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This research aimed to assess the leadership role of principals in the implementation of peace education in selected secondary schools in the Western Cape, South Africa.

This study employed qualitative research approach to assess the leadership role of principals in the implementation of peace education in selected secondary schools in the Western Cape, South Africa. Data were gathered from a small sample of six principals from six selected secondary schools which were engaged in the implementation of a peace education programme, and data were analysed using thematic content analyses.

Findings of the study suggest that principals possess a low level of understanding or awareness of their leadership role in the implementation of peace education. The study pointed out the constraints such as time constraints and learners' negative attitudes and social influences hinder the effective implementation of peace education in selected secondary schools.

First, the data were self-reported and therefore subject to social desirability bias; participants may have provided socially desirable responses rather than their true belief or experiences. Thus, participants may have overstated their role in and commitment to the peace education programme.

Studies that aim to explore alternative approaches to combat violence, such as peace education, are still limited in South Africa. Hence, this paper served to close that gap by contributing to the growing body of research on the leadership role of the principal in the implementation of peace education in the school and exploring barriers hampering its effective implementation.

Staff turnover may have important consequences for the development of collective social resources based on trust, shared norms, and support among school professionals. We outline the theoretical role-specific consequences of principal and teacher turnover for features of principal leadership and teacher community, and we test these ideas in repeated teacher survey data from a sample of 73 Los Angeles elementary schools. We find evidence that principal turnover fundamentally disrupts but does not systematically decrease relational qualities of principal leadership; negative changes for initially high social resource schools offset positive changes for initially low social resource schools, suggesting that relational instability “resets” the resources that develop in the relationships between leadership and teachers. Greater consistency in measures of teacher community in the face of teacher turnover implies that the social resources inhering in the relationships among teachers are more robust to instability.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate school principals' leadership styles in Cyprus in relation to students' support for special education needs within the context of inclusive education.

The original type of evidence was qualitative empirical research through the examination of four case studies in school organizations with a high number of students with special education needs. Using the interview protocol, data on school principals' leadership styles were collected from school principals and teachers. The empirical development theory method was used to analyze the data.

The findings suggest that in the respective school organizations, a combination of all leadership styles can support the desired outcomes of students with special education needs, thereby promoting the inclusive education aspect in school organizations. However, there was a preference for the entrepreneurial leadership style, which connects the external leadership dimension with school principalship.

These findings could assist in shaping a specific educational policy that includes professional development for school principals in entrepreneurship in order to support students with special education needs. Furthermore, the results could be compared to those in other contexts where school principals' leadership styles and practices are promoted in relation to the support of students with special education needs.

Our chapter examines the ways national developments in Australia and New Zealand over the past two decades reflect distinctively antipodean understandings of educational leadership and management. Our interest is twofold. We are concerned about the extent to which these understandings are reflected in strategies designed to enhance the quality of school leadership. We are also concerned about the extent to which these strategies represent progress towards achieving ‘sustainable’ school leadership. We define sustainable leadership in terms of both building leadership capacity within the organisation and embedding lasting organisational change (Fink & Brayman, 2006; Hargreaves & Fink, 2006; Spillane, 2006). The concept used here implies both models of distributed or shared leadership and leadership succession.

The importance of teacher leadership in enhancing school outcomes is recognized, but there remains a scarcity of research addressing the conditions for principals to nurture such leadership. This study examined how school contextual factors, i.e. faculty trust and academic emphasis, moderate the impact of principals' distributed leadership lon teacher leadership.

A nationwide survey was conducted among junior high school teachers in Taiwan. The sample encompassed schools from different geographical regions and sizes, yielding a total of 1,340 valid responses. Hierarchical regression analyses were employed to analyze the potential moderating effects of interest.

There were interactive effects of principals' distributed leadership and school contextual factors on teachers' adoption of leadership roles. The impact of principals' distributed leadership on teacher leadership was amplified in environments marked by elevated levels of trust relations and reduced academic emphasis.

This study uncovers the critical prerequisites principals must address to cultivate teacher leadership. To effectively encourage heightened teacher engagement in leadership, principals must place a premium on nurturing trusting relations with their teaching staff and acknowledge that the influence of their leadership might be lessened in an environment where credentialism holds sway.

The exploration into faculty trust and academic emphasis yields insights into the conducive conditions for principals to foster teacher leadership. The identified attenuating impact of academic emphasis on principal effect within an Asian societal context highlights its significance not only as an organizational property but also as a manifestation of national cultural values.

