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This chapter presents a comparative analysis of the English, Northern Irish, Arab Israeli, Trinidad and Tobago and the US cases. The focus is what we have learned from the research about: the relationships within Education Governance Systems to navigate turbulence; building capacity for empowering senior-level leaders to deliver on their manifestos and outstanding track records for school improvement; reducing the achievement gap between dominant groups and marginalised groups in International Governance Systems. The chapter identifies that all cases require participatory multi-stakeholder action to develop and support collaborative networked learning communities in practice. Such communities of and for practice need to Empower Young Societal Innovators for Equity and Renewal (EYSIER). Policy and Education Governance Systems have the potential to synthesise the best of what has been said and done in the past, with innovative ways of working by empowering networks of knowledge building and advocacy. These networks co-create opportunities for action learners to work together to describe intersectionalities of discrimination and begin to remove fear of discrimination and marginalisation from Education Governance Systems. From this position, senior-level leaders can work with their leaders, teachers, parents and students to optimise how learning about the self, and learning how to learn improves community education for all students and EYSIER.

Describes the practices, thoughts, and feelings of shared‐governance principals as they confront the challenges of school restructuring. The focus is on the principals’ perspective on shared governance and democratic schooling; the challenges of becoming involved in collaborative decision making with teachers, parents, and students; and the principals’ own professional growth as they strove to become “one among equals” with their colleagues. The data discussed here were drawn from a qualitative study of principals in nine schools affiliated with Glickman’s League of Professional Schools in Georgia. A protocol of open‐ended interview questions designed by the researchers, according to general guidelines for grounded theory inquiry, provided principals with the opportunity to identify and describe in detail their perspective on shared governance leadership in schools. Inductive analysis of the data generated a description of the implementation of shared governance that includes five salient themes: meanings, becoming involved, letting go of power, supportive processes, and supportive structures. Discusses findings in terms of the relevant empirical and theoretical literature.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the governance of educational reform, as an interpretive process – “interpretive governance” – through a case study of five superintendents living in a predominantly Swedish-speaking region in Finland.

To foreground superintendents’ perspectives on reforms as simultaneously reflective and constitutive of governance processes, the research applies and extends Rhodes’ (2012) notions of “network governance,” “meta-governance” and “interpretive governance.” Interpretive governance, an underresearched area, is construed as particularly important for developing better insights into how school reform is understood by key actors involved in its enactment.

The research identifies what are described as three “deliberative” dimensions of interpretive governance; these modes of governance are elaborated as “dialogic,” “directive” and “defensive” in nature.

The study reveals senior educators’ interpretations of governance as multifaceted, and argues that these complex modes of deliberation need to be taken into account to better understand how school development is understood and enacted in municipal and school settings.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the processes and relationships between school councils and school leadership teams in the local governance of 18 independent, faith-based schools in New South Wales, Australia.

A three-phase, mixed-method research design was used incorporating development of a conceptual framework for local school governance drawn from current literature, face-to face interviews with chairs of school councils and principals, and a subsequent survey of school council members and within-school leadership teams.

Noting a lack of research into the practices and processes of school council operations and their interface with school leadership, the study identified five key areas that were seen to be foundational to the effectiveness of local governance.

The study contributes an Australian perspective to an international need to better understand local governance arrangements in school leadership and management.

At a practical level, the study provides valuable insights to principals, and to those aspiring to the role, on the nature of the relationship between the school council and school leadership teams.

The study responds to a marked increase internationally in local governance arrangements for schools by way of school councils or boards.

A review of literature reveals that, somewhat surprisingly, there has been relatively little research undertaken in this key area of leading and managing schools.

This study examines the impact of school-district governance characteristics, which include board and management entrenchment and budget and audit committee expertise, on fiscal measures. Despite the significant influence school boards have over the determination and use of the bulk of property taxes, virtually no empirical research exists that examines the influence of school-district governance structures on fiscal outcomes. We find a positive association between board entrenchment and spending and find a negative association between budget and audit committee expertise and spending. The findings of this study confirm that governance structure matters for fiscal outcomes and recommendations are provided to support efforts to improve fiscal efficiency of school-district governance.

This study investigated the conceptions of governance that informed the practices of school trustees, and considered the extent to which those conceptions matched the policy imperatives that shaped New Zealand's school governance framework.

