Conference Agenda

Topic

Schools identified as being in 'challenging circumstances' face multiple and often interwoven challenges. This means, for example, that low levels of student achievement are not due to one factor alone, but are the result of the interaction of, for example, external contextual conditions and internal processes (Bremm, Klein & Racherbäumer, 2016). In line with the conference theme (‘The Value of Diversity’), it is particularly important to provide schools with support that is appropriate to their needs (Ainscow & Southworth, 1996).

Since the late 1960s, school effectiveness studies have investigated how schools succeed in influencing student learning (e.g. Scheerens, 2000). They have identified several characteristics of effective schools, such as high-quality teaching and school leaders who are responsible for creating a positive learning culture (Leithwood, Harris & Strauss, 2010). Especially for schools serving disadvantaged children, leadership styles that help teachers to feel responsible for their student success and reduce deficit thinking play an important role (Klein & Bremm, 2019). However, despite being aware of these characteristics, schools often fail to take action. To address this issue, educational policy initiatives in many countries have provided schools with external support, usually in the form of school improvement consulting (Meyers & Murphy, 2007, Dean et al., 2021).

Objectives

Examples from three European countries will be analysed, where school leaders have experienced the support of consultants. In particular, different interventions will be described and compared, and the consultancy approaches discussed.

The symposium will address the following questions:

• What are the similarities and differences between the programmes for external advisory support?
• At which level do the interventions operate?
• What was the impact?

Theoretical framework

As a theoretical framework, the organisational capacity model (Marks, Louis & Printy, 2000) proved to be empirically useful. The approach identifies different capacities, such as a participatory organisational structure, collaborative approaches, knowledge and skills of school actors, that schools need to have in order to develop. A central capacity in the model is attributed to school leadership. This model serves as a reference to reflect the different approaches and areas of improvement addressed by the consultants.

Methodology and methods

The research teams used a variety of methods to explore the research questions. The contribution from Austria analyses interviews with school principals (n=26) and discusses the perspective of the principals. The contribution from Germany uses a mixed method approach, where findings from a quantitative survey of school leaders are triangulated with data from qualitative interviews with school improvement consultants. The contribution from England focuses on the perspective of consultants within a national improvement strategy (Ainscow, 2020). These were collected through observations and informal focus group discussions.

By taking the perspectives of different stakeholders in the context of school improvement consultancy, the symposium will give the opportunity to critically reflect the on dynamics of counselling in education and the assumed vs. the actual need for support in this context.

Conclusions, expected outcomes

Preliminary findings indicate that the programmes differ in their approach to school support in terms of whether school leaders participated voluntarily or were required to do so. This had an impact on the acceptance of the measures proposed. It was also observed that the issues addressed by the consultants were both at the individual level (i.e. the actions of the school leaders) and at the organisational level (analysis and change of processes at the school level). However, initial data using the capacity model shows that the consulting addresses often only selected areas. In all settings, it became clear that without the commitment of school leaders, transformation processes could not be initiated in schools. The implications of these findings will be discussed.

In 2017, the Austrian Ministry of Education launched an initiative called "securing basic competences" (SBC), which targeted a total of 500 schools in which at least 20% of students did not achieve the basic competences in several cycles of the national educational tests (Altrichter, Kemethofer, Soukup-Altrichter, 2021). The educational policy measure "SBC" provided for these schools to receive compulsory counselling from a multi-professional team (school development consultant, subject expert, school psychologist; MPT) over a period of two years. The role of the MPTs is to support school leaders and teachers in analysing the reasons for their pupils' underachievement and to advise them on an individual improvement process. While the design of the SBC required schools to focus on issues related to their students' performance based on their standard results, preliminary studies (Jesacher-Roessler et al., 2021) show that other topics were often addressed. To this end, this paper examines the consultation processes from the perspective of school leaders, analysing which actions were addressed together with the MPTs. In a further step, we discuss these actions in the context of effective leadership practices for 'turnaround' schools (Duke, 2014; Klein, 2017, Brauckmann & Böse, 2018). In addition, we assess the perceived impact of the MPT on the school development process from the perspective of school leaders. As a reference model for key leadership practices that influence student achievement, we refer to Hitt and Tucker (2016). Based on a systematic review, the study defines 28 action areas in five domains (establishing and communicating the vision, facilitating a quality learning experience for students, building professional capacity, creating an organisation that supports learning, and connecting with external partners). To answer the questions, we conducted interviews with school principals (n=26) from one Austrian province. The interviews were semi-structured and were analysed using content analysis (Kuckartz, 2018). The formation of categories was deductive on the basis of the framework used. Preliminary findings show that many school leaders are looking at instructional processes for the first time and that the consulting helps them to address effective actions. However, there are also examples of school leaders choosing actions that are not related to the five domains. In these schools, the external consultancy and the SBC-project are often given a low priority.

Altrichter, H., Kemethofer, D., & Soukup-Altrichter, K. (2021). Grundkompetenzen absichern–Hintergrund und Programmlogik eines evidenzbasierten Entwicklungsprogramms. D. Kemethofer, J. Reitinger & K. Soukup-Altrichter (Hg.), Vermessen, 177-193. Brauckmann, S., & Böse, S. (2017). Picking up the pieces? Zur Rolle der Schulleitung beim Turnaround–Ansätze und empirische Erkenntnisse. Schulentwicklungsarbeit in herausfordernden Lagen, 85-103. Duke, D. L. (2014). A bold approach to developing leaders for low-performing schools. Management in Education, 28(3), 80-85. Hitt, D. H., & Tucker, P. D. (2016). Systematic review of key leader practices found to influence student achievement: A unified framework. Review of educational research, 86(2), 531-569. Jesacher-Rößler, L, Altrichter, H., Kemethofer, D. & Wölbitsch, L. (2021). Schulische Entwicklungsbegleitung durch Multiprofessionelle Teams [School development support through multiprofessional teams]. Journal für Schulentwicklung, 25 (3). Klein, E. (2017). Bedingungen und Formen erfolgreicher Schulentwicklung in Schulen in sozial deprivierter Lage. Eine Expertise im Auftrag der Wübben Stiftung. In SHIP Working Paper Reihe, No. 1. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17185/duepublico/44384 Kuckartz, U. (2018). Qualitative Inhaltsanalyse. Methoden, Praxis, Computerunterstützung. 4. Aufl. Beltz Juventa.

School improvement consultancy becomes increasingly important for schools in challenging circumstances, and a growing number of schools in Germany seek the help of external coaches in their school improvement efforts (Dedering et al., 2013: 13). Researchers have, however, only recently begun to systematically study the specific conditions under which schools serving disadvantaged communities (SSDC) can improve. From the perspective of school ‘capacity-building’ (Marks et al., 2000), leadership plays an important role for schools to successfully initiate change (Leithwood et al., 2006; Sun & Leithwood, 2015). Such associations have also been documented for SSDC (e.g. Muijs et al., 2004). However, it remains largely unclear how external consultants can best help schools, and particularly their leaders, achieve their goals and become professional learning communities (Giles & Hargreaves, 2006). Extant research points out that the combination of teams from inside and outside the school system is particularly promising (Dedering, 2017), while being sensitive towards the schools’ unique structural and cultural conditions (Ainscow & Southworth, 1996: 247). We seek to answer the following research questions with specific reference to a model project that is currently conducted among 60 SSDC in one federal German state: (1) How and with what goals is school improvement consultancy designed and implemented at the schools? (2) How do school leaders and external consultants perceive their collaboration with each other at the start of the project?, and (3) How do school leaders evaluate the effect of the external consultancy one year later? Data were collected by 19 guideline-based interviews with external consultants and 15 interviews with school leaders that were conducted at the beginning of the project. In addition, we conducted a standardized online survey among the school leaders at the start of the project and in the following year. The interviews were analyzed using qualitative content analysis and typifying structuring of the interview material (Mayring, 2003). First results show that the consultants initially did not feel welcome at the schools, which may partly be attributed to the obligatory nature of their work in the project. As they showed only little orientation towards the specific situation of the SSDC, school leaders were overwhelmingly convinced that they could not be sufficiently supported by the external consultants. The contribution aims at a better understanding of the role of external consultants for improvement activities at SSCD, and sheds more light on how collaboration with school leaders may affect longer-term processes of school improvement.

Ainscow, M., & Southworth, G. (1996). School Improvement: A Study of the Roles of Leaders and External Consultants. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 7(3), 229–251. https://doi.org/10.1080/0924345960070302 Dedering, K. et al. (2013), Wenn Experten in die Schule kommen. Schulentwicklungsberatung – empirisch betrachtet, Springer VS, Wiesbaden. Dedering, K. (2017), “Externe Schulentwicklungsberatung als Unterstützungsansatz”, Manitius, V. and Doppelstein, P. (Ed.s), Schulentwicklungsarbeit in herausfordernden Lagen, Waxmann, Münster, pp.159-175. Giles, C. and Hargreaves, A., 2006. The sustainability of innovative schools as learning organizations and professional learning communities during standardized reform. Educational administration quarterly, 42 (1), 124–156. doi:10.1177/0013161X05278189 Leithwood, K., R. Aitken, and D. Jantzi. 2006. Making Schools Smarter. Leading With Evidence. 3rd ed. Thousand Oaks: Corwin Press. Marks, H. M., K. Louis, and S. Printy. 2000. “The Capacity for Organizational Learning. Implications for Pedagogical Quality and Student Achievement.” In Advances in Research and Theories of School Management and Educational Policy: v. 3. Understanding Schools as Intelligent Systems, edited by K. Leithwood, 239–265. Stamford, CT: Jai Press. Mayring, P. (2003), Qualitative Inhaltsanalyse. Grundlagen und Techniken, Beltz, Weinheim. Muijs, D., Harris, A., Chapman, C., Stoll, L., and Russ, J. (2004). Improving schools in socioeconomically disadvantaged areas – a review of research.

Promoting equity is a challenge facing education systems throughout the world, not least in England where there are continuing concerns about the progress of learners from disadvantaged backgrounds. This paper draws on the experience of a large-scale improvement initiative to address this agenda. A key feature of the project was the presence of what were known as challenge advisers. Gathering evidence City Challenge began in 2003, first of all in London and later in two other cities. A distinctive feature of the project was the particular attention given to schools in challenging circumstance, with advisers providing them with support. As the project developed over a period of eight years, evidence was collected about the work of the advisers. This included attendance at their fortnightly team meetings. It was also possible to shadow some of them as they visited their ‘Keys to Success’ schools; that is, schools designated as requiring more intensive support. There was evidence of an overall pattern of activity to these interventions. This involved the development of a bespoke improvement package for each of the schools, often with an element of support from other schools. Important here was the skill of the challenge adviser in working with a school’s senior staff to assess the context. What was also important was the freedom the advisers were given to act quickly and decisively, albeit within a context in which they were held accountable for their schools’ progress. Key tasks These experiences point to the importance of three tasks: Task 1. Knowing the schools – Whilst this starts with a thorough scrutiny of statistical data, it has to go much deeper. Specifically, it requires advisers to work with head teachers in reviewing their schools regularly, through observation, scrutiny of pupils’ work, and by listening to the views of different stakeholders. Task 2. Brokering partnerships – These same review processes also enable advisers to develop a deeper knowledge of the schools. In this way, they can pinpoint areas of concern, as well as human resources that can be drawn on to address these challenges. Task 3. Monitoring the impact – As these interventions develop, advisers monitor what happens, since there is a danger that they lead to the proliferation of meetings that result in no actions being taken. It is important to recognize that these tasks are likely to require significant changes in the thinking and practices of all those involved.

• Ainscow, M. (2010) Achieving excellence and equity: reflections on the development of practices in one local district over 10 years. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 21 (1), 75-91 • Ainscow, M. (2016) Towards self-improving school systems: lessons from a city challenge. London: Routledge (particularly Chapter 3) • Ainscow, M., Chapman, C. and Hadfield, M. (2020) Changing education systems: a research-based approach. London: Routledge • Ainscow, M. and Howes, A. (2007) Working together to improve urban secondary schools: a study of practice in one city. School Leadership and Management 27, 285–300

School leaders stand in a field of tension between vertical and horizontal expectations. This situation implies that a school leader must consider education policy guidelines and requirements for student results and at the same time meet the needs of students, parents and staff. This requires a "Janus perspective" which on the one hand involves keeping a vigilant eye on the current societal challenges, and on the other hand put the spotlight on which needs should be taken care of in one's own school linked to the local context that frames the institution.

