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This study aimed at exploring the change facilitator styles (CFS) that secondary school head teachers in Pakistan possess.

This is a quantitative study using Hall and George CFS questionnaire to collect data from 276 secondary school head teachers. The CFSQ used in this study consists of 30 Likert-type questions relating to six scales. The six scales, with five items each in aggregate, form three possible CFS, including initiator, manager and responder.

The results indicate that most secondary school head teachers (75.7%) in Pakistan used responder CFS to facilitate change in their schools. 16.7% of the head teachers used manger, while only 7.6% possessed initiator change facilitation styles.

The study has implications for research, in particular in the developing countries where head teachers' leadership practices are rooted in the past with maintaining authority and status quo.

The study has implications for policymakers and schools in developing countries, like Pakistan, in terms of considering the vital role of head teachers in change implementation. In particular, in the prevailing cluster-based educational management, the study's findings remain valuable for schools in the Balochistan province of Pakistan.

The paper reports the results regarding secondary school head teachers' change facilitator styles in the context of power devolution in Pakistan. The authors believe that the manuscript is appropriate for publication by the international journal of educational management because it is in line with the aims and scope of the journal. The authors assure the originality of this work. It has not been published elsewhere, nor is it currently under consideration for publication in any other journal.

This study investigates teacher receptivity to a proposal to relocate Year 7 primary classes to secondary schools in the Western Australia Catholic school system. The proposal has not yet either been formally promulgated to schools, parents and students or adopted by the Catholic Education Commission. A general model of teacher receptivity to a major planned change in a centralised education system, during the adoption stage, was used to guide the study. The dependent variable, receptivity, was measured in two aspects ‐ an evaluative attitude and behaviour intentions. Three independent variables, general beliefs about the secondary school and perceived readiness to leave primary school, perceived practicality of the change, and the perception that fears and concerns associated with the change will be alleviated, were measured. The environment in which teachers work was measured through the teacher (age, gender, experience, area of expertise and school size) and the school (primary or secondary, size and location), as situation variables, related to the independent variables. Receptivity was found to be strongly and positively related to the perceived practicality of the change and moderately, positively related to perceived readiness of Year 7 students for secondary school. The results are combined with other studies to provide advice to educational administrators about how to adopt and manage this proposed change.

In recent years the benefits of distributed leadership have often assumed the status of an unchallengeable orthodoxy. There is a general acceptance that leadership is best when it is dispersed. In reality this is often little more than a form of “licensed leadership” in which those working in subordinate roles can only exercise their leadership in tightly prescribed contexts. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the contribution of teacher professional development to promoting a more optimistic vision of teacher leadership and, ultimately, organisational change. It explores the role of leadership “from above” in supporting classroom teachers to engage with and sustain change.

The study, which was situated in the Republic of Ireland, employed a case study approach with 20 participants in five urban disadvantaged schools.

The paper seeks to demonstrate how a professional development initiative was used to promote significant and sustained change in four of the five case study schools.

It argues that in order to understand sustained change in schools it is necessary to better understand the complex ways in which leadership from above can generate change agency from below.

This paper offers a critical perspective in relation to mainstream distributed leadership theory and practice.

This paper aims to report on the decisions two teachers made about how to engage with a five-year school–university collaboration that used professional development (PD) to foster changes in language instruction for teachers of multilingual learners.

A longitudinal case study was used to examine the experiences of two teachers to provide insights into classroom-level decisions and changes in instructional practices.

Changes in instructional practices occurred when teachers made active, engaged choices about their own learning and teaching in the classroom. Teacher learning did not follow a consistent trajectory of improvement and contained contradictions, and early decisions about how to engage with PD affected the pace and nature of teacher learning. Through personal decisions about how to engage with PD, teachers adopted new instructional practices to support multilingual learners. Positive changes required extended time for teachers to implement new practices successfully.

This collaboration points to a need for long-term PD partnerships that value teacher agency to produce instructional changes that support multilingual learners.

PD can play a key role in transforming literacy instruction for multilingual learners. Teacher agency, including the decisions teachers make about how to engage with professional learning opportunities and how to enact new instructional practices in the classroom, mediates the efficacy of PD initiatives. This longitudinal case study contributes to the understanding of effective PD by presenting two contrasting case studies of teacher agency and learning during long-term school–university collaboration.

