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The international academic literature agrees that principals act as change agents and are vital in creating and promoting an inclusive school culture. In this article, the authors proclaim that Indian schools lack school leadership to accomplish inclusive education (IE) characterized by local needs. The article emphasizes the importance of school principals and discusses how principal vacancies, insufficient training and lack of autonomy jeopardize inclusive and equitable quality education in Indian schools. Contextualized policies, professional standards for principals, research that highlights principals' perspectives and autonomy for principals are required to strengthen principals, who are the primary advocates for IE, to create a more democratic, equitable and just society.

The authors base their arguments and opinions on the latest National Education Policy (NEP, 2020), data/statistics from various educational organizations in India, and research findings of global scholars.

The data and statistics show that principals in Indian schools do not receive the essential assistance to implement IE successfully. A lack of adequate data regarding the subject of debate is another point made by the authors.

Understanding the hardships faced by Indian school principals would help readers recognize the leadership challenges for IE in India. Addressing these challenges is one of the best ways to fulfill the equity and inclusion goals emphasized in UN Sustainable Development Goal #4.

This article is the first to emphasize the importance of prioritizing principals in Indian schools, among other agents when trying to achieve inclusion.

In the deregulated public sector upper secondary school field in Oslo, Norway, turnover among teachers is found to be high. The purpose is to examine whether instrumental practices like control-oriented HRM, performance appraisal and heteronomy directly or indirectly lead to turnover intention, as a crucial pre-stage to turnover. Another purpose is to examine whether this varies with feedback format.

The present study is based on a survey (N = 1,055) carried out among upper secondary school teachers in Norway. Data were analyzed with path analysis, and mediation and moderation analyses were performed.

The study shows that control-oriented HRM, PA dissatisfaction and heteronomy are antecedents to turnover intention for teachers receiving feedback in three different feedback formats. The effect of control-oriented HRM and PA dissatisfaction on turnover intention was generally not stronger among numerically rated than among those rated otherwise. For most feedback format groups, leader–member exchange mediated between turnover intention and PA dissatisfaction and heteronomy, respectively, but not between turnover intention and control-oriented HRM. For teachers rated with text, figures or colors, LMX moderated between control-oriented HRM and turnover intention.

The paper advances that introduction of instrumental practices will be seen as breaches of the psychological contract, but this does not apply to all feedback format groups, for example those receiving numerically rating. Limitations involve self-reported measures, direction of causality issues and a relatively low sample size for some groups.

Practitioners should note that both control-oriented HRM, performance appraisal and little autonomy may cause teachers to consider leaving their jobs. Practitioners should also be aware of the importance of the relationship between employee and leader, as negative responses to instrumentality may work through the leader–employee relationship, leading to turnover intention and, possibly, turnover.

The present study is among the first to examine whether and how antecedents to turnover intention vary with feedback format. A rare interaction between HRM and LMX is uncovered. Few other studies have analyzed the relationship between instrumental practices and turnover intention in light of psychological contract theory.

In this chapter, we present a collaborative autoethnographic study with two main layers: first, we share experiences of two separate educational research projects and explore how different dialogic research practices facilitate both participants and researchers to discover the phenomenon being studied; second, we engage in a dialogic conversation to discover our own research practices. Focussing on projects in two different countries (Norway and Canada), our initial centring question for this chapter is: how do our research practices facilitate insight into participants’ real-life experiences and practices? Then turning the light on our own research practices, we ask: what onto-epistemological assumptions shape our dialogical research practices? The chapter reveals that dialogic research practices allowed collective wisdom to be discovered and ensured that we were able to break through the taken-for-grantedness both of the concept being studied and of our own research practices.

This study aims to explore the instructional leadership practices implemented by academic professionals and leaders to enhance the curriculum of Islamic economics and finance (IEF) in two public universities in Saudi Arabia.

This study used a qualitative approach, using a case study methodology that focused on two meticulously chosen universities in Saudi Arabia. A total of 21 academics from two public universities in Saudi Arabia who worked in IEF schools were selected for semi-structured interviews.

The findings showed that two universities in Saudi Arabia that offer degrees in IEF exhibited limited instructional leadership. The findings indicate four apparent barriers that may explain the lack of involvement in instructional leadership and fair practices in the IEF curriculum at Saudi Arabian universities. According to this study, a positive collegial climate in Saudi universities’ IEF promotes shared instructional leadership.

The use of a limited qualitative method and small sample of respondents in this study may not provide enough evidence to generalise the findings to all universities and higher education schools in Saudi Arabia. Although a case study was used to describe IEF curriculum management and implementation at the two universities, caution should be exercised when applying these findings to other institutions.

IEF schools in Saudi universities need to leverage their positive, collaborative and relationship-building environments to develop activities that promote shared instructional leadership.

The research findings can offer valuable insights and examples for school leaders to develop instructional activities and promote the concept of “shared instructional leadership”. This approach involves delegating responsibilities and actions to others to enhance the IEF curriculum’s quality. Policymakers and university officials can use these findings to enhance strategic policies.

Work-related stress is a significant occupational health issue. Stress cannot be viewed separately from the perceptual or interpretive act by the individual. Self-efficacy is a personal characteristic that explains a high proportion of variation in the performance of school principals.

The current study examines if the COVID-pandemic is related to burnout among school principals. Additionally, the study analyzes if the self-efficacy of school principals plays a mediating role in the impact that the COVID-19 crisis had on their burnout level. To explore this, the authors used survey data of 981 Flemish school principals.

The findings indicate that the COVID-19 pandemic is related to feelings of burnout among Flemish school principals. In addition, self-efficacy mediated the relationship between the COVID-19 scale and the four core subscales of burnout: exhaustion, mental distance, emotional impairment and cognitive impairment. No mediating effect of self-efficacy was found for the secondary symptoms of burnout, psychological distress and psychosomatic complaints.

