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The purpose of this paper is to understand what the principal and principal supervisor each bring and contribute to their collaborative work that is consequential for the principal’s learning and development as an instructional leader.

Multiple case study methodology is used to gather data from 12 principal supervisor/principal partnerships over a 16 month period in one Mid-Atlantic school district. Data sources included interviews, observational data and documents provided by participants in the study.

In productive principal supervisor/principal partnerships, findings demonstrated that the principal supervisor and the principal each brought specific antecedent characteristics to their partnership and each made contributions to the development of a productive partnership during their collaborative work. When these partnership qualities were present, principal supervisors and principals engaged in joint work, leading to robust changes in principals’ instructional leadership practice.

This study examined the work of principals and principal supervisors in one large Mid-Atlantic school district.

Findings from this study have implications for districts’ assignments of principal supervisors, principal supervisor/principal selection and professional development of principal supervisors. Further, districts should create the conditions for principal supervisors and principals to establish learning-focused professional partnerships in three stages, culminating in the engagement of joint work for improvement to facilitate principals’ changes in instructional leadership practice.

Findings from this study illustrate the value of establishing a learning-focused partnership between principal supervisors and principals in three stages to facilitate robust stages in principals’ instructional leadership practice. A new conceptual framework displays the stages of partnership development that occur in productive principal/principal supervisor partnerships.

Districts across the country are calling on their principal supervisors to shift from mainly focusing on operations and compliance to dedicating their time to help principals grow as instructional leaders. Learning theory elaborates that such support for principals demands that supervisors take a teaching-and-learning approach – which the authors define as consistently using particular strategies that are characteristic of high quality teachers and mentors across various apprenticeship settings – to their work with principals on their instructional leadership. Prior research on leadership supports these shifts but does not examine the conditions under which principal supervisors are able to persist and grow in taking a teaching-and-learning approach specifically. What are those conditions? The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper addresses that question through a re-examination of data from two studies with socio-cultural learning theory as the conceptual framework. The authors primarily use observation data (approximately 760 hours), supplemented by 344 interviews and reviews of hundreds of documents.

Contrary to extant research the authors did not associate high quality outside coaching with the positive cases of principal supervision. Nor did hiring principal supervisors with requisite prior knowledge explain why some principal supervisors regressed and grew. Findings underscore the importance of supervisors of principal supervisors (SPSs) being principal supervisors’ main mentors and principal supervisors not over-relying on others for assistance but actively leading their own learning, especially through work with colleagues and protecting their time themselves.

This analysis distinguishes conditions that support principal supervisors in taking a teaching-and-learning approach to their work with principals. The authors elaborate key roles for chief academic officers and others who supervise principal supervisors typically overlooked in policy and research on district leadership. Findings reinforce the importance of mentoring to learning and also district leaders serving as main mentors for each other, rather than relying on outside coaching.

One objective of the present study was to explore how stressful kindergarten principals, as leaders and managers of their schools, found their work to be, and if such job‐related stress was associated with negative emotions and job (dis)satisfaction. Another objective was to assess whether or not social support from one's supervisor could reduce the adverse effects of job‐related stress. A related objective was to examine possible negative impacts associated with receipt of support from one's supervisor.

A total of 44 kindergarten principals in Macau filled out a questionnaire that contained the variables of interest.

The results indicated that the principals found their work to be moderately stressful; only emotional support was shown to be effective in buffering the impacts of job‐related stress; and there were only weak adverse effects related to the receipt of support.

This paper is useful in understanding the relationship of stress to work in the school environment.

Supervision is defined as the attempt by the principal to stimulate, coordinate and guide the continued growth of teachers. A team from the Center for the Advanced Study of Educational Administration at the University of Oregon, working with one U.S. school district, sought to arrive at a description of teachers' perceptions of administrative and supervisory practices in the schools of that district. It was found that teachers appeared to turn more often to their colleagues than to the principal for guidance on certain key professional issues and that the practices of the principal were often in conflict with teachers' normative expectations of supervisory behavior. Indeed, the principal's major responsibilities were seen as budget, coordination policy and public relations rather than instructional leadership.

