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The paper aims to describe the application of theoretical principles derived from a study of self‐organisation and complex systems theory and their application to school‐based capacity building to support planned change.

The paper employs a case example in a Hong Kong School to illustrate the application of the principles and discuss their potential to sustain the effect of capacity building in schools.. The descriptive case study is used to illustrate six theoretical propositions of self‐organization. The case is then unpacked using each of the propositions to illustrate the application of the theory to capacity building in a secondary school setting.

The case illustrates the way each of the principles are reflected in a design process undertaken by the school's principal and its leadership team to create a self‐organizing approach to capacity building.

The value of this paper is threefold. First it shows the way in which capacity building can be theorized for practical benefit in school settings. Second, the theoretical approach described in the case study addresses the longstanding and largely unresolved issue of the sustainability of capacity building efforts in school settings. The case analysis links theory to practical strategy that can be used by school leaders to design their own capacity building efforts that disperse control to the community, are sustainable, and self‐organizing within the school.

The Teen Entrepreneurship Competition (TEC) was an annual inter‐school competition that aimed to promote entrepreneurship education (EE) in Hong Kong (HK) secondary schools. This paper aims to: review and evaluate the implementation of the TEC over the years from 2003‐2010, and use the TEC as a case to demonstrate how EE can be advanced through capacity building in various ways and levels.

There were two key milestone phases for the TEC. This paper will describe and discuss the achievements made in Phase I and the capacity building for advancing the TEC in Phase II in details. Then, a critical analysis of capacity building for advancing TEC in Phase II will be made with a careful consideration of the TEC's design rationales, the research findings in Phase I and the three inter‐related levels of capacity building. Finally, suggestions will be recommended for further strengthening EE in schools.

The sustainability and advancement of the TEC are closely related to: advancing “Character Building” at the individual level, advancing “Partnership Building” at the institutional level, and advancing “Social Responsibility” at the societal level. However, the TEC might still overlook an alignment with the existing curriculum development. A further capacity building of course development and policy making should be sought.

This is a precious illustrative case study for the purpose of sharing useful information and genuine experience with those who are interested in promoting teen EE in schools.

This paper aims to serve as an introduction to and overview of this special issue of the Journal of Educational Administration entitled “Building organisational capacity in school education”. The co‐editors have solicited contributions from authors in Wales, Australia, Canada, the USA, England, Hong Kong and New Zealand.

The paper reviews past and contemporary approaches to the issue of capacity building in education and in particular, sustainable capacity building. As well as reviewing key researchers and writers in this field, including their own work, the authors foreshadow and synthesise the other seven papers that make up this special issue.

The paper contends that building capacity in schools and schooling, while no means easy, can be both understood and accomplished. However, caution needs to be exercised because hard‐fought gains in capacity building and sustainability can be quickly eroded under the influence of poor leadership or extraneous changes.

The paper serves as a framework both for the seven papers that follow and more generally for understanding and conceptualising sustainable school capacity building.

The paper performs the function of framing current debates and pressures around sustainable school capacity‐building in an international theoretical and practical context.

This study aims to present revised models and a reconceptualisation of successful school principalship for improved student outcomes.

The study's approach is qualitative and quantitative, culminating in model building and multi‐level statistical analyses.

Principals who promote both capacity building and systems of accountability and evaluation, to the extent that their teachers perceive these two factors as characterising their schools, advance student empowerment, social development and academic achievement. Other success factors include student home educational environment, the values and beliefs of teachers, and principals' years in a school and hours worked. It is demonstrated that the negative effects of socio‐economic disadvantage can be moderated.

Insights are provided into how schools and their principals can best achieve a broad range of student outcomes. For example, the most direct route for a school to achieve academic success is the indirect route through fostering student social development. For successful practice, the challenge is to create synergistic effects; the accumulation of a number of effects developed with others over time in the same direction.

This study represents the culmination of a five‐year research journey on school principalship that improves student outcomes. It employs an in‐depth qualitative and quantitative methodology culminating in model building and powerful multi‐level statistical analyses. It is one of few studies available that examines most of the factors that may influence a school's success in three categories of student outcomes: academic achievement, social development, and student empowerment.

Although the value of community capacity building is widely accepted within scholarly literature, these initiatives thus far appear to have achieved very little impact in the achievement of community development aspirations. This paper aims to increase knowledge regarding specific priority areas which when targeted will result in more effective pathways towards sustainable development.

This study was performed through utilization of a qualitative strategy, which involved the combination of a number of qualitative methods and techniques including individual interviews, surveys, focus groups, literary review and policy analysis.

The investigation found that improving identified CSD priority areas, aligned with the sustainable development goals (SDGs), seems to be the most effective strategy to enhance the ability of local communities to overcome sustainability challenges over time. SDGs 9, 4, 15, 16, 17 and 8 were identified as the areas of greatest significance for practical community capacity building for sustainable development (CSD).

This paper answers scholarly literature’s call for greater investigation into bringing sustainability research closer to society, to clearly define research direction and agenda. It also recommends ways to action the global goals locally.

Systems educational reform in developing countries through effective principal capacity- building programs is essential for improving student learning, with the purpose of this paper being to use case studies to identify key success factors in the implementation of an instructional leadership program in the developing country of Kiribati.