In this field of tension, school leaders must lead their own staff in the work of interpreting and operationalizing the school's curriculum, which can be challenging. Not least, it requires that the leader himself sets aside sufficient time to update himself on what new reforms and guidelines entail, and in this case the Norwegian curriculum LK20.

The objective of this study is to “open a window” into school leaders’ experienced challenges concerning leading the work of interpreting and operationalizing the school's curriculum in a Norwegian context. For this purpose, we have formulated the following research question:

What challenges do school leaders point out, related to leading the curriculum work at their own school?

In this context, it is relevant to see the school as a learning organization (Senge 1991; Roald 2010). In terms of building capacity for further development of the school, the term "learning organisation" now seems to be replaced by the term "professional learning communities" (Aas & Vennebo, 2021, p. 13). Hence, In the presentation, we will elaborate theoretically on the concept of "professional learning communities". Furthermore, we will include the new curriculum’s description of the professional community and the principal's management of this. We draw on Goodlad's (1979) curriculum model since this model is a relevant analytical tool when it comes to the relationship between the "different faces" of the curriculum.

We will also draw on Ertesvåg's (2012) description of the three phases in development work: initiation, implementation and institutionalisation, which opens up the possibility of being able to analyze whether the school leaders' challenges in leading the curriculum work can be specifically linked to one or more of these phases. We will also take a closer look at ledarship literature, for example Irgens (2021), Klev & Levin (2021), as well as Brunstad (2009) and his book on wise leadership.

This paper highlights the concept of controversial issues in preschool principals’ everyday practice. Controversial issues are something that teachers and principals have to address more frequently in schools and preschools in recent years (Council of Europe, 2017). One explanation for this development might be, according to the Council of Europe, that teachers and principals are working in a rapidly changing global environment. For instance, we have had a worldwide pandemic, conflicts in the surrounding world that increase migration, an ongoing climate crisis and a fast technological development that create insecurities. This development calls for a readiness capacity on the organizational level but also a leadership that is sensitive and able to identify controversial issues that arise in preschools today and tomorrow.

When reviewing research on controversial issues in preschools and schools it is evident that the main focus is directed toward teachers and their practice, i. e. on how they teach in relation to topics that are perceived as controversial in an educational setting (see e.g. Bautista, isco & Quaye, 2018; Sætra, 2019). Further, research on how controversial issues are perceived and dealt with from a principal’s perspective is scarce. The concept of controversial issues is not easily defined and there is no uniform definition of the concept. In this study we use a definition that controversial issues are all issues that create tension or disputes on an organizational and/or societal level such as, for example, segregation, migration, equality, religion, sexuality and gender which may be difficult to know how to handle and/or respond to (Council of Europe, 2017).

As described above, controversial issues are topics that is difficult to handle and sometimes there are no easy solutions or clear paths for the principal in order to deal with or in the process of deciding what to do. In other words, these issues could be described as professional dilemmas for the principals. A dilemma can be defined as a situation where values, obligations and/or commitments collide or conflict and there is, for the involved actors, no obvious right way to do or act (Honig, 1994, 1996). In order to describe and understand these professional dilemmas the concept of dilemmatic spaces is used. A dilemmic space can be understood as a landscape of interactions between different actors within a specific social setting and where frictions in relation to societal and professional norms and values manifest (Olsson, 2022). Through the concept of dilemmatic space, actors, norms, values and action patterns can be framed which can affect how principals are positioned or position themselves, which in turn affects their leadership practice. In this paper we understand the concept of dilemmatic space as being relational and dialectic (Fransson & Grannäs, 2013). This means that not only people are positioned based on their standpoints and their moral positioning but also in relation to various norms, values, patterns of action, decisions, rules, roles and functions are related and positioned in relation to each other, and these positions creates a space, an area where dilemmas might occur that principals have to deal with (Fransson, 2012; Fransson & Grannäs, 2013).

The aim of this study, which has an exploratory point of departure, is to analyze the controversial issues and discuss in relation to dilemmatic spaces. This is done by focusing on which issues preschool principals experience and articulate as controversial in their practice. Further, why these issues are perceived as controversial and how the principals are affected by them and how they position themselves or become positioned and what space they can operate in when trying to deal with them.

The continuous transformation in education globally and perpetual changes in the education landscape have had an impact on many facets of the organisational structure of education, leadership and education provision (Howard et al., 2019; Tintor´e et al., 2022). Although education change is difficult, it is crucial to adapt to worldwide change and needs. Considerable investments in education have been made by many countries, in the hope of school improvement. Despite the investments made, there is still a global concern that numerous schools are not functioning optimally and achieving required throughput rates.

Circuit managers (CMs) are uniquely placed to influence education reform, quality of education and school improvement. The CM is also known as the school inspector or superintendent. CMs have many challenges to deal with that are often beyond their control or mandate (Bantwini & Moorosi, 2018a; Myende et al., 2020). The numerous transformations in education have placed CMs under tremendous pressure, as they are accountable and responsible for the performance of the schools and learners in their circuit areas (Nkambule & Amsterdam, 2018). The support role of CMs has become an integral driver for transformation in schools. CMs should support principals in managing and leading their schools and ensure that principals are capacitated in dealing with many varying disparities (Bantwini, 2018a; Ndlovu, 2018). As such, CMS are central to the success of change initiatives in education. Unprecedented education changes have had an enormous impact on the expected support CMs need to give to principals (Arar, 2020; Kaul, 2021).

Multiple diverse factors influence the support that CMs provide to principals such as required training, context, geography, culture, socio-economic gap, unionised school environment, political interference and leadership of each school (Arar, 2020; Mthethwa, 2020; Myende et al., 2020; Przybylski et al., 2018; Tamadoni et al., 2021). Not all CMs are capacitated to effectively implement the required education changes and deal with school personnel and principals who show resistance to mandatory changes (Myende et al., 2020; Zulu et al., 2021). The findings of various studies show that CMs do not provide principals and schools with sufficient support (Bantwini & Moorosi, 2018b; Kaul et al., 2021).

There is an outcry from principals to be prepared, mentored, trained and developed to deal with education change (Bantwini & Moorosi, 2018b; Myende et al., 2020). The problem is that most education districts and CMs do not provide initiatives or opportunities for principals to be developed to deal with the challenging context in which they find themselves. The responsibilities of principals for ensuring continuous quality education and school improvement rely mainly on the leadership of the CMs in education districts to implement change. The significance of the CMs support to principals during education change cannot be overemphasised and need to be researched (Myende et al. 2020).

The significance of the CM in supporting principals, improving schools, and enhancing student learning is central to achieving greater educational transformation in diverse contexts. To assist CMs in dealing with multifarious factors and enable them to provide principals with effective and sustainable support, the researchers designed a support framework for CMs to support principals during education change.

Globally, reform discourses and policy texts increasingly press standardization, test-based accountability, and evidence-based approaches to decision-making in education systems. These ideas have become staples in policy discourses (Ball, 2008), pushing education leaders to engage with technically rational problem-solving approaches. Although some challenges entail problem solving, others do not. Rather, they pose dilemmas for educators to manage. Dilemmas, as distinct from problems, refer to “messy, complicated, conflict-filled situations” where the alternative solutions are roughly equally desirable (or undesirable), necessitating compromise on the part of education and school leaders on some fundamental values (Cuban, 2001, p. 10). Dilemmas pose distinctive challenges for educational leadership.

In this presentation, we focus on the dilemmas that system leaders encounter in reforming primary school science in response to the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS Lead States, 2013). Primary school science offers an interesting case for two reasons: First, reformers press for ambitious changes that will require system leaders to engage in educational system-building to support science teaching. Second, primary school science has not figured as prominently as literacy and mathematics in policy texts that advance test-based accountability. Historically science is often sidelined in the primary school curriculum (Murphy & Beggs, 2005; NASEM, 2022), with primary teachers often lacking confidence in teaching science (Klepaker & Almendingen, 2017; Murphy et al, 2007), and as a result likely poses unique challenges for system leaders.

We motivate and frame our research by bringing three distinct literatures into conversation. First, education system-building refers to the work that system and school leaders, often in collaboration with teachers, do to organize, support, and manage the core work of schooling—teaching. It involves five core domains of work, distributed across levels (e.g., local education agencies, schools, and classrooms) of the education system, including building educational infrastructures; supporting the use of educational infrastructure in practice; managing environmental relations; managing practice and performance; and developing and distributing instructional leadership (Datnow et al., 2022; Peurach et al., 2019; Spillane et al., 2022). Our analysis focuses on system leaders’ efforts to build education systems to support primary school science and the dilemmas they construct in doing that work (Peurach, Yurkofsky, & Sutherland, 2019).

Second, we take a school subject specific approach to education system-building because the available empirical evidence suggests that the school subject matters not only for how teachers think about teaching and its improvement (Ball, 1981; Siskin, 2013), but also for school and system leaders’ efforts to lead and organize instructional improvement (Spillane & Hopkins, 2013). Further, the institutional environments that form around particular school subjects differ, shaping the work leaders must engage in. For example, some subjects––notably literacy and mathematics––receive considerably more attention from policymakers and other institutional actors than others, such as science and social studies (Burch & Spillane, 2003; Murphy & Beggs, 2005).

Third, while the rise of technical rationality globally has contributed to foregrounding the problem-solving work of educational leadership, scholars have long documented the centrality of dilemmas and managing dilemmas in educational practice from classroom teaching (Lampert, 1985) to school and district leadership (Cardno, 2007; Cuban, 2001; Spillane & Sun, 2022; Spillane & Lowenhaupt, 2019). Dilemmas captured situations in which educational leaders face two or more prized values, where choosing would lead to sacrificing something else they value, potentially making matters worse. Hence, dilemmas do not lend themselves to technically-rational approaches to problem-solving; rather they must be managed – coped with – over time.

Our research questions are:

1. What are the core dilemmas that education system leaders grapple with in improving and supporting elementary science education?

2. How do education system leaders manage these dilemmas?

As a response to ever-changing societal changes and the challenges it leads to for leadership and learning in schools, the leadership of school development has emerged as one of the key areas within school leadership research (Kovačević & Hallinger, 2019). Simultaneously the professional development of school leaders has aroused the extensive attention of researchers, politicians, and practitioners. Professional development activities range from formal training programs to informal interactions at the workplace (Goldring, Preston, & Huff, 2012). The symposium focuses on formal school leadership training programs (SLTPs) provided by higher education institutions that aim to contribute to school leaders’ professional development and promote school development.

Researchers state that successful SLTPs are embedded in authentic school environments to allow participants to apply what they have learned (Goldring et al., 2012; Simkins, 2012) and strengthen learning on the individual and organisational levels (Aas, 2016). Likewise, Zhang and Brundrett (2010) state that SLTPs can only prepare and develop influential leaders with support from the school context. Additionally, Huber (2011) suggests that professional development to be successful should be centred around experiential knowledge/practices and combine cognitive theoretical ways of learning, cooperative and communicative process-oriented procedures, and reflexive methods. Cognitive theoretical learning includes, among others, lectures and self-study, cooperative and communicative process-oriented procedures including, for instance, group and project work, and reflexive methods containing methods such as feedback and supervision. However, even though the success and effectiveness of SLTPs have received theoretical and empirical support, some researchers point out that most empirical findings about SLTPs are limited to the subjective outcome at the individual level (see, e.g. Jensen, 2016). Thus, the topic of how SLTP can contribute to professional learning and promote school development remains unclear.

In this symposium, we are a group of researchers through the project Research on national school leadership training programs, examining the issues associated with this topic. Specifically, we examine the key characteristics of SLTPs that contribute to professional development and benefit school development and how teams consisting of researchers and educators can facilitate and enhance learning activities that support learning for individuals participating in the programs and their organisations. We examine these research questions in a review study based on data from 44 peer-reviewed articles from nine countries (which cover the three-country perspectives to be represented in a symposium) and three studies using an action research approach and data from national SLTPs for school leaders in Norway. The action research is theoretically informed by Wells’ (1999) approach to knowledge building. In this approach, learning is not a separate form of activity but an inherent aspect of engaging with others in purposeful actions that have significance beyond themselves for all the participants. It involves an ongoing transformation of the learner/participant and, as such, typically occurs not on a single occasion but incrementally over time.