The research aimed to clarify how supervisors in the Arab education system act to close the achievement gaps and to introduce learning programs that can empower students and improve their achievements. Qualitative research employed in-depth interviews with supervisors in the Arab education system, which constitutes a substantial element of the schools’ governance. The research attempted to answer the following questions: (1) Which steps do education administrators in the Arab education system take to reduce students’ underachievement, widen circles of cooperation and empower change agents during crises that deepen achievement gaps between Arab and Jewish students? (2) Do Arab school supervisors understand their interplay with government policies as empowering or disempowering them to improve students’ achievements and ensure the curriculum’s cultural relevance? (3) To what extent do the supervisors believe that cultural change is required to enable them to empower school communities to become societal innovators for equity, peace and renewal within existing administrative structures?

Research findings were interpreted through the lens of Turbulence Theory (Gross, 2014). Findings indicated that the supervisors strive to improve students’ achievements. A major challenge is to ensure the relevance of learning programs to the school community, while mediating between local community demands and the technocratic accountability imposed by the Ministry of Education for the implementation of its policies. This leadership is isolated in its efforts to establish fairness and education for empowerment and coexistence in a divided society. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the micropolitical strategies principals use to influence school staffing within an urban school district.

The author used a qualitative case study approach drawing upon 47 semi-structured participant interviews with 25 individual research participants, 80 hours of observations, and 36 district artifacts. The author completed an iterative analysis using ATLAS.ti with a coding scheme informed by the educational leadership, human resource management, and micropolitical literatures.

The findings illustrate that school principals engaged productively within district staffing procedures to influence the allocation and composition of teaching staff within their schools. The iterative analysis identified three micropolitical strategies employed by school principals, including advocacy, acquiring leverage, and networking. First, principals used advocacy to shape personnel staff’s understanding of school needs. Second, principals acquired leverage over staffing by enlisting the support of their school supervisor. Finally, principals networked with colleagues to identify teachers within the district’s transfer system for possible hire.

The findings have both practical and research significance. Practically, the findings highlight how principals engage in leadership within the context of district staffing processes. With respect to research, the findings address an important gap in the literature as it pertains to principal’s leadership actions in relation to internal district administrative processes.

The findings of this study are unique in that they challenge the conventional view of district staffing procedures, which has typically framed these procedures as barriers to principal leadership. The findings suggest district staffing procedures can be a forum for productive leadership actions.

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.

Education reform aimed at achieving improved student learning is a demanding challenge for leaders and managers at all levels of education across the globe. In 2010, the position of Assistant Regional Directors, School Performance (ARD-SP), was established to positively impact upon student learning across public schools in Queensland, Australia. The purpose of this paper is to explore the perceptions of the role and leadership understandings of ARDs in Queensland in order to understand more fully the tensions and opportunities they face within this reasonably newly created position.

This qualitative study is based on interviews with 18 ARDs and two of their supervisors to gauge a better understanding of the nature of the role as it relates to leadership and management in the Queensland context.

Interview data revealed three key themes pertaining to the nature of the role and these were performance, supervision, and professional challenges. A key finding was that the notion of supervision was experienced as problematic for ARDs-SP.

This study has limitations and these include a sample that focused on ARDs within one State of Australia and one schooling system (i.e. public education); and interviews were the primary data collection source.

Although there have been studies of supervisors of principals (referred to as superintendents, directors) in other countries and other systems, this study is a first to explore the tensions and opportunities faced by executive leaders in Queensland.

The purpose of this article is to report a study of the strategies members of principal selection panels use to select the best candidate for a principal position.

The study draws on both qualitative and quantitative data. The quantitative analysis drawn on data collected from school supervisors and school principals confirmed a four‐factor structure and qualitative interview data was used to supplement findings.

In order of importance the strategies employed by selection panels were: panel professionalism, the interview, making the cut and pre‐interview.

Findings indicate that the selection component of principal recruitment remains at best an uncertain science. Tensions endure between beliefs and perceptions of panel members from different backgrounds. These include beliefs about competence and level of involvement in important activities such as short‐listing. Relational ties, religious affiliation and values congruence are important to members of selection panels, but we are unsure of the influence these have on the quality of successful applications. It seems that at a minimum they may reduce the pool of “real” applicants.

The study provides useful information on the strategies members of principal selection panels use to select the best candidate for a principal position.