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This article explores how ethics education has evolved over the last 15 years in graduate schools of educational leadership. A review of previous studies showing an increased attention to ethics education is analyzed in the context of external pressures such as new NCATE standards, and the emerging role of moral psychology to inform how ethics is taught in other pre-professional college programs.

Instructional leadership is a school leadership approach that places great emphasis on enhancing the quality of teaching and learning. This study explored the enabling factors of instructional leadership in subject coordinators.

The participants in this qualitative study were 24 subject coordinators in elementary schools in Israel. Data collection was based on semi-structured interviews, and data analysis included three stages: sorting, coding and categorizing.

The findings identified three significant enabling factors of instructional leadership in subject coordinators: pedagogical knowledge, relationship capability and support from the principal.

This study suggests that the enabling factors of instructional leadership in subject coordinators differ from those of instructional leadership in principals because of their different places in the school structure and explains the enablers of instructional leadership in subject coordinators as middle leaders.

School library media specialists (SLMSs) often struggle with assuming leadership roles. Discrepancies existed in perceptions of SLMSs of their leadership preparedness, their opportunities to exert leadership, and their assumption of leadership roles. The purpose of this quantitative study was to explore the perceptions of SLMSs regarding their instructional leadership and to examine the extent to which they practiced instructional leadership. The study was designed to determine whether there were differences between SLMSs perceptions of the importance of their leadership roles and their opportunities to practice those roles. The results of the study indicated that SLMSs perceived all of the leadership roles to be more important than they were able to carry out in practice and that supportive administrators were the most essential factor in providing SLMSs the opportunity to practice and expand their roles as instructional leaders.

The 1980s and 1990s saw a significant phase of educational marketization reform in several countries. Schools began to operate within a ‘market’, and ‘marketing’ became more important. Research showed that teachers and school leaders were largely hostile to this ‘alien’ area of schooling. School leadership in this environment became more complex and stressful. Literature began to identify leadership tensions, conflicts and dilemmas. This chapter ‘revisits’ some of the more significant research at the time and examines some of the dilemmas posed by the need to market the school. The dilemma framework offered by Wildy and Louden (2000) is used to explore three key areas: accountability, efficiency and autonomy. The chapter offers insights into how this topic can be revitalized and explored within the operation of ‘new’ leadership paradigms such as ‘distributed leadership’ and ‘destructive leadership’. The chapter concludes by discussing how the topic of dilemmas can be taken forward.

The field of educational leadership is very much dominated by studies of process. That is, discourses of best practice, effectiveness, efficiency, accountability, and so on, dominate the landscape. This then feeds into those working in schools in leadership positions and leadership teams coming to value style over substance. Whether a leader is working according to a particular adjectival leadership model matters little if the purpose of schooling and education is not the priority and shared. In this chapter, I argue that leaders need to have issues of social justice and equity as central to the purpose of their work, for those in disadvantaged areas and schools, and also those working in more privileged sites. Schools have unfortunately often been sites where forms of racism and social injustices have been perpetuated. A key aspect then for leaders is to work redress these practices. However, when working with large diversities in many schools, some leaders feel they are often unprepared for such challenges. In this chapter, I explore the difficulties and challenges of this kind of leadership with a particular focus on the Australian context and examine ways that leaders can think about and act in ways that recognize and acknowledge the diversity in their schools and communities, challenge their own assumptions and beliefs, and also work toward alleviating socially unjust practices.

This chapter describes a teacher leadership professional development program for K-12 science teachers constructed through a partnership between a university and five school districts. The development and implementation of the program drew from the literature on teacher leadership, communities of practice, and distributed leadership. The program supports teachers through a two-year fellowship program where they examine their teaching practices, attend professional development workshops, and undertake an independent teacher leadership project in their own schools. The chapter also describes the research conducted by the university to improve the program and shares findings and future implications of this research.

All teachers are leaders by the nature of their work. They lead within their schools, whether implicitly or explicitly, for good or for bad, proactively or reactively. In this chapter, we present a framework of teacher leadership that is an assemblage of our previously published works. We use this chapter to provide a consolidated view of how to help all teachers to acknowledge, understand, and use their “awesome” power as leaders to transform their classrooms, schools, and communities. Schools are sites of social, political, and economic influence and teachers play key roles in either maintaining the status quo or creating environments that are transformative and equitable for all members. We argue that a teacher's power is essential both within and beyond the walls of the classroom. Teachers have the capacity and power to participate in change decisions and efforts that traditionally either have been tacitly assumed by them or deliberately defined by others. By having an understanding of critical leadership or leadership for social justice, teachers will be more prepared to identify and resist the variety of contexts which threaten their professional expertise and contexts that deliberately question their professional knowledge.

This chapter identifies that distributed leadership is about sharing power for political pluralism. Distributed leadership has a comprehensive commitment to bringing different groups with different interests, different languages and dialects, different knowledge bases, different metaphysical knowledge and different religions, or no religion, together through provisional agreement on key principals of political pluralism. Marginalised groups may not feel like they belong and may be vulnerable to ideologies that give them a sense of being disconnected from community. Such a position stands as a barrier to political pluralism and shared world views. The situation might be ignored in schools because developing political liberalism through participatory, evidence-informed leadership that is logical, moral and ethical requires time, and agents need to be prepared for such identity work. However, the problem cannot be ignored if community members seek to belong with risky gangs, and are vulnerable to radicalisation, which is very dangerous for them and for their communities. Empowering others may be achieved by developing their capability to ask good questions, and apply collaborative critical thinking for solving social and personal problems. Such empowerment requires shifts from hierarchical teaching of standardised knowledge that is right or wrong to doing the right thing as mature citizens in becoming. The chapter also identifies that it cannot be assumed that leaders are willing or able to distribute leadership, or that doing so would be a panacea for navigating the turbulence faced by their schools to empower societal innovators for equity and renewal. Rather, we concur with Leithwood et al. (2008) who advocate for a thoughtful and purposeful approach to developing leadership for school improvement.

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between effective leadership practices, leadership dispositions and child upbringing in six Mexican successful elementary school principals who improved the achievement, work climate, and resources in their schools. In this study, culture; order; discipline; resources; curriculum, instruction, and assessment were the most salient leadership responsibilities. The present study confirmed that trust is one of main leadership dispositions that may be related to child upbringing. The most frequent behavior displayed in the families of these principals was generating a sense of trust. Likewise the findings shed some light on the importance of secure attachment, setting limitations, and establishing rules to foster dispositions for good leadership. These exploratory findings suggest that resilience is another important leadership disposition. Results are discussed.