Elementary schools have been confronted with large-scale educational reforms as strategies to improve the educational quality. While building school-wide capacity for improvement is considered critical for changing teachers’ classroom practices, there is still little empirical evidence for link between enhanced school capacity for improvement and instructional change. In this study, the authors examined the impact of school improvement capacity on changes in teachers’ classroom practices over a period of time. Leadership practices, school organizational conditions, teacher motivation and teacher learning were used to measure school-wide capacity for improvement. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Mixed-model analysis of longitudinal data over a four years (2005-2008) period of time from 862 teachers of 32 Dutch elementary schools were used to test the impact of school improvement capacity on changing teachers’ instructional practices.

The results showed that organizational-level conditions and teacher-level conditions play an important, but different role in changing teachers’ classroom practices. Whereas teacher factors mainly affect changes in teachers’ classroom practices, organizational factors are of significant importance to enhance teacher motivation and teacher learning.

More longitudinal research is needed to gain better insight into the opportunities and limits of building school-wide capacity to stimulate instructional change.

By encouraging teachers to question their own beliefs, facilitating opportunities for teachers to work together to solve problems, and through the promotion of shared decision making, school leaders can reinforce the personal and social identification of teachers with the organization. As a consequence, teachers will feel increasingly committed and are more willing to change their classroom practices. Additionally, school leaders can use the findings from this study and the related instrument as a tool for school self-evaluation.

This paper contributes to a deeper understanding of the nature of changes in conditions for school improvement and its influence on changes in teachers’ instructional practices over a period of time.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the level of resistance to change in implementation of total quality management (TQM) in Iranian schools and investigate the influence of principals’ and teachers’ gender and years of experience on resistance to change.

This study presents the results of survey research carried out in Iran. The participants of this study are secondary school principals and teachers. The researchers employed descriptive analysis on data collected. Independent sample t-test was used to determine the difference in resistance to change based on teachers and principals gender, and one-way ANOVA and Kruskal-Wallis H-test were applied to determine the difference in resistance of teachers and principals based on years of experience.

The researchers found that the level of resistance to change in Iranian schools is medium; the most important factor for resistance to change is confidence in the status quo. Gender has an effect on resistance to change only for teachers. Years of experience do not have an effect on resistance to change.

The study identifies some useful points for school’s principals and teachers to implementation of TQM in school.

The purpose of this paper is to study how reflection affects the teacher change with a focus on teaching practices under education reforms in Hong Kong.

This study adopted narratives as the research design to unveil the contents of teachers’ reflection and how the contents affect their change in teaching practices under education reforms.

The study finds that teachers’ reflection starts with completion of curriculum (“technical level”), then consideration of students’ learning needs (“practical level”) and finally, the social justice and equality (“critical level”). The levels of reflection teachers engage have significant influence on their change. The higher the level of reflection teachers have, the more motivated the teachers to explore new teaching practices not only for the learning needs of students in classroom but also for the society outside classroom.

This study underlines the value of reflection in the process of teacher change in their teaching practices.

This article seeks to present two main issues: educational staff assessment of changes in their work resulting from the introduction of class and school management software; and educational staff assessment as to whether software use contributed to their work.

The research concentrated on the teachers (120) of three high schools located in different regions of Israel. The management software was introduced gradually about seven years before the beginning of the research. The research was qualitative and enabled consideration of social and educational phenomena, and various coping strategies, with the purpose of identifying weak spots and bettering education. Data analysis was conducted according to grounded theory, focusing on the creation of a premise on the basis of data collected from participants. This method includes three stages: open, axial and selective coding.

The data indicate that teachers recorded changes in their work as a result of software use. The research found that class management software is a necessary tool for schoolwork that can bring about increased achievements and discipline. But software use can be harmful as well. Teachers felt that in order to realize the potential of class management software, while minimizing its potential damage, interpersonal connections between the educational staff and their students should be maintained and strengthened, as well as developing relationships among teachers, administrators and school management.

The article enriches the existing literature in the field and contributes to the understanding of the integration between technological and educational systems, and the changes in educational work resulting from technological advance.