The issues addressed in this symposium lie at the very heart of the content domain of the Educational Leadership Network (NW26). Numerous educational leadership studies have shown that the primary subject of this symposium, SLTPs and professional leadership development, has important implications in school leadership, which is a central focus of NW26. This symposium includes an international review and three empirical papers on the effectiveness of SLTPs. As boundary conditions aligning learning components in the SLTPs and experiential knowledge/practices of those participating in the programs are seen as critical for developing and theorising in school leadership studies, this symposium should contribute to the NW 26 via theoretical and empirical reporting on these contingent components. Finally, a discussant from Sweden will discuss how the papers advance and further the symposium's topic with interest for a European/international research audience that might stimulate discussions and benefit future research.

This paper reports from a review of empirical research on school leadership training programs (SLTPs) offered by universities. The review aims to summarise international literature to contribute a better understanding and provide an overview of what is currently known about SLTP, which aims to contribute to professional development and benefit school development. The review raises the following research question: What characterises school leadership programs that promote the leadership of school development? The review can be described as a Rapid Review (Khangura et al., 2012) designed to create reviews in line with specific procedures. A rapid review has limitations. However, the format has nevertheless been developed so that the same requirements for systematics and transparency apply to any systematic review. A systematic review is characterised by using techniques to minimise bias and by following criteria for searching for relevant studies (Cohen et al., 2011). Hence, the following selection criteria for inclusion of studies were determined: 1) SLTPs offered by universities; 2) published between 2010 and 2020; 3) published in 15 selected peer-reviewed journals 4) published in English or a Scandinavian language. The process of selecting articles for review was based on quality criteria according to which the studies were assessed. As a result, 44 studies from nine different countries were included for review. As a basis for synthesis, the articles were categorised and prepared for a configurative synthesis (Gough et al., 2017). Configuration was about bringing the findings from the studies together so that they could show us potential connections and develop new knowledge. In the review, the 44 included articles are treated as data. This means that in addition to the findings, the studies' context and background have also been relevant to the synthesis work (Gough et al., 2017). Since the synthesis work is data-driven, the configurative synthesis is consequently developed "bottom-up" (Sandelowski et al., 2012). Based on the review, the present paper provides an overview of components that characterise SLTPs that promote the leadership of school development. The identified components are referred to as condition components, learning components, and content components. These components will be presented and discussed in the symposium. In addition, the review offers features of SLTP that might interest researchers and the development of programs that benefit school leaders' professional development and their organisations.

Gough, D., Oliver, S. & Thomas, J. (Red.). (2017). An Introduction to Systematic Reviews. Sage Publications. Khangura, S., Konnyu, K., Cushman, R., Grimshaw, J. & Moher, D. (2012). Evidence summaries: the evolution of a rapid review approach. Systematic Reviews,10(1), 1-10. Sandelowski, M., Voils, C. I., Leeman, J. & Crandell, J. L. (2012). Mapping the mixed methods–mixed research terrain. Journal of mixed methods research, 6(4), 317-331.

Internationally lectures have traditionally been the dominant form of teaching in universities and colleges (Huber, 2011), characterised by students' limited opportunity for active participation (Pettersen, 2005). To strengthen the quality of higher education in Norway, national guidelines have been given, among other things, stating that studies must include learning activities where students become active participants in their learning. The core of student active learning is student activity and involvement in the learning processes; in short, it is about methods where students are activated in meaningful learning activities and think about what they are doing. In many educational programs, integrated use of lectures and more student-active approaches to learning are used (Amundsen & Haakstad, 2018). For example, teachers combine lectures with group work, reflection tasks, and the like. Such combinations of learning approaches align with researchers who propose the use of a range of learning activities in various formats for obtaining an effect of development for school leaders participating in formal school leadership training program and their organisations (see, e.g. Huber, 2011; 2013; Goldring et al., 2012; Forde & Gronn, 2013 & Simkins 2012). This paper reports from a study investigating how group discussions can contribute to students' learning in the extension of lectures to gain a comprehensive insight into and further develop teaching practices with lectures in combination with group discussions as an asset for students learning. The study is carried out with an action research design (Carr & Kemmis, 1986). The context of the study is a National School Leadership program (15 credits) offered by a Norwegian university. The data is based on observation logs of a teaching session and the students' reflection notes conducted at the session's end. The findings indicate that group discussions in the extension of lectures provide learning opportunities that promote the students' learning, both collectively and individually. Through the group discussions, learning opportunities emerge in the interaction between theoretical knowledge addressed in the lecture and practical, experience-based knowledge based on the students' self-perceived "pegs" and ideas from their organisational contexts. In this interaction, learning experiences are produced that give the students increased understanding and new perspectives about how they can drive development in their practice contexts and how they, as school leaders, can act in new ways. However, the findings reveal how both organisational and structuring conditions and conditions related to qualities in task design and the conversations themselves can inhibit learning potential.

Amundsen, G. Y. & Haakstad, J. (2018). Teaching in higher education – consistency and change in context and role. Journal of the European Higher Education Area, 2, 83–98. Carr, W. and S. Kemmis (1986). Becoming critical: education, knowledge, and action research. Falmer Press. Forde, McMahon, & Gronn (2013). Designing individualised leadership development programmes. School Leadership & Management, 33(5), 440–456. Goldring, E., Preston, C., & Huff, J. (2012). Conceptualizing and evaluating professional development for school leaders. Planning and Changing, 43(3/4), 223–242. Huber, S. (2011). The impact of professional development: A theoretical model for empirical research, evaluation, planning and conducting training and development programmes. Professional Development in Education, 37(5), 837–853. Huber, S. (2013). Multiple learning approaches in the professional development of school leaders – theoretical perspectives and empirical findings on self-assessment and feedback. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 41(4), 527–540. Pettersen, R. (2005). Kvalitetslæring i høgere utdanning. Innføring i problem- og praksisbasert didaktikk. Universitetsforlaget.

Ever since the start of the national school leadership programs in 2009 in Norway, there has been an expectation from the Directorate of Education that the programs should involve school owners in their students' education (Hybertsen et al., 2014). However, evaluation reports from the national school leadership programs show that the principal's leaders, the school director at the municipality named school owner, are not included in the student's work. Most students experience the school owner as not very supportive, and the providers find it demanding to involve them (Caspersen, Aamodt, Stensaker, & Federici, 2018). Effective school research emphasizes the importance of school owners and principals working systemically with leadership learning and curriculum (Leithwood, Harris, & Hopkins, 2020) and school owner support (Aas & Paulsen, 2019). In addition, research shows that school leadership programs must respond to the schools' societal-, personal- and system challenges (Dempster, Lovett, & Fluckiger, 2011). As the student's leader, the school owner plays a central role in these practical challenges. In many countries, coaching is part of national school leadership programs (Lumby, Crow, & Pashiardis, 2008; Robertson & Earl, 2014). Nevertheless, involving the student and their school owner in coaching is yet to be tried in Norway. This paper reports from a study of coaching integrated into the National Principal Training Programs in Norway (15 credits). The coaching is linked to the student's tasks: they shall develop and lead school development work related to the curriculum in their organization. The students' work is anchored in one of the school owner's focus areas. The research question is: How can the school owners' participation in a digital guidance meeting in a national school leadership program contribute to learning for students and school owners? The study has been carried out in an action research design involving collaboration between the researchers and the practitioners (Carr & Kemmis, 1986; Stenshorne & Ballangrud, 2014). The three supervisors from the university conducted the coaching interviews with 26 students and their leaders, and they answered anonymous questionnaires. Using Wells' categories of meaning as analyzing tools (Wells, 1999), we find that the students developed their leadership role and practice, professionality, understanding of the societal challenges, and collaboration, with implications for the knowledge of the school owners. In addition, the conversation can contribute to learning and development. A prerequisite is that the meeting is well prepared.

Carr, W., & Kemmis, S. (1986). Becoming critical: education, knowledge, and action research. Falmer Press. Dempster, N., Lovett, S., & Fluckiger, B. (2011). Content and strategies to develop school leadership: A select literature review. The Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership. Leithwood, K., Harris, A., & Hopkins, D. (2020). Seven strong claims about successful school leadership revisited. School Leadership & Management, 40(1), 5-22. Lumby, J., Crow, G., & Pashiardis, P. (2008). International Handbook on the Preparation and Development of School Leaders. Taylor and Francis. Robertson, J., & Earl, L. M. (2014). Leadership learning: Aspiring principals developing the dispositions that count. Journal of Educational Leadership, Policy and Practice, 29(2), 3-17. Stenshorne, E., & Ballangrud, B. B. (2014). Ledelsens muligheter og utfordringer i skolen som demokratisk organisasjon. In J. Madsen & H. Biseth (Eds.), Må vi snakke om demokrati? Om demokratisk praksis i skolen (pp. S. 101-117). Universitetsforlaget. Wells, G. (1999). Dialogic Inquiry. Towards a Sociocultural Practice and Theory of Education. Cambridge University Press. Aas, M., & Paulsen, J. M. (2019). National strategy for supporting school principal's instructional leadership. A Scandinavian approach. Journal of Educational Administration, 57(5), 540-553.

According to a new review of leadership training programs for school leaders, coaching has become one of the tools used in leadership development programs for school leaders (Aas, Andersen et al. 2021). Studies reporting on the benefits of coaching used for professional development and for developing leadership performance are growing (Bush 2009, Forde, McMahon et al. 2013, Goff, Guthrie et al. 2014). Even though researchers recognize and highlight the necessity and importance of working in and with groups in professional development, few group-coaching models have been developed, and there is little research in the field (Aas, 2016; Aas, 2020). In studies of group coaching, there seems to be agreement on several effects, including understanding and self-regulation for acceptable group behaviour, better listening and communication skills, clarification of strengths and values and improved understanding of the organisation as a whole (Brown & Grant, 2010). In many countries, coaching is part of national school leadership programs (Lumby, Crow et al., 2008; Robertson & Earl, 2014). This paper reports from a study of group coaching integrated into the National Principal Training Programme in Norway, which aims to promote reflections on the personal agency (role clarity and self-efficacy) that can lead to changes in leadership performance (Aas & Fluckiger, 2016). We set out to investigate the group coaching protocol, which starts with a coaching question that is reformulated during the group coaching session (Flückiger, Aas et al. 2017) and ends in a leadership action the leaders will try out after the coaching session. The research question is: What happens when are school leaders participating in group coaching in a leadership training program try out new leadership actions after the coaching session? Inspired by action research (Carr & Kemmis, 1986), we followed 84 students and 16 group coaches from two different universities in 2021 and 2022. First, in analyzing the students' planned leadership actions, the findings show that developing leadership skills to improve relationships and collaboration with teachers was the main challenge. Next, the findings indicate that group coaching contributes to the professional development of the school leaders who participated and that the learning was further developed by testing concrete leadership actions in their school context. Finally, the study demonstrates how action research where university teachers explore aspects of their teaching, in this case, group coaching, can contribute to the further development of leadership programs for school leaders.

Goff, P. et al. (2014). Changing principals’ leadership through feedback and coaching. Journal of Educational Administration 52(5), 682-704. Lumby, J., et al. (2008). International Handbook on the Preparation and Development of School Leaders. New York, Taylor and Francis. Robertson, J. and L. M. Earl (2014). Leadership learning: Aspiring principals developing the dispositions that count. Journal of Educational Leadership, Policy and Practice 29(2), 3-17. Aas, M. (2016). Bli en bedre skoleleder. Gruppecoaching som verktøy. Universitetsforlaget. Aas, M. (2020). Ledercoachning och gruppecoachning som verktyg i ledares profesionella utveckling. Perspektiv på handledning. In U. Leo and E. Amundsdotter. Malmö, Gleerups Utbildning AB: 143-163. Aas, M., et al. (2021). Forskning på den nasjonale skolelederutdanningen. Delrapport 1, Oslo Metropolitan University. Aas, M. and B. Fluckiger (2016). The role of a group coach in the professional learning of school leaders. Coaching: An International Journal of Theory, Research and Practice 9(1), 38-52.

