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The authors argue that middle leaders are the key educators in school-based educational development. Schools often secure small-scale funding to engage in government or systemic initiatives, and these projects require a leadership “close to the classroom” if they are to realise sustainable educational gains. This leadership often comes from the middle leaders – those who practice their leading in and around classrooms. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

A single case study methodology is used to investigate two middle leaders, leading a small-scale project. Their leading practices are examined using the “theory of practice architectures”, to identify how these practices were enacted within their educational context.

While principals play a crucial role in enacting change, it is the middle leaders who are closer to the classroom than most principals, and whose practices more directly impact teaching and learning as they are best placed to ensure that meagre resources are well used to improve student learning. They do this by ensuring that development is collegial and a response to evidence-based needs.

First, middle leaders need support in facilitating educational development. Second, their leading practice is crucial for sustainable school-based development. Third, site-based educational development occurs most effectively when it is evidence-based. Finally, this form of educational development requires high-level collegiality.

This paper is original in two key ways: first, it addresses the under-researched practices of middle leaders; and, second it employs the practice theory to understand school leadership and development.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how Catholic district offices support school leaders’ instructional leadership practices at times of major reform.

The paper employs the theory of practice architectures as a lens through which to examine local site-based responses to system-wide reforms in two Australian Catholic secondary schools and their district offices. Data collection for these parallel case studies included semi-structured interviews, focus groups, teaching observations, classroom walkthroughs and coaching conversations.

Findings suggest that in the New South Wales case, arrangements of language and specialist discourses associated with a school improvement agenda were reinforced by district office imperatives. These imperatives made possible new kinds of know-how, ways of working and relating to district office, teachers and students when it came to instructional leading. In the Queensland case, the district office facilitated instructional leadership practices that actively sought and valued practitioners’ input and professional judgment.

The research focussed on two case studies of district offices supporting school leaders’ instructional leadership practices at times of major reform. The findings are not generalizable.

Practically, the studies suggest that for excellent pedagogical practice to be embedded and sustained over time, district offices need to work with principals to foster communicative spaces that promote explicit dialogue between teachers and leaders’ interpretive categories.

The paper contends that responding to the diversity of secondary school sites requires district office practices that reject a one size fits all formulas. Instead, district offices must foster site-based education development.

The paper adopts a practice theory approach to its study of district support for instructional leader’ practices. A practice approach rejects a one size fits all approach to educational change. Instead, it focusses on understanding how particular practices come to be in specific sites, and what kinds of conditions make their emergence possible. As such, it leads the authors to consider whether and how different practices such as district practices of educational reforming or principals’ instructional leading might be transformed, or conducted otherwise, under other conditions of possibility.

This study aims to discern medieval information literacy (IL) practices through scrutiny of medieval manuscripts: both the content and the “marks of usage” evident therein.

Analysis of the writing of scribes. Engagement with selected primary texts (manuscripts) and prior scholarly investigations.

Ample evidence exists of the practice of IL in the medieval era, and how it was transmitted and negotiated across time and space. Popular guides for scholars, including Hugh of St. Victor's Didascalicon, and the marks of usage left on manuscripts by readers/scribes, are evidence of how members of scholarly communities engaged in collaborative metacognitive work, helping each other with tasks such as understanding the ordinatio (organisation) of texts; cross-referencing; locating information; and making judgments about relevance, amongst others. New practices were stimulated by key historical transitions, particularly the shift from ecclesiastical to secular settings for learning.

This is a preliminary study only, intended to lay foundations and suggest directions for more detailed future investigations of primary texts. The scope is Eurocentric, and similar work might be undertaken with the records of practice available elsewhere, e.g. the Arab world, South and East Asia.

Some previous work (e.g. Long, 2017) has investigated medieval scholarly communities by retrospectively applying notions from practice theory, but no prior work has specifically focused upon IL as the practice under investigation.

Recent substantial developments of consumer-to-consumer social commerce platforms (C2C-SCPs) emboldened consumers/users to be involved as sellers. Considering C2C social networks that privilege local reach, this paper aim to explore how the practice-based view informs non-professional sellers' involvement.

Underpinned by data from 29 semi-structured interviews with non-professional sellers on Kaskus, one of the largest local Indonesian C2C-SCPs, the study reveals the emergence of a novel structural practice that we call casual selling.

The findings show that casual selling allows non-professional sellers' involvement in C2C-SCPs through three broad categories of practices: priming oneself, producing commercial operations and valuing others. Within these three categories, non-professional sellers are found to generate both personal and collective involvement along nine situated market practices.