School leadership is found important for school development and student learning. Consequently, the interest in professional leadership education for principals has increased. In Sweden, professional leadership education for novice principals was made mandatory in 2010. Moreover, enhanced focus on leadership for teaching and learning in terms of ‘pedagogical leadership’ is highly topical. This study aims to deepen our knowledge of novice principals’ experiences of pedagogical leadership practices and relate these to their paths toward principalship. The study follows a qualitative and situated design and adopts a practice-based approach. Observations were conducted in the educational and workplace practices of novice principals in Sweden and interviews were conducted with principals and teachers. Using a conceptual framework of Wenger (1998), the analyses show that principals experience challenges concerning pedagogical leadership if their competence and experience are not aligned with practice and context. This mismatch seems to impair their pedagogical leadership practice. In addition, a lack of leadership experience obstructs their learning in the professional leadership education for principals.

Previous studies found that principals must be involved in both instructional leadership and organizational management, yet they did not explain how the former supports the latter. To narrow this gap in the available research-based knowledge, the current study explored the contribution of organizational management to instructional leadership.

This study was qualitative in nature. The study participants were 28 principals of elementary schools in Israel. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews. Data analysis, based on coding, aimed to cluster the eight organizational management functions according to how each function supports instructional leadership.

The present study revealed that the eight functions of organizational management support four main aspects of instructional leadership: (1) Developing a positive learning climate; (2) Improving teaching quality; (3) Realizing the school instructional vision; and (4) Enabling instructional leadership.

The findings of this study reinforce the argument that although instructional leadership is the critical component of effective school leadership, it should be supported by other frameworks.

This study aims to examine the validation of both the model of direct effects and the model of indirect effects of principals' leadership on student academic achievement.

A longitudinal study was conducted in which 22 schools, 55 classes and 1,224 Cypriot primary students participated. Specifically, achievements in Greek Language and Mathematics were assessed at the beginning and at the end of the same school year. Moreover, leadership style of school principals and teachers as well as school and classroom culture was measured.

The findings provide some empirical support for the model of direct effects of principals' leadership on student academic achievement. Moreover, student achievement gains were found to be related with five factors at the school level: the principals' human resource leadership style and four dimensions of organizational culture. At the classroom level, three dimensions of learning culture significantly influence student achievement in each subject. Finally, relationships between effectiveness factors operating at different levels were identified.

The article presents an original empirical study which examined the relationship among school leadership, school culture and student achievement in order to validate both the model of direct effects and the model of indirect effects of school principals on student achievement.

There is research evidence emerging to show that Chinese principal leadership appears to have a limited effect on the large-scale and deep school changes, but reasons for this have not been well explored. The purpose of this paper is to offer a conceptually framed explanation. By using China as an illustrative case, the authors propose using a macro-institutional framework to examine how principal leadership is mediated institutionally and why the leadership of change is especially difficult for Chinese principals.

In order to facilitate a contextualized understanding, the three institutional pillars developed by Scott's (2001) were used as a macro-institutional framework to explain difficulties confronting principal leadership in China when making deep and sustainable school changes from regulative, normative and cognitive perspectives.

The appeared change inertia and school changes on surface can partially be attributed to the cultural and institutional contexts of Chinese principal leadership. For principals, professional incentives and their change initiatives are institutionally and culturally constrained. Consequently, Chinese principals are left with very limited professional space to focus on making visible and endurable student-centered school changes.

This is a first macro-institutional application to address principal leadership of change from the context of China. The regulative, normative and cognitive aspects are analytically useful to differentiate and manifest the institutional complexity and intricacy which are mediating principal leadership impact on school changes. This also illuminates the exploration of context sensitive leadership research to capture context features and understand context-embedded logics.

The purpose of this paper is to select a theoretical framework for effective school leadership that is connected with research, standards and current practices in the USA, and examine its validity and generalizability cross-culturally.

The paper uses both qualitative and quantitative methods through expert panel evaluation, cognitive interviews, and field testing of the instrument. The author asks: How well does the Learning-Centered Leadership (LCL) framework align with the professional standards and current practices of principals in urban Chinese schools in the opinion of the experts? Is there evidence that its leadership assessment instrument has construct validity in Chinese urban schools based on the re-examination of its content and measurement criteria? And is there evidence that the instrument is yielding consistent results when taken by the intended participants? How effective are the analytic strategies employed by this study in detecting the equivalences and discrepancies in how educational leadership is defined and evaluated, between two vastly different educational systems?

The paper finds evidences that give support to the claim that there is strong cross-cultural alignment on the overarching goal of improving student learning. However, the US framework and assessment will need to be modified to reflect the Chinese reform priorities that emphasize the balance between academic and social learning.

The belief that there are common elements in contemporary international educational policy has brought growing interest in sharing leadership theories and successful models cross-culturally. This paper addresses the challenges in understanding the complexity of cross-cultural translation of theories and applications, and explores viable solutions to meaningful adaptation.