Cuban (1993) likened educational change to a seascape whereby stormy winds create massive waves on the surface, some turbulence below the surface while on the seabed all remains calm and the work carries on as before. In this sense, reform efforts that seek to prompt change towards improving education quality and equity have relied heavily on prescriptive and one-size-fits-all approaches based on evidence from high-performing countries and schools; in contrast, the educational improvement literature has advocated to move from decontextualized top-down approaches that cause big waves but make little difference. This is particularly important in the case of schools facing challenging circumstances, where social, educational and political contextual factors matter.

Schools facing challenging circumstances are generally located in socially disadvantaged contexts, characterised by poverty, unemployment, physical and mental health problems, and poor access to social services (Muijs et al. 2004). Moreover, there is evidence that these schools face internal issues that are multidimensional and intertwined, including ineffective leadership, poor quality teaching, lack of resources, and high teacher turnover (Meyers and Murphy 2007). Although it is challenging to initiate sustained change processes in this type of schools, which require drastic transformations in schools’ organisation, professional capital and management, there is evidence that they can increase their performance by building internal capacity for improvement (Leithwood, Harris, and Strauss 2010). Given the challenging conditions of the context in which these schools are situated, and the internal difficulties they face to build capacity for improvement, the evidence suggests there are several factors that can contribute to building such capacity.

Regarding factors internal to these schools, research indicates that principals are key to generating improvement and leading turnaround processes. School leaders with high capacity, flexibility and adaptation are required, willing to mediate multiple external demands and internal needs of the educational community, to sustain the processes of change and improvement based on flexible and systematic planning and implementation (Meyers and Hitt, 2017). Similarly, leadership practices that make a difference for the improvement of schools in challenging circumstances focus on learning, promoting conditions to set and achieve ambitious goals of learning and teaching, based on shared leadership and accountability (Townsend, 2019). Conversely, regarding external factors, the development of initiatives that create networks involving research practice partnerships (RPPs) has been shown to be an important mechanism for moving beyond more traditional approaches to improvement, underpinned by authentic collaboration focused on addressing issues with classroom practice or learner experiences and outcomes (Madrid Miranda and Chapman, 2021). Similarly, evidence also has shown how quality assurance and accountability policies can foster the improvement of schools facing challenging circumstances by providing school leaders and teachers with useful performance feedback that allow them to make sense of accountability demands and identify issues under their control to seek solutions that help them turn their schools around (Camphuijsen, 2021).

In this symposium, we bring together different perspectives from Europe and Latin America to critically discuss how schools facing challenging circumstances address educational change and improvement, in diverse social, educational and policy contexts.

The crisis caused by COVID-19 disrupted education worldwide and intensified the difficulties faced by schools in challenging contexts. In Chile, teachers and leaders had to react quickly to school closures and the transition to remote education, in the midst of uncertainty and ambiguity in governmental guidelines (González et al. 2020). In this scenario, difficulties historically faced by schools located in contexts of social and economic disadvantage were intensified and resulted in more pronounced gaps in the educational opportunities of their students. Promoting improvement in this type of schools is not an easy task, as the problems they face are often multidimensional and intertwined (Hochbein 2012). However, it is possible to consider schools in challenging contexts as complex systems that require an adaptive approach (O’Day 2002). This calls to reflect on how school leaders can introduce innovative solutions that coherently combine pedagogical, managerial, and social justice logics to develop capacities for whole-school improvement (Woulfin and Wiener, 2019). This conceptualisation is useful for understanding both the potential and limitations of educational leadership in challenging contexts by emphasising the dynamics of learning and adaptability (Koh and Askell‐Williams 2021). The ability of an organisation to learn from its ecosystem, that is, to identify, assimilate, and take advantage of information from the environment to apply it in processes of innovation in its routines, policies and practices, is called absorptive capacity (Cohen and Levinthal 1990). This paper presents a qualitative case study of six Chilean schools in challenging contexts, exploring how they developed adaptations to ensure educational continuity, employing the perspective of absorptive capacity. 12 school leaders and six ministry advisors were interviewed twice between 2020 and 2021, for a total of 36 interviews, and data were analysed through a Qualitative Content Analysis strategy. Findings show that school leaders faced complex problems related with the challenging circumstances of their communities during the pandemic, and their proposed solutions to these problems were mediated by their internal organisational conditions, the characteristics of advisors and their interaction. When external advisors established a contextualised and flexible relationship with school actors, schools fostered organisational learning that led to the development of improvement actions. The study shows that it is relevant to continue researching the role of educational leadership in this type of schools from an organisational learning perspective, to understand to what extent principals can promote educational improvement in challenging circumstances.

References Cohen, Wesley M, and Daniel A Levinthal. 1990. “Absorptive Capacity: A New Perspective on Learning and Innovation.” Administrative Science Quarterly 35 (1): 128–152. González, Álvaro, María Beatriz Fernández, Mauricio Pino-Yancovic, and Romina Madrid. 2020. “Teaching in the Pandemic: Reconceptualizing Chilean Educators’ Professionalism Now and for the Future.” Journal of Professional Capital and Community 5 (3/4): 265–272. Hochbein, Craig. 2012. “Relegation and Reversion: Longitudinal Analysis of School Turnaround and Decline.” Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk (JESPAR) 17 (1–2): 92–107. Koh, Gloria A., and Helen Askell‐Williams. 2021. “Sustainable School‐improvement in Complex Adaptive Systems: A Scoping Review.” Review of Education 9 (1): 281–314. O’Day, Jennifer. 2002. “Complexity, Accountability and School Improvement.” Harvard Educational Review 72 (3): 293–329. Woulfin, Sarah L., and Jennie Weiner. 2019. “Triggering Change: An Investigation of the Logics of Turnaround Leadership.” Education and Urban Society 51 (2): 222–246.

This paper focuses on a systematic attempt to rethink roles and responsibilities across an urban education district within a relatively small and hierarchical education system (Chapman, 2019). In doing so, it draws out the lessons and learning from the Every Dundee Learner Matters (EDLM) strategy, focusing on how all educational establishments have adopted an inquiry-based stance to move knowledge, expertise around the system to support more equitable approaches to education. The challenging context in which this strategy was initiated involved working with educators during lockdown at a time when much of the developmental work was initiated virtually due to school lockdown and then subsequently with establishments facing challenges of staffing pressures and student attendance due to the pandemic. This paper explores the extent to which an inquiry driven university-district RPP can promote the conditions to support equitable improvement across a local education system. The strategy is centred on the principle of equity, defined as ‘A process of improving the presence, participation and progress of all children and young people in nurseries and schools by identifying and addressing contextual barriers.’ The theoretical framework draws on an ecology of equity that explores issues from within- between- and beyond schools in terms of building an inquiring stance and leadership capacity by fostering authentic collaboration and a Networked Learning System (Hadfield and Chapman, 2010; Ainscow, Chapman and Hadfield, 2021; Chapman and Ainscow, 2022; Madrid Miranda and Chapman, 2021). Design based implementation research (DBIR) has been used to identify a series of design principles that underpin the approach. The evidence-base for this paper is largely drawn from in-depth interviews and focus groups with a range of school leaders and teachers within the system which have been triangulated with meeting notes and documentary evidence and other stakeholder perspectives combined with artefacts generated from collaborative action research which are important in terms of identifying progress, facilitators and barriers in creating the conditions for developing more equitable approaches to progress. Emerging findings suggest that even within the unprecedented times during the global pandemic, educators have been resourceful and resilient in terms of engaging in professional learning and developing an inquiring approach. Findings highlight institutional, local system and national facilitators and barriers to progress. These include social, political and cultural factors that can accelerate and/or dampen progress. Furthermore, there are a number of structural and procedural dimensions that operate at both the institutional and local level.

References Ainscow, M., Chapman, C. and Hadfield, M. (2020) Changing education systems: a research-based approach.Routledge Chapman, C and Ainscow, M (2022) (eds) Educational Equity: Pathways to success, Abingdon/New York: Routledge Chapman, C. (2019) From hierarchies to networks: possibilities and pitfalls for educational reform of the middle tier. Journal of Educational Administration, 57(5), pp. 554-570. (doi: 10.1108/JEA-12-2018-0222) Chapman, C. and Hadfield, M. (2010) Supporting the middle tier to engage with school-based networks: change strategies for influencing and cohering. Journal of Educational Change, 11(3), pp. 221-240. (doi: 10.1007/s10833-009-9125-y)

Schools in socioeconomic disadvantaged areas have to face challenging circumstances caused by external conditions, but schools’ underperformance can also be considered as results of insufficient process quality at school and classroom level. With regard to effective schools in challenging circumstances previous studies reveal conducive conditions for school turn-around: effective leadership practices and professional learning communities seem to be crucial (Muijs et al., 2004). Therefore, strategies for improvement have to focus mainly on enhancing the educational quality by using external support and school-to-school networks (Chapman, 2008). Effective leadership in schools facing challenging circumstances comprise strategies for building teams, delegating responsibility and encouraging teachers to set developmental goals and to foster efforts for improvement (Muijs et al., 2004; Reynolds et al. 2001). Considering the knowledge ´Leadership for Learning` (MacBeath & Townsend, 2011) seems to be an appropriate theoretical model to investigate whether leadership practices are able to initiate effective school improvement efforts in schools with trouble. Effective leadership styles for improving schools are linked to the five elements of leadership for learning in which the principal sets the focus on learning, promotes conditions for learning, fosters a dialogue about goals of learning and teaching, encourages teachers into sharing leadership and establishes a sense of shared accountability (MacBeath & Townsend, 2011; Townsend, 2019). The paper will follow two research questions: 1. Which process quality factors of the organizational culture (e.g. leadership patterns, professional teacher collaboration, data use) make a difference for improving schools with trouble? 2. How far does ´leadership for learning` influence directly and indirectly school development and the establishing of capacity for change? The research was embedded in a design-based school development program with evidence-based and suitable support or schools in networks in Germany in 31 secondary schools (2014-2020). The analyses contain structure equation models, mediator analysis and multiple regressions of individual and aggregated data of 31 schools and 980 teachers, based on standardized questionnaires, capturing context and process variables over two measuring points. The results show evidence for impacts of effective leadership practices and professional teacher collaboration on teaching development activities (Brücher, Holtappels & Webs, 2021): Leadership for learning shows a direct impact on teacher commitment and the sustainability of innovations, but indirect influence on establishing school development capacity. Beyond this, professional teacher collaboration, teacher commitment to school development and data use within the project are strong predictors for building up school development capacity in schools with trouble.

References Brücher, L., Holtappels, H. G. & Webs, T. (2021). Schulleitungshandeln an Schulen in herausfordernden Lagen – Zur Bedeutung von Leadership for Learning für den Aufbau von Schulentwicklungskapazität. In: I. Van Ackeren, H. G. Holtappels, N. Bremm & A. Hillebrand-Petri (Hrsg.), Schulen in herausfordernden Lagen – Forschungsbefunde und Schulentwicklung in der Region Ruhr. Weinheim/Basel: Beltz Juventa, S. 205-243. Chapman, C. (2008). Towards a framework for school-to-school networking in challenging circumstances. Educational Research, 50(4), 403–420. MacBeath, J. & Townsend, T. (2011). Leadership and Learning: Paradox, Paradigms and Principles. In T. Townsend & J. Macbeath (Eds.), International Handbook of Leadership for Learning. Part I (p. 1–25). Dordrecht: Springer. Muijs, D., Harris, A., Chapman, C., Stoll, L. & Russ, J. (2004). Improving Schools in Socioeconomically Disadvantaged Areas – A Review of Research Evidence. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 15 (2), 149–175. Reynolds, D., Hopkins, D., Potter, D. & Chapman, C. (2001): School improvement for schools facing challenging circumstances: A review of research and practice. London: DfES. Townsend, T. (2019). Changing Understandings of School Leadership. In T. Townsend (Ed.), Instructional Leadership and Leadership for Learning in Schools. Understanding Theories of Leading (p. 1-12). Palgrave Macmillan.