This paper emphasizes the importance of school principal's self-efficacy experiences for crisis management. Implications for school leadership training and support are discussed.

As part of a broader qualitative study on well-being and social support, the study reported here explored the issue of principal well-being to provide further insight into the concerns of principals. Its aim was to identify aspects of the principal role that impact on well-being.

A phenomenological approach was used to study the experiences of the principals. Eight primary school principals in New South Wales, Australia participated in semi-structured interviews that examined this area and identified aspects of their leadership role that influence their well-being. Purposive sampling was used to ensure representation in terms of gender and school size.

Five themes emerged as the key concerns of the principals: the responsibility of the role; managing people; feelings of isolation; the stress caused by the role; and prioritising the well-being of staff. Comments from the principals highlight how each of these areas is experienced.

Identifying and exploring these concerns added to the extant research on principal well-being by providing detail on the specific experiences of principals. The study also offers a basis to consider how the current situation may be improved by addressing the well-being concerns that are common, as well as highlighting areas that warrant further research attention.

School-level leaders should not be expected to be mired in emotional turmoil and sacrifice their own health, happiness and well-being to do their jobs effectively. While the emotional aspects of school-level leadership have continued to evolve and become increasingly complex since the turn of the twenty-first century, the supports available to these individuals remain outdated, ineffective, and moribund. If mentoring, anonymous telephone support lines and other ‘old school’ approaches for supporting school leaders were still effective, they would not be struggling to deal with the emotional aspects of their work and workload. Further, there is a need to provide ‘just-in-time’ supports that are available to school-level leaders when concerns arise. Absent structural changes, isolated and individualized approaches to self-care cannot mitigate the challenges principals face or the physical, mental and emotional toll associated with their work and workload. Communal strategies and policy levers are recommended in an effort to go beyond mindfulness and other (potentially) individualistic and neoliberal approaches to self-care. This chapter also explores how principal preparation programmes and other formal professional learning opportunities are an untapped resource in terms of strengthening school-level leaders' emotional regulation capacity and building a general appreciation for the emotional aspects of school-level leadership.

Educators need to engage in continuous learning to ensure that their knowledge and practice responds to the changing needs of society and students. Collaborative approaches, in which social capital resource is exchanged, can serve as an effective way of facilitating such learning. With this systematic review, the authors identify the opportunities and benefits inter-school social capital networks might bring by exploring: (1) what inter-school networks are available internationally for primary and secondary schools, (2) the features and activities present within inter-school networks and (3) evidence of impact of inter-school network activities.

For this study, the authors employed a systematic review methodology. The review comprised the five stages of the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses: PRISMA, 2021) protocol. The study findings derived from 111 research outputs (from a total of 1,221 originally identified).

The review highlights a number of different inter-school networks and their diverse purposes as well as key network features, such as the actors present in networks and the activities network participants engage with. At the same time, however, the authors only identify limited reliable evidence of the impact of inter-school networks.

The study fills a knowledge gap by exploring, for the first time, the presence, features of inter-school social capital networks available to school leaders as well as investigating the impact of these networks.

Government primary schools in Australia increasingly take up the International Baccalaureate's Primary Years Programme (IB-PYP) to supplement government-mandated curriculum and governance expectations. The purpose of this paper is to explore how teachers navigate and contest dual policy-practice expectations in the Victorian Government IB-PYP context.

This study used a narrative inquiry approach. The narratives of two teachers were generated through a narrative interview and then re-storied with participants through a set of conceptual lenses drawn out of the policy assemblage and affect studies theoretical spaces.

The stories participants told show that competing mandatory local policy expressions are experienced and contested both to stabilize a technocratic rationality and produce alternative critical-political educational futures.

There a few accounts of teachers' policy experience in government school settings implementing the IB-PYP. In addressing this gap, this paper directly responds to prior claims of the IB's failure to promote an emancipatory pedagogy, showing instead that when teachers who bring a more critical understanding of educational purpose to their work take up the IB-PYP policy to support the enactment of that purpose.

This study addressed a relatively understudied process of school leadership: the principal-teacher conversation about instructional change. Two distinct conversation structures were examined: controlling conversation and transformative leadership conversation (TLC). Self-determination theory (SDT) was used to make the case that TLC is a better fit for instructional change than controlling conversation. Hypotheses were developed on the relationship between principal-teacher conversation and teacher trust in the principal, teacher autonomy and teacher vitality. These mental states were identified for empirical testing because of their influence on change processes.

The empirical study used a correlational research design with survey data. The data came from a random sample of 2,500 teachers from the population of certified teachers in a southwestern state in the USA. Useable survey responses were obtained from 1,615 teachers, for a response rate of 65 percent. Teachers in the sample averaged 15 years of teaching experience, with 7 years in their current school. Around 81% of teachers identified as female and 18 percent as male and 79% of teachers listed a racial identification as white. Hypotheses were tested in a path model using AMOS 28.0 with robust maximum likelihood (MLR).

As hypothesized, TLC had moderate to strong positive relationships with teacher trust in the principal, teacher autonomy and teacher vitality. Controlling conversation had small, negative relationships with teacher trust in the principal and teacher autonomy. Controlling conversation was not related to teacher vitality in the path analysis. Compared with controlling conversation, TLC had stronger relationships with teacher mental states.

The results of this study begin to reveal useful evidence on the inherent social-psychological mechanisms active in principal-teacher conversations. With results indicating that conversation structure has consequences for positive teacher mental states, the study directs attention to a ubiquitous yet understudied leadership process.