Semi‐structured interviews were undertaken with 32 participants in the governance of New Zealand primary schools. The interviews were structured around four scenarios that described the work of a hypothetical Board. For each scenario, the participants were asked to rate how well the Board did its job and then asked to explain their ratings.

Conceptions of good governance were dominated by concerns about the quality of relationships and the effectiveness and efficiency of task completion. There was little evidence that educational or democratic values shaped governance activity.

These findings were derived from a small sample of 32 participants, drawn from a disadvantaged, multi‐cultural community. While their generalizability to all New Zealand primary school should not be assumed, the similarity of these themes to those reported in prior New Zealand surveys suggests that this sample may not be atypical.

The originality of this study is that it presents a methodology for discovering the extent to which key policy ideas are reflected in the understanding of those who are intended to carry them out.

The final decade of the twentieth century saw a major shift to self‐governance for schools in many countries, including the UK and Australia. This trend is underpinned by the assumption that greater autonomy will lead to improved educational outcomes. The impact of self‐management on principals and schools is now well documented but much less attention has been given to the implications for governance, a significant omission as the process of decentralisation transfers responsibilities to governing bodies rather than school principals. Reviews the main issues of governance and illustrates them from the research in England and Wales and in Australia. It joins the debate about the appropriate balance between governance and management for governing bodies and examines the lay/professional interface in school governance. It assesses governors’ role as representatives of school interest groups and concludes by setting out a research agenda for governance in self‐managing schools.

This study aims to use the original data collected from school board members representing nonprofit charter schools in the state of Minnesota to examine the relationship between the distribution of board-executive governance responsibilities and the performance of organizations operating as part of a New Public Management style macro-governance reform.

A combination of survey data collected from Minnesota charter school board members and hard performance data were utilized in two OLS regression models to predict the link between organizational governance and school performance.

The authors find that boards can improve hard measures of organizational performance by shifting responsibility of day-to-day operations closer to the executive, and public advocacy duties closer to the board. The results build on the existing literatures on school board governance and board-executive relations. Overall, the findings suggest the existence of an ideal balance between board-executive governance responsibilities in key functional areas on charter school boards.

Though a healthy literature exists regarding the value of charter schools, very few studies have actually explored the way in which these organizations are governed. This study is the first to link charter board governance responsibilities to performance.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the urgent need for a genuinely effective and attainable citizenship education model in Hong Kong’s schools, which focusses on promoting student participation in school governance. It is an empirical citizenship education management model for school leaders that illustrates the predictive effects of personally responsible, participatory, justice-oriented and patriotic citizenship, necessarily supported by school management practices, school ethos and teacher beliefs.

A total of 3,209 students from 51 secondary schools in Hong Kong participated in a quasi-experimental design questionnaire survey. A structural equation model (SEM) was applied to confirm the model.

The results of the SEM show that the values and cultural practices held by a school’s teachers drive the implementation of its citizenship education. Moreover, it is well known that organizational values can exert a powerful influence and it is the same within educational structures: management practices in schools have an impact on ethos, teachers’ beliefs and student participation in school governance.

The paper provides practical proposals for school leaders to create opportunities for student participation in school governance.

This study builds on existing literature and provides school leaders with a practical model for implementing student participation in school governance.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships between the civic mission of schools and students on participation in school governance through an empirical study. It articulates the importance of school mission on nurturing citizenship of high school students.

The research used a mixed method with questionnaire survey in the first phase and qualitative interviews in the second phase. Quantitative data were obtained from a survey completed by 3,209 students and 495 teachers (including principals) from 51 secondary schools in Hong Kong. Qualitative data were collected from 41 individual interviews with principals and teachers and 17 focus group interviews with 56 students in five case study schools.

Both students and teachers believed that good citizenship qualities should include students’ participation in school governance. Schools in general took up the civic mission to nurture good and participatory citizens. A mission of nurturing students to become good and participatory citizens made a significant and positive contribution toward achieving students’ actual participation in school governance. However, students’ actual impact on major school policies was minimal. A paradox existed whereby students, knowing their influence over managerial issues was much circumscribed, still gave it a higher rating than their teachers.

The paper contributes an empirical model for school leaders to develop school vision for promoting student participation in school governance. Based on a large-scale research supported by public funding, the paper contributes an empirical model for school leaders to develop school vision for promoting student participation in school governance. It further adds to the literature on relationship between citizenship education, civic mission of school and student participation in governance.