Over the last decade, how to solve the stubborn underperformance of around 580 schools has been a pressing question in the English government’s agenda. In its 2017 Annual Report, the Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills (Ofsted) highlighted a set of schools judged as ‘requires improvement’, ‘satisfactory’ or ‘inadequate’ in every inspection over the period from September 2005 to August 2017. Subsequently, Ofsted conducted qualitative case studies of 10 stuck and 10 ‘unstuck’ schools. ‘Fight or flight? How 'stuck' schools are overcoming isolation’ concluded that stuck schools needed more targeted assistance, following more thorough and detailed inspections that are not tied to overall grades (Ofsted, 2020). Despite Ofsted’s policy priority on ‘failing’ schools, 2 to 3% of schools nationally, have been systematically stuck or graded as less than good (‘Inadequate’ or ‘Requires Improvement’) since 2005, without improving. This paper draws on a Nuffield Foundation’s funded longitudinal mixed-method study oriented to better understand patterns of change over time and stakeholders’ experiences in stuck schools and their comparison group. Whilst its main findings have been reported elsewhere (Munoz-Chereau, Hutchinson and Ehren, 2022), this paper further explores the comparison ‘unstuck’ group formed by six (thee primary and three secondary) schools that after being ‘stuck’ for more than a decade, managed to improve against the odds their overall effectiveness. Methodologically, the qualitative multiple-case study combined the analysis of schools’ documents, semi-structured interviews with headteachers, teachers and governors, and focus groups with stakeholders in order to reconstruct the schools’ longitudinal inspection and improvement trajectory. Whilst ‘unstuck’ schools described how the combination of differentiated inspections, thresholds, sanctions, and public reporting amplified their difficulties and overpowered the attempts of improvement and support, they stressed how after stabilising their teams through strong leadership, managed to improve by identifying and addressing pressing areas for improvement that were under their control (such as discipline, curriculum alignment or continuous professional development) , that allowed them to turn around. Despite this multiple-case study does not provide a blueprint for what works in general, it does provide a thick description of the contexts, challenges, strengths and opportunities that allowed them to construct a positive story. Overall, the ‘stuck’ metaphor distracts attention from the unequal playing field. Findings call for more empirical longitudinal research and contributes to the research base on improvement in low-performing schools.

Ofsted (2020). ‘Fight or flight? How 'stuck' schools are overcoming isolation. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/fight-or-flight-how-stuck-schools-are-overcoming-isolation Munoz-Chereau, B., Hutchinson, J., & Ehren, M. (2022). 'Stuck'schools: Can below good Ofsted inspections prevent sustainable improvement?. https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10149556

Overview:

Empirical research studies (Leithwood et al., 2006) conclude that the principal is the second most influential variable in student academic success. Over the past twenty years, the International Successful School Principalship Project (ISSPP) has conducted over 150 qualitative case studies of successful principals in 27 different countries, providing contextualized understandings of school and principal success in challenging contexts. These findings have been robust across time, region, and country, a significant finding as the phenomenon of policy transfer has increased high stakes testing globally over the past two decades.

Research Questions:

Notwithstanding Leithwood’s (e.g., 2005; 2006) work over a number of years combining the empirical and conceptual, we were intrigued by five questions which did not yet seem to have been answered:

1. What similarities and differences can be identified in the beliefs and behaviours of successful school principals across national cultures and policy contexts?

1. What part do local, regional, national and international policies play in influencing the work of successful principals?

1. Do different countries have different ways of defining success?

1. How do high-stake assessments and accountability measures influence the practices of successful principals?

1. Do different socio-economic contexts in which schools operate affect the ways in which successful principals work? Are different qualities and skills needed?

1. How do successful principals come to be successful? How do they learn about their work and acquire the skills needed to create and sustain school improvement?”

ISSPP Methodology

Initially, the ISSPP project utilized multi-perspective, qualitative case study methods. The selection of the case sites was done using purposive sampling of schools that controlled for differences in accountability standards and evidence of improved student performance during the tenure of the principal under study. To gain multiple perspectives about what a principal had contributed to a school’s success, the principal, teachers, school staff and parents were interviewed using a semi-structured protocol.

Findings from Two Decades of Research on Successful Leadership

Over the past twenty years, ISSPP has produced robust global findings about school leadership which ensures student success beyond narrow policy prescriptions (Author, 2007; Leithwood, Day, Sammons, Harris, & Hopkins, 2006; Author, 2006). The ISSPP project has developed a nuanced and contextually sensitive conception of success that extends beyond student outcomes on high-stakes tests to student wellness, community perceptions, and equity. Additionally, global research findings have indicated increasingly complex contexts for school leadership, including digitalization, globalization, externalized accountability policies, and increasingly diverse demographics. Closely related, across the international studies, researchers also reported multiple layers of influence on individuals (children) with regards to their education from the home to society and culture (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). Such new and perennial tensions and complexities in a rapidly changing society require a multi-level and multi-layered perspective (Author, 2020a) where schools are complex adaptive systems and societal institutions (Author, 2020b; Morrison, 2010).

Given this level of project saturation and findings about increasing complex and multi-layered contexts for schools, the ISSPP has designed the next phase of its work by developing a theoretical framework of complexity theory and ecological systems theory as well as an analytical framework to explain school and leadership success as part of a multi-level phenomenon with relations among individuals and groups from classrooms to nation state and transnational levels amidst the complex contemporary situation. Extended research methods feature a survey instrument as well as updated qualitative interview protocols.

Papers in this symposium present a synthesis of ISSPP findings, examples from the United States and Australia, and future directions for ISSPP.

This paper presents the results of a meta-ethnography of the case studies conducted in nine countries published in journals and books from the ISSPP. ISSPP publications point to the importance of unveiling how and why ISSPPs differ across contexts. Research synthesis has the advantage of describing this over individual studies. Results from such synthesis can help to provide robust claims, optimize findings, identify context-free elements and context-specific elements, unveil context influence patterns, and paint a thorough and cohesive picture of successful principalship at the global level. Such findings can also provide guidance for practitioners and policy makers. This paper reviews the eighty-five articles and twenty-three chapters involving 108 school cases from the U.S., UK, Australia, Norway, Sweden, Spain, Israel, Cyprus, and New Zealand. We adopted the meta-ethnography (Doyle, 2003; Savin-Baden & Major, 2007) as the most appropriate method to review this body of ISSPP studies since this approach can help us discover the connections and complex interactions between agents (e.g., principals and their own characteristics) and contexts at multiple levels (school, community, district-wide, nation-wide, etc.), and what have happened in similar or different contexts overtime. In addition to theme identification within and across contexts, we synthesized the interpretations of the original researcher(s) of each study to retain meaning in context, a promising strength of meta-ethnography (Weed, 2005). Student academic achievement in the broad sense lies at the centre of school success, with other factors (e.g., schools’ reputation, learning experiences) emphasized to different extent in different countries. While successful principals do similar things, their most frequently reported practices vary across countries. For example, principals in US focused often on improving instruction and fostering data teams whereas their counterparts in Australia, Cyprus, Israel, New Zealand, and Spain demonstrated strong advocacy for parents who have been marginalized. British, Sweden and Norwegian principals work for inclusive school culture and communicate widely with stakeholders. Successful principal practices also vary with school contexts (e.g., a low-income school, in a multi-ethnicity school). Local and national policies did play a role in influencing the work of successful principals. For example, principals in Spain with educational policies promoting equity and social justice with no laws to alleviate the severe problems of educational inequality were empathetic, approachable, and accessible while principals in Norway showed optimism, creativity, and persistence in response to the new and contradictory policy expectations. More findings are provided in the full paper.

Doyle, L. H. (2003). Synthesis through meta-ethnography: Paradoxes, enhancements, and possibilities. Qualitative Research, 3(3), 321–344. Savin-Baden, M., & Major, C. H. (2007). Using interpretative meta-ethnography to explore the relationship between innovative approaches to learning and their influence on faculty understanding of teaching. Higher Education, 54(6), 833–852. Weed, M. (2005). Meta interpretation: A method for the interpretive synthesis of qualitative research. Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 6(1), 1–17.

In this paper, we recap the history and evolution of ISSPP research in the USA with research teams that grew from one location (Buffalo, NY) in 2002 to seven teams at present. Drawing on a meta-analysis of leadership studies in the United States and other Western countries, including effective schools research on high-needs U.S. schools, Leithwood and Riehl (2005) identified four core practices necessary but not sufficient for success in any context: 1. Setting directions 2. Developing people 3. Redesigning the organization 4. Managing the instructional program These four core practices were used as a common analytical framework for analyzing interview data within and across the U.S.A. cases. All of the cases were selected with a common sampling strategy whereby we purposely selected schools with improved student outcomes and nominations by school district leaders and organizations. Some research teams focus on public schools while others include religious schools; some schools are situated in districts that have tighter coupling with support within accountability mandates and district systems while others have more loose coupling whereby schools seek out programs and innovations on their own initiative. Data sources include semi-structured qualitative interviews with the district leaders, principal, teachers, parents, and students in order to provide a more elaborated understanding of the phenomena i.e., school success and the principal’s leadership contribution to that success. Successful principals in New York, Massachusetts, Texas, South Carolina, Arizona and Indiana set directions and developed people around a school direction and redesigned the school organizations around collaboration. Like the Buffalo cases, these school leaders provided sustained professional development aimed at improved instructional practices and used data as a source of reflection and planning. At the same time, the additional U.S. cases conducted over the past fifteen years reflect increased leadership attention on the needs of increasingly diverse students from internal demographic shifts as well as global population migrations. While some of the principals grew up in the neighborhood areas or communities in which their schools were situated, that was not the case for all of the principals. The principals were conscious of their own histories and were committed to learning about the history of the school and surrounding community. These cases of successful principals in high-needs Northeast, Southeast, Southwest and Midwest U.S. schools provide qualitative, contextualized understandings of school success and principal contributions to that success at particular points in time over the past 20 years.

Byrne, D., & Callaghan, G. (2013). Complexity theory and the social sciences: The state of the art. Routledge. Leithwood, K., Day, C., Sammons, P., Harris, A., & Hopkins, D. (2006). Successful school leadership: What it is and how it influences pupil learning. Leithwood, K., & Riehl, C. (2005). What do we already know about educational leadership. A new agenda for research in educational leadership, 12.

In two devolved Australian school systems, for over 20 years Australian researchers have been interested in understanding how successful school leaders lead schools that have a broad range of student and school outcomes that are above expectations (Author, 2020a & b). This paper draws upon findings from five Tasmanian and 17 Victorian multiple perspective case studies of successful primary, secondary and special school principals. All cases included interviews with the principal, senior teachers, teachers, students, parents and school council members and document analysis, In addition, eight cases included observation of the school, and one case included a teacher survey. The cases reveal a complicated pattern of leadership activities by the principal and other school leaders that includes setting school directions, building positive cultures, developing supportive organizational structures, enhancing personal, professional, organizational and community capacity, and developing networks, collaborations, partnership and stakeholder engagement. These areas of leadership action interact with school, staff, family and broader contextual factors to develop outstanding teaching and learning that results in a wide array of positive student and school outcomes. Student outcomes include academic, extra-curricular, co-curricular, personal and social areas. School outcomes include reputation, learning environment, resource, community empowerment and teacher quality areas. Successful school leadership is shown to be a complex endeavor, led by the principal but involving many, that can be sustained successfully over many years, and which leads to important and diverse student and school outcomes. The findings are related to both system and complexity views of educational leadership to provide a contemporary view of educational leadership that is especially suited to times of rapid and disruptive change.