A case study approach involving mixed methods including semi-structured interviews and document analysis was used within three purposively sampled schools to examine implementation success factors relevant to instructional leadership literature

The case studies reveal the overall value of the Kiribati instructional leadership program involving school leader workshops and ongoing coaching support, with instructional leadership reflecting directive and collaborative, as well as transformative theoretical aspects. Key implementation success factors within researched schools were leaders undertaking regular observations in classrooms, systematic tracking of student achievement and nurturing a positive culture for learning, as well as establishment of various collaborative processes involving community and teacher peer learning groups.

The study provides in-depth information through teacher and school leader interviews and examining relevant school documentation artefacts. A limitation is that the study involved only three schools and was undertaken less than a year into program implementation. Future research involving more schools and several years after implementation would be beneficial to investigate sustainability across the school system and longer-term program impacts.

The data provides practical tips for school leaders regarding effective teacher capacity-building approaches, as well as providing information for policy makers, especially in developing countries, about effective professional development programs for school leaders and teachers. 10; 10;

The study examines a system-wide workshop series and coaching approach to school leader and teacher capacity-building in a developing country from a theoretical and practical perspective relevant to instructional leadership and also transformational leadership, which is an under-researched area. 10; 10; 10;

Who are late‐career school principals? Do they continue to make a positive contribution to their schools? Do they feel tired and trapped or do they maintain their commitment to education and young people? The purpose of this paper is to explore these issues, employing the results of a survey on successful school principalship with the population of Tasmanian government school principals.

Surveys on successful school principalship were distributed to a population of 195 government schools (excluding colleges and special schools) in Tasmania. Return rates were 67 per cent for principals and 12 per cent for teachers. Surveys sought responses in areas such as demographic characteristics, leadership characteristics, values and beliefs, tensions and dilemmas, learning and development, school capacity building, decision making, evaluation and accountability, and perceptions of school success.

The findings confirm other research indicating that pre‐retirement principals, when compared with other principals, are more likely to have a strong work ethic, to consult widely and to have a strong social consciousness. The findings contradict results from other research indicating that pre‐retirement principals, when compared with other principals, are more likely to be rigid and autocratic, disenchanted with and withdrawn from work, and “tired and trapped”.

Such findings lead one to conclude that pre‐retirement principals continue to be a committed and valuable resource and that therefore greater research and policy attention should be given to the issue. With education systems undergoing major and continuing change, while at the same time suffering potential shortages of effective school leaders, it is time to re‐examine educational career structures, especially for those principals approaching retirement.

The paper's originality lies in the evidence it provides about an area that is not well researched.

This paper aims to provide an Australian perspective on successful school leadership.

The paper focuses on case studies in two Australian states (Tasmania and Victoria). Case studies for each state were developed independently and are reported separately.

The findings show a remarkable degree of commonality demonstrating that the core aspects of successful school leadership can be identified in ways that can help explain the complexity of principal leadership that leads to improved student outcomes.

Highlights the importance and contribution of the principal to the quality of education.

Elementary schools have been confronted with large-scale educational reforms as strategies to improve the educational quality. While building school-wide capacity for improvement is considered critical for changing teachers’ classroom practices, there is still little empirical evidence for link between enhanced school capacity for improvement and instructional change. In this study, the authors examined the impact of school improvement capacity on changes in teachers’ classroom practices over a period of time. Leadership practices, school organizational conditions, teacher motivation and teacher learning were used to measure school-wide capacity for improvement. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Mixed-model analysis of longitudinal data over a four years (2005-2008) period of time from 862 teachers of 32 Dutch elementary schools were used to test the impact of school improvement capacity on changing teachers’ instructional practices.

The results showed that organizational-level conditions and teacher-level conditions play an important, but different role in changing teachers’ classroom practices. Whereas teacher factors mainly affect changes in teachers’ classroom practices, organizational factors are of significant importance to enhance teacher motivation and teacher learning.

More longitudinal research is needed to gain better insight into the opportunities and limits of building school-wide capacity to stimulate instructional change.

By encouraging teachers to question their own beliefs, facilitating opportunities for teachers to work together to solve problems, and through the promotion of shared decision making, school leaders can reinforce the personal and social identification of teachers with the organization. As a consequence, teachers will feel increasingly committed and are more willing to change their classroom practices. Additionally, school leaders can use the findings from this study and the related instrument as a tool for school self-evaluation.

This paper contributes to a deeper understanding of the nature of changes in conditions for school improvement and its influence on changes in teachers’ instructional practices over a period of time.

The purpose of this paper is to report findings from an exploratory study of New York's Children First Networks (CFNs); to examine what is known about the CFNs thus far, drawing on new empirical research, as well as document review and analysis of secondary sources.

Organizational learning theory guided this qualitative study. As such, in‐depth interviews conducted with central office staff, network leadership teams, cluster leaders, and principals focused on the flow and management of information within the networks; the ways in which stakeholders developed shared meanings; how collective intelligence was built and transmitted; and organizational responses to the early experience of the CFNs.

Findings highlight the tools and processes the NYC Department of Education (DOE) has put into place to operationalize the CFNs. Respondents identified as critical the replacement of supervisory leadership from the district with customization of services provided by the network teams to promote principal‐led reforms. Increased efficiency was noted by interviewees, but a number of challenges in the reform’s implementation also surfaced that point to the limitations of the CFNs as a capacity‐building mechanism.

As an exploratory study, this research is intended to inform larger‐scale, mixed‐methods investigations of school networks, especially those implementing reforms aimed at improving teaching and learning in schools. Research is needed into the resource exchanges between individuals and groups in networks, what differentiates high‐performing from lower‐performing networks, and how data are used to inform the evolution of network structures and practices.

This study is the first peer‐reviewed article on the evolution of New York City's Children First Networks.