This paper adds to previous research by introducing the practice-based view to social commerce literature. In doing so, it deals with the under-investigated seller's perspective and activities that prevail in C2C-SCPs.

In C2C-SCPs, casual selling constitutes a distinct mode of involvement in social commerce in which established professional selling standards are suspended. As a structural practice, it entices non-professional sellers to consider a wider variety of situations in which they are in dialogue with other individuals (buyers and sellers) to shape s-commerce potential. In doing so, C2C-SCP users draw on a dynamic intertwining between digital technology and the socio-cultural environment surrounding s-commerce.

This bibliography is offered as a practical guide to published papers, conference proceedings papers and theses/dissertations on the finite element (FE) and boundary element (BE) applications in different fields of biomechanics between 1976 and 1991. The aim of this paper is to help the users of FE and BE techniques to get better value from a large collection of papers on the subjects. Categories in biomechanics included in this survey are: orthopaedic mechanics, dental mechanics, cardiovascular mechanics, soft tissue mechanics, biological flow, impact injury, and other fields of applications. More than 900 references are listed.

Instructional leadership is a school leadership approach that emphasizes improving teaching and learning. This study explores how school middle leaders – teachers holding leadership positions in schools, who are responsible for a particular area or discipline of the school's curriculum – fulfill their instructional leadership role.

The participants in this qualitative study were 24 middle leaders (subject coordinators) in elementary schools in Israel. Data collection was based on semi-structured interviews, and data analysis included three stages: sorting, coding and categorizing.

The current study points to three main characteristics of instructional leadership in school middle leaders: leading by expertise; leading by collaboration; and leading by example.

At present, there is only scant literature on instructional leadership in school middle leaders. This study suggests that principals and middle leaders, who work closely with each other to provide instructional leadership in their schools, do so in different ways.

Instructional leadership is a school leadership approach that places great emphasis on enhancing the quality of teaching and learning. This study explored the enabling factors of instructional leadership in subject coordinators.

The participants in this qualitative study were 24 subject coordinators in elementary schools in Israel. Data collection was based on semi-structured interviews, and data analysis included three stages: sorting, coding and categorizing.

The findings identified three significant enabling factors of instructional leadership in subject coordinators: pedagogical knowledge, relationship capability and support from the principal.

This study suggests that the enabling factors of instructional leadership in subject coordinators differ from those of instructional leadership in principals because of their different places in the school structure and explains the enablers of instructional leadership in subject coordinators as middle leaders.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of administration and faculty members in developing character education within public and private universities in Kuwait. It further aims to explore the value of character education in effecting the quality experience of higher education.

The researchers employed a quantitative research paradigm, using a questionnaire survey method to collect data from faculty members at major public and private Kuwaiti universities. They used Statistical Package for the Social Sciences to analyze a total of 298 questionnaires.

The findings revealed that universities do indeed play a “strong” role in student character education. However, within public universities, it is the faculty themselves who form the key ingredient in the process rather than the administrative body, which is perceived to have a “Medium” effect. Conversely, at private universities, the administration and faculty both merited a “strong” role in developing character education.

The study will provide leaders with several recommendations to improve the integrated development of universities through fostering character education.

While K-12 education has received significant attention regarding the moral and character development of students over the last few decades, this study, extends this research significantly into higher education; focusing upon character development at university and comparing its implementation at both public and private institutions.

Teaching performance assessments (TPAs) have developed in the USA and Australia as a “bar exam” for the profession and are used means to assure that graduates are classroom ready. The purpose of this paper is to outline how these assessments have been implemented in teacher education in the USA and Australian contexts. The edTPA is embroiled in controversy in the USA and there are important lessons from the related research literature that could inform the how other countries engage with TPAs in pre-service teacher education.

This conceptual paper outlines how Australia has introduced TPAs in initial teacher education (ITE) through policy borrowing from the USA. The paper synthesises critiques of the edTPA (USA) from research literature and considers the implications of TPAs in the Australian context.

The TPA impacts the focus of pre-service teacher practicum teaching, and pedagogy and curriculum in ITE education. The TPA could be used to mobilise detrimental accountability mechanisms. With the outsourcing of assessment to edu-business, Pearson Education, teacher education institutions in the USA have a sense that they have lost control over determining which students are credentialed to teach. Although pre-service teacher assessment is still administered and assessed by ITE institutions in Australia, there is a concern that could change. It is argued that educators, administrators and policy makers should avoid moves to outsource TPAs in Australia.

Because it is in its infancy, there is a little robust research into the implication of introducing teacher performance assessments into the Australian teacher education context.