Author, 2020a Author, 2020b

A range of research by ISSPP members from more than 20 countries over the last two decades has found that, regardless of national contexts, cultures, policies and individual school contexts and conditions, successful principals work takes place in schools as complex adaptive systems and is predicated upon educational purposes that include but are broader than the functional, founded on principles of social justice and inclusion (Biesta, 2015). The newly developed ISSPP research design reported in the proposed symposium has been developed as a consequence of these findings. It recognises the importance of examining leadership in the context of how principals navigate within and between both individual and system levels (e.g., between teachers, principals and middle leaders, governance, communities’ policy histories, national cultures) over time and at critical points in growing, achieving, and sustaining success. Thinking in this way may require a paradigm shift for many towards an ‘holistic, connectionist and integrationist view of the individual and the environment, rather than a fragmented, reductionist perspective’ (Youngblood, 1997:34). Using this way of thinking acknowledges that successful leaders go beyond, ‘rational-scientific’ methods, employing ‘soft skills to foster trust, and leverage the power of communities. Implicitly, it rejects linear and predictive explanations or singular views of truth about how principals achieve success, asserting that their work is dynamic, emergent, and dependent on the interaction of several variables, not all of which can be observed or predicted, but all of which are connected. This paper presents the future directions for ISSPP, including the use of complexity theory and ecological systems theory in research on successful school leadership, as they lead and manage the complex interactions within and between micro, meso, macro, exon and chrono level systems (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). Drawing on 20 years of extant empirical research findings as well as complexity theory and ecological systems theory, we present an analytical framework that informs data collection and analysis. Further, the paper explains the use of a comparative design, a multi-perspective, multi-level approach in conducting research that enables multiple causalities, multiple perspectives, and multiple effects to be charted. The paper concludes with implications of the ISSPP for the educational leadership field.

Biesta, G. (2015). What is Education For? On Good Education, Teacher Judgement, and Educational Professionalism. European Journal of Education, 50 (1), 75-87. Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development: Experiments by nature and design. Harvard university press.

This symposium focuses on how school leaders handle values and ethics concerning policy. Values, valuation processes, and leadership in educational administration with a particular emphasis on the notion of community and professionalism are the bases for researchers active at the Consortium for the Study of Leadership and Ethics in Education (CSLEE) which was established as a University Council for Educational Administration (UCEA) Program Center in June 1996. More than twenty years later this UCEA program center continues its work and remains devoted to the support, promotion, and dissemination of theory and research on values and leadership. The CSLEE is a consortium of faculty and research associates representing eight international university-based centers and institutes. The papers in this symposium are all written by active members of the CSLEE and the empirical examples come from 4 different countries.

Values have traditionally been considered an important influence on administrative practices. Chester Barnard’s seminal work, The Functions of the Executive, proposes a definition of leadership, dating back to 1938, that highlights the moral dimension of leadership as essential to administration. More recent works by Don Willower (1994, 1999) and Jerry Starratt (2003) have reinforced the relevance of values as influences on administration and promoted active debate on the subject.

A practice-grounded and research-validated reinterpretation is presented of how values and ethics influence administrative practices in schools. The basic proposition is that acquiring administrative sophistication is a function of understanding the influence of personal values on the actions of individuals and the influence of values on organizational and social practices. A values perspective is used to link theory and practice to promote authentic leadership and democracy in schools. Authentic leadership may be thought as a metaphor for professionally effective, ethically sound, and consciously reflective practices in educational administration. This is leadership that is knowledge-based, values informed, and skillfully executed. With these notions in mind, values are formally defined and proposed as an influence on the actions of individuals as well as on administrative practice. The perennial challenges of leadership are discussed together with the special circumstances of our times. This requires the pursuit of personal sophistication, sensitivity to others, and the promotion of reflective professional practice. Examples of findings from recent research that demonstrate the utility and relevance of values and valuation processes as guides to educational leadership are presented.

The challenges between educational systems leadership and democratic ethical practices on various leadership levels and in different leadership positions in the educational system are covered in the four papers to be presented. All educational systems have several governing and leadership levels. Both within and between the levels are intervening spaces that interpret, transmit, and translate policy intentions. Our symposium will focus on how diverse values and ethics are understood and played out depending on the level and country context. We are interested in how relations and communication in the intervening spaces reflect values and ethics and how these are connected to policy and practice in the translation processes. All the papers in the symposium will analyze how values and ethics are understood and handled on different leadership levels. Especially, how diversity in values and ethical issues are understood and handled by school leaders on different levels in the system.

Leadership is more than making decisions and taking responsibility. It is also about facilitating and creating trust, engagement, motivation, and distributing power to others (Arlestig & Johansson, 2016; Shaked & Shechter, 2017). In Sweden, the number of leaders both above and beneath principals grows. This raises questions on how leaders interact and share their mission and responsibility. How are values, power, and interpretation of policy interacted and communicated between leaders? An important aspect of the governing chain is to contribute to how policy is understood, implemented, and challenged. In the rational model of the democratic governing chain, intervening spaces at all levels are neglected to the policy process. The meeting and forums between leaders on various hierarchical levels can be seen as intervening spaces where interpretations and negotiations take place. Places where ideology and rationality meet individual actors and various school contexts and organizations. Our research question is: How are democratic policy ideas visible in the intervening spaces of a governing chain in public schools? The study took place in two municipalities representing the 25 most populated cities in Sweden. The data is based on interviews with 66 informants with leadership roles on the district level and two schools in each municipality (Grimm, Norqvist & Roos, 2021). The interviews were semi-structured asking about relations, trust, responsibility, and assessment. All interviews were recorded and transcribed. The empirical data shows that even if leaders have continuous meetings there is various understanding of what is seen as important and good quality. There is also various intention and priorities depending on if the leader works on the district level as a principal or teacher. The communication between levels hides some of the problems if there is a risk to lose control. Instead, the language is used to encourage and show that there is continuous work towards higher academic student results. The findings indicate that intervening spaces and policy drift are vital to support, control, and use professional competence in the process to transfer political ideas to classroom practice. (Johansson & Ärlestig 2022a; 2022b).

Ärlestig, H., Day, C., & Johansson, O. (2016). A decade of research on school principals: cases from 24 countries. Dordrecht: Springer. Grimm, F., Norqvist, L., & Roos, K. (2021). Exploring visual method in the field of educational leadership: Co-creating understandings of educational leadership and authority in school organisations. Educational Management, Administration & Leadership, 174114322110307–. https://doi.org/10.1177/17411432211030747 Johansson, O. & Ärlestig, H. (2022a). Democratic governing ideals and the power of intervening spaces as prerequisite for student learning. Journal of Educational Administration, 60(3), 340–353. https://doi.org/10.1108/JEA-04-2021-0079 Johansson, O., Ärlestig, H. (2022b). Policy implementations in schools: the chain of command and its intervening spaces. In A. Nir (ed.) School leadership in the 21th century: challenges and strategies. (pp. 247–276). NY: Nova. Shaked, H., & Schechter, C. (2017). Systems thinking for school leaders: Holistic leadership for excellence in education. Cham.: Springer.

Educational leadership in the US context has increasingly focused on how communities engage each other, and how leaders navigate and lead diverse communities in just and equitable ways. This paper draws on research from three geographically distinct regions within the US, highlighting insights drawn from these cases situated in different levels of the US educational system. Using communicative intelligence (citation) as an organizing concept, the authors discuss cases involving educational leaders, university faculty and immigrant elementary school parents to illustrate how ethics and values evident in the actions of participants in each situation, amid different and overlapping crises, inform the development of a framework for leading within crisis situations combining relational literacies outlined by the five capabilities and four abilities of communicative intelligence (Zoller, Lahera, & Normore, 2015) with evidence of leadership practices and values characterized by compassion, trust and emotional integrity (Solomon, 2005). The three cases include a) a US West Coast university’s PK-12 school leadership preparation program focused on leadership dispositions, behaviors, knowledge and skills that honor social justice, equity, and individual culture while providing a space to foster personal growth, agency and leadership capacity of aspiring leaders for community/education transformation; b) a university educational preparation community in an urban setting on the US East Coast, in which participants navigated the various issues surrounding the COVID19 lockdown; and c) an immigrant parent organization, affiliated with a midwestern urban elementary school, whose aim it was to advocate for themselves, their families and their school-age children amid anti-immigrant policies and climate. By drawing on components of communicative intelligence, the authors identify how leaders in each context, contending with various threats and crises, engage with each other and their constituents (e.g. students, teachers, parents, peers) in ways that privilege humanizing principles of compassion, trust and emotional integrity, while navigating changing and sometimes threatening policies. As such, the authors develop a framework for leadership praxis that cultivates cohesive and educative communities in diverse contexts.

Solomon, R. C. (2005). Emotional leadership, emotional integrity. In The quest for moral leaders. Edward Elgar Publishing. Zoller, K., Lahera, A., Normore, A. (2015). It ’s not just what you say. Journal of Staff Development. 36(5), 34-38.

This paper reports the tensions between school principals’ values and interpreting and implementing new policy and rules during the pandemic in Victoria, Australia. Our research on successful school leadership has demonstrated the importance of values in shaping principal leadership (Day & Leithwood, 2007; Mulford, 2007). Successful leadership have a range of values that include basic values (respect for others and valuing others); general moral values (empathy, social justice, equity); professional values (personal responsibility, assumptions about student learning); and social and political values (all members of the school community need to be supported) (David et al. 2006) We all have values, but successful leaders can articulate them to their school community and demonstrate them through their behaviour and actions. To be authentic leaders, principals must show their values and behaviour are aligned. The pandemic created a new environment where technological, social, economic, and political forces combined to create new challenges for principal values. The impact of the pandemic in Australia was highly variable. Some states and territories were relatively unaffected while other states suffered significant disruption. In Melbourne, Victoria, the whole community were put under severe restrictions on movement and social interaction (Duckett, Stobart & Hunter, 2021; Macreadie, 2022). for long periods stretching over two years. Different authorities reacted by introducing new rules and policies that changed regularly. Unfortunately, authorities in each state of Australia developed their own rules, for example, closing state borders and restricting the movement of people. The Commonwealth Government also introduced new policies and rules that were often in conflict with state governments. In schools there were often inconsistencies of rules between government and non-government schools, and between school systems. Schools were closed and reopened depending in recommendations of different authorities. Principals became the main actors in interpreting the rules and guiding their students, teachers, and the broader school community through a new rules-based regime which was often in conflict with their values. The paper reports the tensions between values and implementation of rules more detail with numerous examples collected from interviews with principals.

Duckett, S., Stobart, A., and Hunter, J. 2021. What should be in Victoria’s school reopening plan. The Age, September 15, 2021 Macreadie, I. 2022. Reflections from Melbourne, the world’s most locked down city, through the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond Microbiology Australia 43(1), 3-4, doi.org/10.1071/MA22002 Day, C. Leithwood, K. (2007). (Eds.), Successful Principal Leadership in Times of Change. An International Perspective. Studies in Educational Leadership Volume 5, Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. Gurr, D., Drysdale., & Mulford, B. (2005). Successful principal leadership: Australian case studies, Journal of Educational Administration, 43(6), 539-551. Mulford, W. R. (2007). Overview of research on Australian Educational Leadership 2001-2005 Australian Council of Educational Leaders (ACEL), Winmalee, N.S.W.: ACEL. Mulford, B., & Silins, H. (2009). Revised models & conceptualisation of successful school principalship in Tasmania. In B. Mulford, & B. Edmunds (2009). Successful school principalship in Tasmania. Launceston, Tasmania: Faculty of Education, University of Tasmania. Moos, L., Johansson, O., Day, C. (2011). (Eds.), How School Principals Sustain Success over Time. International Perspectives. Studies in Educational Leadership Series 14. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. David G., Drysdale. L & Mulford, B. (2006) Models of successful principal leadership, School Leadership & Management, 26:4, 371-395, DOI: 10.1080/13632430600886921

What happens when an organization’s “fairness technologies” fail? When no matter the structures, policies, and procedures instituted, organizational fair play is undermined and the status quo reproduced? When management co-opts these structures and policies to maintain uneven relationships with employees? When management foments and exploits employee angst and insecurity to frustrate the collective pursuit of conditions conducive to well-being. This paper draws on experiences of scholar-administrators preparing educational leaders to “manage”—to facilitate work through the adoption and implementation of organizational policies and procedures, norms and practices—in an educational field re-formed through neoliberal policies and the politics of austerity. Through our programs, we seek to engender knowledge, skills, and dispositions allowing aspiring leaders to navigate pressures created by the “coercive laws of competition” (Marx, 1976) in ways that allow for individual and collective thriving. In our focus on management-employee relations, we incorporate insights from Capital brought forward in recent work by Lyng (1990; 2004; 2014), Sjoberg (1989; 1998; 2004), Mattei (2022), Chibber (2022; 2022) which offer insights into conditions of austerity and precarity, alienation and resignation, compliance and control. Centering material accounts and informed by insights from the cultural turn, these scholars enrich our understanding of how the politics of austerity impinge on social relations and the interplay of class, race, gender, etc. The academic literature on “edgework” is often referenced to Stephen Lyng’s (1990) theorization of individual risk-taking in response to experiences of alienation in late capitalism. Here, we incorporate Sjoberg’s formulation of “intellectual edgework” to consider corporate risk-shifting to individuals. We discuss “edgework as praxis” to: 1) Understand how conditions of precarity and austerity contribute to employee alienation and resignation expressed in workplace aggression, “quiet quitting,” “quiet firing”, etc. 2) Consider the possibilities and limits of managerial responses through the adoption and implementation of organizational policies and procedures, norms and practices. 3) Reconsider leadership as strategic engagement within intensely contradictory spaces that demand radical empathy. Edgework praxis is highlighted in the interrogation of fairness technologies encountered through our work with refugee communities in the U.S., program development in Uganda; and as administrators in a community-engaged urban university. We reflect on implications for ethical leadership and the preparation of ethical leaders within the academy, primary and secondary schools, and organizations generally. In this way, we seek to prepare the sort of ethical managers we would like to work for and hope to be.

