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Australia has to find solutions to a critical shortage of school principals, and to this end, governments are spending millions of dollars on the development of leadership standards and professional learning programs. This article focuses on the ‘disengagement’ problem and examines the disincentives for aspirants to undertake the role and for incumbents to continue in the role. Various responsive measures are critiqued, and alternative proposals that arise out of discussions with principals are discussed.

This chapter analyzes 2011 survey data from a sample of Texas principals who were asked about their perceptions of their working conditions such as: support and facilities; salary; resources; autonomy to make decisions; testing and accountability pressures; and relationships with supervisors. Respondents were also asked about their intentions to stay or leave their particular school. Researchers and policymakers agree effective and stable school leadership is critical to school improvement efforts, but we know little about how various working conditions impact principal effectiveness and turnover. This work is important because in-depth knowledge of the causes of principal turnover in general and how principal working conditions impact turnover in particular is a pre-requisite to creating policies and support mechanisms to support principals in small and mid-sized districts.

The aim of this qualitative study was to determine what makes school principals successful. The study obtained data through interviews, both face-to-face and via e-mail correspondence. Content analysis provides the framework for analyzing the data. The data revealed that successful school principals have three different, but interrelated competencies, which are personal, administrative, and leadership competencies. The study also indicates that those successful principals gave priority to human relations, they see the school as their home where principals created a warm atmosphere, communicated effectively with all stakeholders, committed themselves to their schools, managed schools in a democratic way, solved problems on time and effectively.

This chapter explores the ‘gap’ between policy intent and policy effect through the eyes of a group of practising school principals in China. The reform policies targeted are the new curriculum, the school review system and personnel system. The universalising tendency of educational reform towards decentralisation and marketisation has swept across China as it has in Western democracies. Another trend Chinese education shares with other systems is that central policy initiatives go through a complex process of interpretation and re-interpretation before they reach schools, a pattern that continues as schools struggle to implement them. Using interview data collected from 11 secondary school principals in Shanghai, China, the chapter suggests that the way in which policy is interpreted and translated in schools is influenced by the particularities of the context, and that the status of the school plays a particularly important role in this process. Despite the moderating role of the local context, some commonalities across principals' policy interpretations emerge. These commonalities suggest that universal education reform policies inevitably reflect cultural and societal characteristics when they are introduced and adapted to the specific national context.

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.

Emotions are recognised as central to all aspects of human experience. Yet, in some cultures and across various professional domains, there is a tendency to suppress emotions and limit their perceived significance. The development of research in neuroscience has allowed for a better understanding of how different parts of the brain interact and function, connecting emotions and cognition. However, despite the advancement in neuroscience, many leaders continue to embrace data-driven decision making, distancing the role of emotions in these critical processes.

This study seeks to better understand how school leaders define leadership and to reflect on the role of emotions and emotion management in two collectivist transitional societies: Liberia and Palestinian Arabs in Israel. A total of 14 school principals (seven from each country) were interviewed for this study. A Restorative Practices framework, combining a focus on cognitive (rational) and emotional (affective) components was used to analyse the data.

The results indicate that a high level of emotional involvement when discussing decisions related to individual students and an effort to suppress emotions when discussing professional decisions related to teachers or the institution. Differences were found in the way emotions were handled in relation to school level (elementary vs. high school), gender, stakeholder (students, teachers) and the principal’s development stage (experience). The Liberian participants perceived a conflict between western culture and the local culture with regard to newly implemented educational policies.

This chapter examines leadership practices in a Mexican elementary school that implemented an environmental education (EE) project. The data were collected between 2010 and 2012 through document analysis and interviews with the principal, school supervisor, teachers, counselors, students, and parents. Additional data were collected through observations of classrooms, extracurricular activities, and professional development workshops. Findings from this study suggest the principal played a key role in facilitating a collective effort among the staff to transform the school through EE. The principal’s previous administrative experiences gave her credibility with teachers and the tools to lead the school improvement effort. The main challenge the principal faced was helping parents understand the transformative benefits of EE. Internal and external factors that support and threaten the sustainability of this change are also discussed.

This study aims to test the mediated effect of school climate in the relationship of principal time use (PTU) to student academic achievement using data from Singapore's 2011 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS).

Capitalizing on the large-scale data, the study examined how Singapore principals distributed their time across 13 leadership activities and tested using structural equation modeling (SEM) how Singapore principals' time use was related to student achievement through molding intermediate school conditions, such as school climate.

The authors' findings suggest that Singaporean principals, when allocating time, generally emphasized (1) monitoring students' learning progress, (2) promoting school vision, (3) developing curricular goals and (4) monitoring teachers in areas related to curricular goals. Furthermore, after classifying the 13 principal activities into three broad domains, the authors find that Singaporean principals prioritize the domain of vision and goals over the other two domains – facilitating teaching and learning through a safe, positive school environment and problem-solving with teachers, as well as self and organizational improvement. Finally, the authors' SEM manifested a partial mediated model, suggesting principals' strategic time use could serve as a malleable factor in yielding optimal student outcomes through developing a positive school climate.

This study at present is one of the early attempts linking PTU, intermediate school conditions (e.g. school climate) and student outcomes using a mediated design and corresponding statistical modeling.

This study aims to explore the challenges reported by Israeli school vice-principals regarding their relationships with principals and teachers. The study examines two questions: (1) How do vice-principals perceive the challenges involved in their relationships with principals and teachers? and (2) How do they respond to these challenges?

The study employed a qualitative approach to explore the challenges encountered by Israeli school vice-principals in their relationships with principals and teachers. Semi-structured, face-to-face interviews were conducted with 17 vice-principals, allowing for an in-depth understanding of their perspectives and experiences.

The findings of the study highlight three challenges mentioned by the research participants: bridging between principals and teachers, maintaining complete loyalty to both sides and middle-ground responsibility for the school.

This study enriches the existing literature on vice-principals by investigating their distinct position as intermediaries bridging teachers and principals. It offers valuable insights into the challenges they encounter in their interactions with both parties, as well as their strategies to tackle these issues. Through the application of role theory, the research deepens comprehension of the intricate nature of the vice-principals' role, providing pragmatic suggestions for improvement.

School improvement planning has been a central part of school improvement initiatives for decades. Evidence suggests, however, that traditional planning processes are regularly superficial. In the USA, some principals have begun developing short-cycle planning designed to encourage school leadership teams and staff to develop, monitor and adjust plans throughout the academic year.

In this study of eight schools in one urban district, the authors analyzed multiple rounds of short-cycle improvement plans and principal interview data to assess the progress schools made implementing plans over the course of a semester, the ways in which plans were monitored and adjusted and the extent to which principals embraced short-cycle planning.

The authors found that many tasks from first semester plans were completed, which informed the development of plans for the second semester. Observational data were primarily used to monitor plan completion, although principals engaged in monitoring but relied on their leadership team to do so. Principals reported regular engagement with plans throughout semester, but plans were seldom adjusted within a semester.

The findings suggest that short-cycle planning is potentially a viable alternative to traditional annual planning as principals communicated being more engaged and adaptive. Still, the evidence also indicated that old habits might be hard to break as school leaders did not monitor and adjust plans frequently enough to guide improvement efforts in relative “real time.”