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In an era of increased autonomy and accountability in education, school principals have been given the responsibility for many tasks that used to be centralized, such as hiring and managing personnel, ensuring that the curriculum is followed and that the development of the school is on the right path. In this study an exploration is attempted into the associations among institutional context, school leadership, school climate and student outcomes.

The authors analyze data from the Programme of International Student Assessment study 2015 to identify variations in institutional context (autonomy and accountability) among education systems to determine whether and how institutional context is associated with leadership and whether education systems, in turn, are associated with school climate and students' achievement in reading. To account for the hierarchical structure of the education systems under investigation, a three-level structural equation modeling (SEM) approach was employed to analyze the data gathered on the institutions, schools and students.

No association was found between the degree of autonomy of an education system and leadership behavior; however, accountability and leadership seemed to go together. Achievement in reading competencies was greater in school systems in which principals had more autonomy. At the school level, a relationship was found between leadership and opportunities for parental involvement.

The results of this study indicate the need of strong leadership in order to have better results when there is more accountability. In this sense, the authors' findings also point to the increased importance of context-sensitive leadership skills.

We read and hear frequently about the role of vision in leadership. Standards for leadership education programs typically emphasize vision as a core component of leadership education and published accounts of successful leadership usually extol the leader’s vision. Given the prevalence of this term in discourse on leadership, it is surprising how little literature exists with specific discussions of how to teach it. In this article I discuss the potential of problem-based pedagogy for teaching the concept of vision. This paper draws on literature, theory, and my professional experience as a faculty member for 20 years in a graduate-level education leadership program.

The purpose of this paper is to explore existing and desired methodologies for systematic quality work to promote quality in preschools from the principal’s perspective.

A collaborative approach was used in this research project, and principals were asked to complete portfolio assignments. Their answers to those portfolio assignments were analysed by the research team and subsequently compared to total quality management values.

Existing and desired methodologies for systematic quality work are presented and sorted into 13 and 17 groups, respectively. The principals desire four times more methodologies than they are presently using to promote systematic quality work, and the results show that they must extend their methodologies to support TQM values.

This research is based on answers collected from 18 principals in one municipality in Sweden.

The use of the cornerstone model provides a framework to illustrate the application of TQM in preschools.

Principals struggle to find time for systemic quality work. The presented results can be used to work systematically with quality in preschools and other organizations.

The voice of school principals represents the principals' thoughts and experiences because of their as teachers' evaluator. It provides principals' perception on making sense the teacher evaluation. In qualitative research, voice can provide the truth and meaning of principals' experience in teachers evaluation. Their voices in the qualitative interviews are recorded and transcribed into words (Jackson and Mazzei, 2009 and Charteris and Smardon, 2018). By listening to the voices of principals in five provinces in Indonesia, this study, a qualitative research, intends to explore the principals' sensemaking in teacher evaluation.

This study adopted a qualitative approach, as it was principally concerned with capturing participants' direct experiences in their natural setting as both the teachers' evaluator and school leader (Patton, 2002). The qualitative interview and content analysis were used in this study. The qualitative interview is a type of conversation used to explore informants' experiences and interpretations; in this study, the headmaster (Mishler, 1986; Spradley, 1979 in Hatch, 2002). Researchers used the interviews to uncover the structure of meaning used by principals in making sense the policies that determine teacher evaluations and that are used to carry out evaluations within principal's local authority. The implicit structure can be discovered from direct observation, and the qualitative interviews can bring this meaning to the surface (Hatch, 2002). Therefore, by applying the qualitative interviews, it is expected that information or “unique” interpretations from the principal can be obtained (Stake, 2010). Content analysis is a research technique for making valid conclusions from oral texts into a research context. This analysis can provide new insights, improve researchers' understanding of certain phenomena, or inform other practical actions through the use of verbal data collected in the form of answers to open interview questions (Krippendorff, 2004).

There are three important findings relating to principals' sensemaking of teachers' evaluation; they are teachers' length of service, principals' perceptions of teacher evaluations and consistency in teacher performance improvement. The principals' perception greatly influences their beliefs and sensemaking of teacher evaluation. In essence, teacher evaluation has not been used to identify high-quality teachers. Principals focus more on the improvement of teachers' welfare than teacher actual performance.

Future research should explore principals' attitude toward the stakeholders when student achievement is not in line with the consistent increase in teachers' performance ratings. And, it is also necessary to investigate the policy makers response to see the consistent improvement in teacher's evaluation is not in line with student achievement. Finally, how to eliminate the culture of joint responsibility without causing frictions in the school environment.

The authors hereby declare that this submission is their own work, and to the best of their knowledge, it contains no materials previously published or written by another person, or substantial proportions of material that have been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma any other publishers.

During the COVID-19 crisis in Victoria, Australia the complexity of school leadership increased greatly for school principals. This study focused on the lived experiences of early career principals in the independent school sector from March to November 2020 in Victoria, Australia. It investigates transformative work that was undertaken by these leaders in leading their schools over a protracted crisis.

The study builds on constructs of crisis leadership, adaptive leadership, agile leadership and emotional intelligence, exploring the leadership approaches undertaken by twenty-two early career principals in Victoria, Australia. Using a narrative inquiry approach, across three temporal points in 2020, storied productions drawn from the findings present four emergent types of emotionally intelligent leadership approaches undertaken by these principals. These leadership approaches are presented as the commander-leader, the conductor-leader, the gardener-leader and the engineer-leader with each approach demonstrating both organisational leadership approaches as well as individual leadership styles used by these principals as they led their schools.

The findings have direct implications for professional development programs focusing on aspiring principals and early career principals with emphasis on the importance of developing emotionally intelligent skillsets in principals for use during periods of rapid change or high crisis in schools. The findings present insight into the support useful for early career principals in the first five years of principalship.

This study uses a unique emotional intelligence approach to understand school leadership during and after a crisis.

School leadership is found important for school development and student learning. Consequently, the interest in professional leadership education for principals has increased. In Sweden, professional leadership education for novice principals was made mandatory in 2010. Moreover, enhanced focus on leadership for teaching and learning in terms of ‘pedagogical leadership’ is highly topical. This study aims to deepen our knowledge of novice principals’ experiences of pedagogical leadership practices and relate these to their paths toward principalship. The study follows a qualitative and situated design and adopts a practice-based approach. Observations were conducted in the educational and workplace practices of novice principals in Sweden and interviews were conducted with principals and teachers. Using a conceptual framework of Wenger (1998), the analyses show that principals experience challenges concerning pedagogical leadership if their competence and experience are not aligned with practice and context. This mismatch seems to impair their pedagogical leadership practice. In addition, a lack of leadership experience obstructs their learning in the professional leadership education for principals.