Chibber, V. (2022). The class matrix: Social theory after the cultural turn. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Chibber, V. (2022). Confronting capitalism: How the world works and how to change it. New York, NY: Verso. Lyng, S. (1990). Edgework: A social psychological anlaysis of voluntary risk taking. American Journal of Sociology, 95(4), 851-886. Lyng, S. (2004). Edgework: The sociology of risk-taking. New York, NY: Routledge. Lyng, S. (2014). Action and edgework: Risk taking and reflexivity in late modernity. European Journal of Social Theory, 17(4), 443-460. Marx, K. (1976). Capital: A critique of political economy. New York, NY: Penguin. Mattei, C. (2022). The capital order: How economists invented austerity and paved the way to fascism. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Sjoberg, G. (1989). Notes on the life of a tortured optimist. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 25(4), 471-485. Sjoberg, G. (1998). Democracy, science, and institutionalized dissent: Toward a social justification for academic tenure. Sociological Perspectives, 41(4), 697-721. Sjoberg, G. (2004). Intellectual risk taking, organizations, and academic freedom and tenure. In S. Lyng (ed.), Edgework: The sociology of risk-taking. New York, NY: Routledge.

Internationally, education has become more and more interconnected. Global reform movements, powerful supranational bodies, and comparative assessments have brought national education systems closer together in one sense. Many individual countries are faced with increasing influences and pressures emanating from external sources in what can now often seem to be a borderless Western education space (McNamara et al. 2022) and this has many implications for leadership and policy. However, it is commonly acknowledged that global agendas, processes, and drivers do not affect national education systems in fixed and linear ways (Savage and O’Connor 2015), and there is growing awareness in some quarters of the importance of context in both leadership (Clarke and O’Donoghue 2017) and policy (Braun et al. 2011; Ball et al. 2012).

While there will be similarities between different countries, certain leadership and policy issues can be very different across countries in terms of how they are embraced, enacted, and experienced by practitioners, as well as how they are explored by researchers. In this session, a range of perspectives will be offered on the lessons a group of researchers have learned from researching leadership and policy in different countries: Australia, England, and Ireland.

This symposium is being held by the Critical Education Leadership and Policy (CELP) research group from the Manchester Institute of Education, University of Manchester. As a research group, CELP undertakes policy scholarship that explores education leadership as a site where policy is enacted, power relations exerted, and professional identities and practices are suggested and inhibited. Researchers in CELP use and develop a wide range of methods, social theories and conceptual frameworks, and a critical approach that foregrounds the relationship between the wider context and school leaders’ practices and identities. This context includes the policy, ideological, historical, economic, political and cultural.

A particular strength of the CELP group is that it comprises scholars from different countries and with experiences of working and researching in different countries. As part of this symposium four of CELP’s researchers reflect and share the lessons they have learned from researching education policy and leadership in these different jurisdictions. From this range of perspectives on researching leadership and policy, there will be some commonalities, convergences, and complements, but there will also be more distinctive cases. All of these perspectives, it is envisaged, can help other leadership and policy researchers to follow new lines of thought as well as posing ‘new questions and new problems for leadership and policy researchers’ (Ball 2011, 52).

Educational leadership as a field has previously been critiqued for a lack of diversity in topics of focus (Lumby & Moorosi, 2022), theory (McGinity et al., 2022), and method (Thomson, 2017). We respond to the ECER2023 call for papers by recognising the importance of field histories and research foundations, while centring a future of research that ‘benefits society’ and the wider education profession. In this symposium, we consider what can be learnt from our experiences of researching in different contexts, in an effort to move forward toward a field that recognises the unique and shared contextual features. The papers in this symposium draw upon our research in the field of educational leadership to ask important questions about what it means to “do research that benefits society” and how the field of educational leadership might move towards more diverse approaches to our work.

This paper’s national perspective comes from Ireland, a small country on the periphery of Europe. Education is widely acknowledged as being highly valued in Irish society (Drudy and Lynch 1993; Harford 2010; Dolan 2012; Quinn 2012). The education system is a high-performing one and like many education systems around the world it is now closely aligned with the economy and viewed competitively and as a way of attracting foreign direct investment (McNamara et al. 2022). A notable feature of the Irish school system is the high-level of involvement of the Catholic Church. The paper offers the perspective of an Irish researcher as part of a reflection on the lessons they have learned from their time researching education policy and leadership in Ireland.The author has researched a broad range of policy and leadership areas in Ireland and will share four key lessons learned from doing this work: it is important to pay close attention to context when doing research in education; it is possible that some interviewees are too interview ready; it can be very valuable treating researcher subjectivity as a key asset in your research; and you are not always listened to—being critical sometimes means being ignored. Although these lessons have been learned by the researcher in Ireland, their relevance and usefulness are not confined to this country. It is envisaged that these lessons will resonate with, bring reassurance to, and be of value to many others beyond Ireland.

Dolan, A. M. (2012). Reforming teacher education in the context of lifelong learning: the case of the BEd degree programme in Ireland. European Journal of Teacher Education, 35(4), 463-479. Drudy, S., and Lynch, K.(1993). Schools and Society in Ireland. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan Ltd. Harford, J. (2010). Teacher education policy in Ireland and the challenges of the twenty‐first century. European Journal of Teacher Education, 33(4), 349-360. McNamara, G., Skerritt, C., O’Hara, J., O’Brien, S., & Brown, M. (2022). For improvement, accountability, or the economy? Reflecting on the purpose (s) of school self-evaluation in Ireland. Journal of Educational Administration and History, 54(2), 158-173. Quinn, R. (2012). The future development of education in Ireland. Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, 101(402), 123-138.

This paper brings perspectives from Australia, drawing on experiences of researching educational leadership and policy from a critical perspective. Australia has been described as being ‘tangential’ to Europe, the UK, and the US as a site of knowledge production (Fahey & Kenway, 2010), and as being on the ‘semi-periphery’ of academia (Luczaj & Holy-Lucasz, 2022). As a result, Australian research has tended to bring ideas from outside. There is a significant presence of European theorists in Australian critical education research with, for example, a long history of Australian sociologists drawing on European and North American writing as part of their work (Connell, 2015). To provide important context for this paper, Australian educational leadership research is largely represented in two key paradigms, described by Niesche and Gowlett (2019) as mainstream and critical. Broadly speaking, mainstream leadership research tends to focus on ‘what works’ in educational leadership and efforts towards improving schools, whereas critical research tends to focus on questions of equity, social justice, and power. Niesche and Gowlett (2019) note the importance of critical perspectives in the current political and educational climate, which prizes solutions to the complex challenges facing schools and communities. The diverging approaches to research results in a real risk of knowledge being generated in silos, a notion previously explored by McGinity et al. (2022). More specifically, educational leadership as a field has faced critiques of the ways research has reproduced similar questions over time. In response to the ECER2023 focus on the value of diversity in education and educational research, this paper explores possibilities for a more diverse approach towards researching educational leaders. To do so, the paper draws upon the author’s experiences of undertaking educational leadership research in Australia. It responds to calls for rethinking and diversifying the dominant approaches in the field in relation to three key areas: theory (McGinity et al., 2022), methods (Thomson, 2017), and topics of focus (Lumby & Moorosi, 2022). To explore these areas, the paper draws upon examples of research that has explored women’s experiences of leadership; made use of different metaphors to understand leaders’ identities and practices; and has communicated research findings in diverse methods. Through analysing these wider projects and research practices, the paper argues for a diversification of research approaches, topics, and methods in order to ask different questions, hear different stories and perspectives from participants, and undertake research that benefits society while moving the field forward.

Connell, R. (2015). Setting sail: The making of sociology in Australia, 1955–75. Journal of Sociology, 51(2), 354–369. https://doi.org/10.1177/1440783314532174 Fahey, J., & Kenway, J. (2010). Thinking in a ‘worldly’ way: Mobility, knowledge, power and geography. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 31(5), 627–640. https://doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2010.516943 Luczaj, K., & Holy-Luczaj, M. (2022). International academics in the peripheries. A qualitative meta-analysis across fifteen countries. International Studies in Sociology of Education, 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1080/09620214.2021.2023322 McGinity, R., Heffernan, A., & Courtney, S. J. (2022). Mapping trends in educational-leadership research: A longitudinal examination of knowledge production, approaches and locations. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 50(2), 217-232. Niesche, R. & Gowlett, C. (2019). Critical perspectives in educational leadership: a new ‘theory turn’? In Niesche, R. & Gowlett, C. (2019). Social, Critical and Political Theories for Educational Leadership, 17-34. Singapore: Springer. Thomson, P. (2017). A little more madness in our methods? A snapshot of how the educational leadership, management and administration field conducts research. Journal of Educational Administration and History, 49(3), 215-230.

Educational-leadership research in England, as across the English-speaking world, arguably features insufficient methodological diversity (McGinity, Heffernan, & Courtney, 2022; Thomson, 2017). It tends to be epistemologically aligned with a functionalist, instrumental construction of leading (Gunter, 2016), and to investigate this construct through a positivist lens that privileges quantitative data (Thomson, 2017). Importantly, policymakers and practitioners draw upon such research to enact a ‘what-works’ agenda in educational leadership. For example, the UK government has renewed its funding commitment to the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF, 2022). The EEF is intended to be a “one-stop shop” regarding research evidence in education and aims explicitly to identify and disseminate “what works”. A recent example regarding leadership guidance concerns a systematic review of the characteristics of effective teacher professional development (Sims et al., 2021), where the methodological approach of a systematic review; the identification of characteristics (or traits) and the privileging of effectiveness all indicate a functionalist framing. This approach reproduces the conceptual collocation of educational leadership with an underpinning managerialist, performative and privatising discourse that de-contextualises and ignores questions of structural inequality and differential agency. England, I argue, constitutes an instantiation of the possible, since the discursive conditions that produced it are Europe-wide (Gunter, Grimaldi, Hall, & Serpieri, 2016). In response, I aim in this presentation to elucidate a worked methodological repudiation to functionalism from a recent research project: “Multi-academisation and its leadership”, which I offer to the field as a ‘lesson learned’ and so, an intellectual resource. I employ a novel methodology which I argue illuminates more profoundly than through functionalism the sociological meaning of “being” and “doing” educational leadership in a marketised English context. Specifically, I describe and reflect upon my recent experiences of rendering my interpretation of participants’ experiences of multi-academisation as Brechtian-inspired scripted drama (Courtney & McGinity, 2021). This enabled my co-author and me to be more literal through being more figurative, by transforming our charismatic, almost messianic participant leader explicitly into a Jesus-like character in our scripted analysis and thereby negating the need to explain his practice through a constructed lens of messianic leadership. This approach enables new interpretations of what constitutes valid forms of analysis, and how the role of imagination in qualitative research might be made more explicit and methodologically raised in status. It exemplifies an alternative methodological approach that better encompasses how social actors may be understood, compared to measurable, quantitative data regarding inputs and outputs.

