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This paper will discuss one university’s efforts to initiate a process to better support PK-12 continuous school improvement goals for all 13 schools in their PDS network as a way to broaden the university’s mission and respond more formally to the individual school communities with which they partner.

The paper is conceptual in that it presents an innovative idea to stimulate discussion, generate new ideas and advance thinking about cross-institutional collaboration between universities and professional development schools.

The paper provides insights and ideas for bringing about change and growth in a seasoned PDS partnership network by connecting PK-12 continuous school improvement efforts to PDS partnership work.

This paper fulfills an identified need to study how seasoned partnerships can participate in simultaneous renewal by offering ideas that school–university partnership leaders can build upon as they make efforts to participate in the process of growth and change.

The purpose of this article is to expand knowledge on Swedish principals' professional development (PD) from the perspectives of superintendents. In particular, the article analyzes how superintendents understand and organize PD for principals.

Empirical data are derived from a strategic sample of ten (n = 10) superintendents. Transcribed interviews were analyzed in two steps. The first step was carried out inductively to identify prominent aspects of PD for principals. In the second step, the detected themes and categories were analyzed more deductively through the theoretical lens of learning in organizations.

The analysis revealed that the purpose of PD for principals and the principal leadership that must be nurtured from the perspective of superintendents spans a scale, from knowing what is already required to critically examining and exploring the unknown. In addition, the understanding of learning stretches from an individual enterprise to a collective activity. However, noteworthy differences between the superintendents were detected and organized into three ideal types.

Despite a profound research design and a careful selection of superintendents, the sample sets some limits because of the plurality within the decentralized Swedish school system.

The results can support strategies from superintendents, principals and educational authorities to build infrastructures that foster PD at different levels of school systems.

This article offers a novel perspective by analyzing principals' PD from the perspectives of superintendents.

The purpose of this study is to assess teachers' and principals' perception towards the role of collective learning (CL) and application in building professional learning communities (PLCs) in schools in one selected circuit in the Zambezi Region.

Quantitative research method was used, and the data were collected using PLCs’ questionnaires revised for circuit and region in Namibia. A total of 340 teachers and principals in primary, combined and secondary schools were involved in this research. Based on teachers and principals' assessment, high- and low-performing factors of CL are presented and explained.

The major findings are that the majority of participants either strongly agreed or agreed with almost all the statements. It was only in the statement that “teachers and the broader community role players come together to discuss better ways to solve problems” that a majority of participants disagreed. This research challenges all those involved in building up PLCs to think more about CL when they are in the process of structuring their schools as PLCs.

This article is the original work of these authors and has not been submitted to other journals for publication.

Change agents are individuals who can successfully transform aspects of how organisations operate. In education, teachers as change agents are increasingly seen as vital to the successful operation of schools and self-improving school systems. To date, however, there has been no systematic investigation of the nature and role of teacher change agents. To address this knowledge gap, we undertook a systematic review into five key areas regarding teachers as change agents. After reviewing 70 outputs we found that current literature predominantly positions teacher change agents as the deliverers of top-down change, with the possibility of bottom-up educational reform currently neglected.

This study aims to determine how school-based management (SBM) capacity developed through international cooperation functioned to overcome challenges during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in Nepal.

The research structure was designed based on the success case method. The researchers conducted a questionnaire survey of head teachers to understand schools’ responses during the COVID-19 pandemic period, identified likely success-case schools, held workshops at the likely success-case schools and conducted in-depth interviews with head teachers and school management committee (SMC) members to understand how SBM functioned and contributed to the success cases.

Storytelling from the success-case schools provided reliable evidence that the localised approaches of SBM are effective for planning and implementing suitable responses at school. The reviews of the head teachers showed that both head teachers and teachers had strong leadership and understood the importance of collaboration with teachers, SMC members, Parent Teacher Association (PTA), guardians and students. Although the research could not show clear evidence of a causal relationship between their achievement and Japan’s project input, the success-case schools clearly benefited from the head teachers’ appropriate execution of SBM with their strong leadership as well as the collaborative efforts of the stakeholders.

The research tries to clarify the influence of the effects of SBM capacity development projects by analysing the changes of head teachers and teachers through the storytelling aspect of the success case method with in-depth consideration of actual school responses during the emergency period of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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 purpose of this study is to explore the concept of long-term thinking in a non-business context to gain deeper insights into bridging the gap between the theory of long-term thinking and its application as a management strategy.

To explore the concept of long-thinking further in a non-business setting, a grounded theory study was conducted with preschool leaders in a municipality in Sweden to examine how the leaders describe, define and apply the concept of long-term thinking in their schools. Interviews with school leaders, both written and oral, were used for data collection.

This study illustrates that the concept of long-term thinking can be twofold. First, the description can be as an anchor that reflects a mission. Second, the description can be a steering mechanism that guides decision-making. The findings also reinforce the importance of organisations developing an organisational culture that connect their vision and goals with the values and needs of their customers.

This study was carried out in a single organisation and shows a snapshot of the organisation's status at the time the data were collected. Therefore, the findings are not generalisable to all organisational settings; rather the findings may be transferable to other settings.

The results can be used to help identify areas where preschools in a municipal context can engage with sustainable quality development in order to build systems that support work with quality in a more structured way.

Long-term thinking is seen, within both theory and organisations, as necessary to achieve success in terms of sustainable development and quality, and this study contributes with knowledge about the current gap between theories of long-term thinking and practice in organisations.

This research study explores the perceptions of the importance and meaning of innovation in education by qualified teachers. The authors deliberately selected geography teachers for the research because the extraordinary dynamics of changes and innovations the teacher has to deal with are significantly reflected, particularly in geography teaching.

The main aim of the research was to determine geography teachers' views on the importance, role and meaning of innovation in teaching. The research group consisted of 12 qualified teachers, and a semistructured interview was chosen as the research method. The research was conducted over six months, from October 2020 to March 2021.

This research confirmed the interest in introducing innovations into teaching by the teachers interviewed. Teachers mainly think of innovation as new ways of teaching that aim to revive and make teaching more attractive, to increase the motivation of all actors in the learning process. While teachers with more ample teaching experience connect innovations mainly with presentations, education games, and excursions, teachers-beginners and teachers with shorter teaching experience understand innovations mainly as the application of new trends in education, such as research projects and working with GIS and digital technologies. The research confirmed that lectures supported by presentations are the most frequently used teaching method for explaining the geography curriculum in primary and secondary schools. Presentations in which teachers focus on linking relationships and explaining connections more deeply replace existing textbooks and teaching texts for most teachers interviewed.

The number and qualifications of the teachers involved in the research.

Teachers see the quality of the school environment and the education system as the significant barriers to providing better geography education. They often come to innovations through their own study and activities and feel a significant lack of available materials for the practical application of innovations in teaching. They also perceive the support for creation by state authorities and educational institutions as insufficient. Most teachers interviewed would welcome regular training courses and vocational education on the appropriate introduction and use of innovations in the classrooms in the form of practical examples and developed methodologies.

The selection of teachers for the research was deliberate and included active teachers of both genders working in primary and secondary schools. The selected teachers had varying teaching experiences and studied different combinations of teaching subjects with geography.