian higher education context.

This study presents a quantitative study informed by a description of the context for implementation. It adopts a quasi‐experimental, multiple time series design and examines the process and effects of change in teaching and learning at a graduate school of business (GSB) in Thailand. The GSB implemented a variety of active learning methods that were explicitly designed to increase student engagement. Descriptive statistics, as well as mixed effects models, were used to analyze student course evaluation data over a several year period.

Active learning methods could be implemented in the context of an East Asian high education institution and they entailed positive change in student engagement over time.

The paper's results support assertions that Asian students respond positively to well‐designed instructional methods that seek to foster active learning.

Draws on the analyses presented in the other articles in the Journal of Educational Administration Vol. 30 No. 3 to identify emergent themes concerning the evolving role of the principal in several countries. Focuses especially on the manner in which the policy context of educational organizations is leading to a decentralization of management and the resulting impact on the administrative practice of principals. Finally, suggests some of the implications of these changes for the preparation and development of principals.

Proponents have argued that simulation-based learning (SBL) offers capabilities that respond to persisting critiques of management education. This research intended to provide additional empirical evidence for the instructional effectiveness of SBL. This paper aims to discuss these issues.

This research adopted a quasi-experimental, multiple time series design to examine the instructional effectiveness of courses that incorporated computer simulations in a Master of Management program at a business school in Thailand. It compared student perceptions of three SBL courses with courses that used a variety of other instructional approaches over a period of seven years.

Results revealed that students rated the SBL courses significantly higher on overall perceived instructional effectiveness, as manifested by action-directed learning, student engagement, quality of assessment and feedback, and instructor effectiveness.

The consistency of significant results for a large number of course sections over a substantial period of time suggests that the SBL courses created a more active, productive environment in which to learn management theory and practice.

The results support assertions that simulations offer potential for enhancing the quality of university-based management education.

First, the research provides empirical insights into the implementation of SBL in management education; second, many instructors remain skeptical as to whether active learning methods imported from western contexts are suitable for Asian learners. The study addresses this issue in the light of data that describe one institution's sustained attempt to employ computer simulations in its graduate management education program.