Courtney, S. J., & McGinity, R. (2021). Turning Water into Wine: Scripting Multi-Academisation through Messianic Educational Leadership. In D. Mifsud (Ed.), Narratives of Educational Leadership: Representing Research via Creative Analytic Practices. Cham, Switzerland: Springer. Education Endowment Foundation. (2022). New: Government confirms long-term funding for EEF. Retrieved from https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/news/new-government-confirms-long-term-funding-for-eef Gunter, H. M. (2016). An intellectual history of school leadership practice and research. London/New York: Bloomsbury. Gunter, H. M., Grimaldi, E., Hall, D., & Serpieri, R. (2016). New Public Management and the Reform of Education: European lessons for policy and practice. (H. M. Gunter, E. Grimaldi, D. Hall, & R. Serpieri, Eds.). London: Routledge. McGinity, R., Heffernan, A., & Courtney, S. J. (2022). Mapping trends in educational-leadership research: A longitudinal examination of knowledge production, approaches and locations. Educational Management Administration and Leadership, 50(2), 217–232. Sims, S., Fletcher-Wood, H., O’Mara-Eves, A., Cottingham, S., Stansfield, C., Van Herwegen, J., & Anders, J. (2021). What are the Characteristics of Effective Teacher Professional Development? A Systematic Review & Meta-analysis. London. Retrieved from https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/education-evidence/evidence-reviews/teacher-professional-development-characteristics Thomson, P. (2017). A little more madness in our methods? A snapshot of how the educational leadership, management and administration field conducts research. Journal of Educational Administration and History, 49(3), 215–230.

Distributed leadership has – in a relatively short time – become a popular area of research but also an instrument of leadership development, with some scholars even attributing it a “taken-for-granted status” (Lumby, 2016, p. 161) and others calling it “one of the most influential and well-discussed ideas to emerge in the field of educational leadership” (Harris et al., 2022, p. 438). Since Spillane et al (2001) popularized a shift of perspective towards focusing on leadership as a practice and encouraged the study of interactions (taking into account leaders, followers and the situation) instead of singular leaders, hundreds of thousands if not over a million scholarly works have been published on this topic in the field of educational research (Mifsud, 2023, p. 5).

Yet, despite this enormous amount of publications, there are many theoretical and empirical challenges and “blank spaces”. For example, Tian et al. (2016) in their review found that a commonly accepted definition or conceptualization of distributed leadership could not be identified. More than a decade ago, Crawford (2012) criticized that scholars and practitioners had not sufficiently explored questions of identity and power in the context of distributed leadership; a critique that still seems to apply. The impact and pathways of impact of distributed leadership practices on various inner school factors such as teaching quality or student achievement have so far – at least compared to research on instructional leadership – not quite been mapped out. For Harris et al. (2022), “the black box of distributed leadership practice remains only partially open” (p. 452). Furthermore, the influence of various cultural contexts has not yet been fully explored. Some of the questions prevalent in this context are: what are commonalities and differences in the conceptualization of distributed leadership and in the cultural practices of it across several cultures? What do we know about the cultural and structural fit of distributed leadership in various contexts (for example in societies with a stronger emphasis on low hierarchies vs. a stronger emphasis on marked hierarchies)?

This symposium will try to explore the issues mentioned above. Contributions from Europe, the US and Australia will be used as focal lenses to study different conceptualizations of distributed leadership. Each contribution will present empirical insights into practices and effects of distributed leadership with some additionally presenting insights into methodological approaches and challenges of researching distributed leadership. The selection of countries will enable comparisons focusing on similarities as well as on contrasts. For example, Ireland and Switzerland are comparable in terms of rather strong school boards, while the US and Australia have rather pronounced accountability systems, a stark contrast to Switzerland’s low-accountability approach. Each country also brings unique cultural and school system features like the strong emphasis on direct democracy (for example articulated in lay authorities) or the commitment to standardized testing (US).

The symposium will feature four presentations. In each presentation, the underlying understanding of distributed leadership as a perspective and practice will first be laid out followed by a short overview of the cultural and systemic background before delving into the respective study and results. A discussant will offer a critique of the contributions, but more importantly connect them to the wider discourses, criticisms and “blank spaces” previously mentioned. The discussant has an Irish and US background and will offer commentary from a perspective that includes European as well as (broader) international elements.

In the wake of changing steering mechanisms in education and public administration around the turn of the millennium, most cantons in Switzerland introduced formal school leaders (Hangartner & Svaton, 2013). Despite the empirically supported relevance of school leadership and its distribution in the context of the organization and development of schools (Ärlestig et al., 2016), there is only little empirical evidence in Switzerland on how leadership is exercised and distributed in practice. Research on school leadership in Switzerland tends to be regionally limited and predominantly focusing on the position of formal leaders, although findings imply the importance of school staff beside the formal leaders for shaping and developing schools (Harris & DeFlaminis, 2016; Hallinger & Heck, 2009; Spillane et al., 2004). These research gaps are what this contribution aims to address: In a cross-cantonal research project, investigating school leadership practice as a process of interaction in mutual influence across actors. Not only the leadership practices of formal school leaders but also teachers’ involvement and participation in the management and development of schools as well as the relationships between stakeholders are focal point of the study. In a first explorative phase, two schools each in the canton of Argovia and in the canton of Vaud were examined using shadowing-type observations over the period of several weeks, during which school leaders and meetings between teachers were observed. In addition, document analyses and interviews with principals and teachers were conducted. The analysis of the data is carried out in an iterative procedure according to the grounded theory principles (Corbin & Strauss, 2015), allowing a gradual construction of theories. In the present time, investigations are being carried out in additional schools in both cantons. Over the duration of the study, 12 schools are to be investigated. Preliminary findings suggest that factors such as school size, organizational structure, and the prevailing school culture may influence teachers' assumptions of responsibility for leadership-related tasks. Differences in the perception of leadership and its distribution also seem to exist due to previous professional experiences of school leaders and teachers, partly due to their experiences prior to the introduction of principals. Relationships and levels of trust between formal leaders and the teaching staff, as well as between individuals appear to play a significant role in shaping leadership processes and the involvement of stakeholders across the schools. Some markers of leadership distribution can be identified but appear to be contextually bound.

Ärlestig, H., Day, C., & Johansson, O. (Eds.). (2016). A Decade of Research on School Principals. Springer International Publishing. Corbin, J. M., & Strauss, A. (2015). Basics of qualitative research. Techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory (4.). Sage. Hallinger, P., & Heck, R. H. (2009). Distributed Leadership in Schools: What Makes a Difference? In A. Harris (Ed.), Distributed Leadership: Different Perspectives (Vol. 7, pp. 47–80). Springer Netherlands. Hangartner, J., & Svaton, C. J. (2013). From autonomy to quality management: NPM impacts on school governance in Switzerland. Journal of Educational Administration and History, 45(4), 354–369. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220620.2013.822352 Harris, A., & DeFlaminis, J. (2016). Distributed leadership in practice: Evidence, misconceptions and possibilities. Management in Education, 30(4), 141–146. https://doi.org/10.1177/0892020616656734 Spillane, J. P., Halverson, R., & Diamond, J. B. (2004). Towards a theory of leadership practice: A distributed perspective. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 36(1), 3. https://doi.org/10.1080/0022027032000106726

Over the last several decades, the educational system in the United States has undergone significant reforms leading to new forms of educational leadership that take a distributed approach to school improvement. In the context of shifting student demographics, the accountability movement, and the recent upheaval caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, educational leaders have been at the center of multiple initiatives to address the evolving needs of youth (Mehta, 2013; McLeod and Dulsky, 2020). These initiatives have distributed leadership across roles, institutions and levels of the school system in new, innovative ways. In this contribution, we focus on one such initiative, the Chelsea Children’s Cabinet, a cross-sector partnership among institutional and organizational leaders within one small city collaborating to support youth through coordinated actions (Ed Redesign, 2019). Formed in the Spring of 2021 to address issues related to the pandemic, the Cabinet includes local leaders from education, government, law enforcement, mental health and community-based organizations, along with our Boston College research team. We build on prior research about cross-sector partnerships. In recent years, an array of cross-sector initiatives have brought leaders together to address the community conditions that affect youth (Impellizeri and Lee, 2021; Miller et al., 2017). While designs vary, these initiatives share the aim to develop collective, context-specific solutions to community-level concerns (Boyer et al., 2020). We draw on distributed leadership theory as we consider the dynamic interactions among institutional and organizational leaders on the Cabinet. According to this framework, “leadership practice is constituted in the interaction of leaders and their social and material situations. (Spillane et al., 2001, p. 27). As such, leadership occurs across individuals, interactions and the artifacts that mediate those interactions. We use qualitative case study methods to examine distributed leadership within the Cabinet (Yin, 2009). Data sources include 25 semi-structured interviews conducted with cabinet members in the spring of 2021, fieldnotes taken during planning and cabinet meetings as well as community events led by the Children’s Cabinet throughout the 2021-2022 school year. Findings demonstrate how leadership is distributed across sectors based on privileged positioning by sector as well as existing relationships. Our analysis shows how leaders draw on distinct institutional logics to justify actions and rely on various tools and artifacts to structure their interactions. We end with theoretical implications for the distributed leadership framework as well as implications for leadership practice given the need for cross-sector coordination in an increasingly complex education landscape.

Boyer, A.M. et al. (2020). Predicting Community Adoption of Collective Impact in the United States: A National Scan. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 0899764020964583. https://doi.org/10.1177/0899764020964583 Ed Redesign. (2019). Children’s Cabinet Toolkit. https://edredesign.org/files/childrens_cabinet_toolkit_a_roadmap_for_getting_started.pdf Horsford, S. D., & Sampson, C. (2014). Promise neighborhoods: The promise and politics of community capacity building as urban school reform. Urban Education, 49(8), 955-991. Impellizeri, W., & Lee, V. J. (2021). A Comparison of IHEs and Non-IHEs as Anchor Institutions and Lead Agents of Promise Neighborhoods Projects. Education and Urban Society, 00131245211049736. https://doi.org/10.1177/00131245211049736 McLeod, S., & Dulsky, S. (2021). Resilience, reorientation, and reinvention: School leadership during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. In Frontiers in Education (p. 70). Frontiers. Mehta, J. (2013), “How Paradigms Create Politics The Transformation of American Educational Policy, 1980–2001”. American Educational Research Journal. 50(2), 285-324. Miller, P. M., Scanlan, M. K., & Phillippo, K. (2017). Rural Cross-Sector Collaboration: A Social Frontier Analysis. American Educational Research Journal, 54(1_suppl), 193S-215S. https://doi.org/10.3102/0002831216665188 Spillane, J. P., Halverson, R., & Diamond, J. B. (2001). Investigating school leadership practice: A distributed perspective. Educational researcher, 30(3), 23-28. Yin, R. K. (2009). Case study research: Design and methods (Vol. 5). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Like in most educational jurisdictions around the world, successful Australian principals have embraced the notion of distributed leadership. Yet its application in practice is highly variable mainly because practitioners have different understandings of the concept. The term ‘distributed leadership’ is associated with concepts such as shared, collaborative, participatory and collective leadership. What is being distributed is still uncertain. For example, is it delegated tasks, shared responsibilities, leadership activities or leadership practices? The purpose of distributed leadership also varied and include alleviating pressures on the school leadership (Harris, 2007), broadening the scope of responsibility and decision making, succession planning ((Gunter and Rayner 2007); building capacity for leadership (Day, 2009), and creating greater involvement and ownership (Hallinger and Heck 2009). While there is confusion among practitioners, researchers are clearer in their conceptualisation of distributed leadership: reciprocal interdependences (Harris, 2009; Spillane, 2006)); a way of thinking about leadership practice (Spillane, 2006); involving the teachers in leadership of the school (Hallinger and Heck, 2009). There also appears to be some consensus that the principals are pivotal in creating the conditions, culture and structure that promotes distributed leadership whether it is seen as a form of work redesign (Gunter, 2008, 2012; Harris, 2009) or different formations or patterns of leadership distribution that emerge that impact on outcomes (Leithwood et al., 2009; Spillane, 2006). This presentation summarises the research from Australia case studies of successful school (International Successful School Principals Project, ISSPP) that show that for successful school principals distributing leadership is multi-faceted, takes on different forms, is implemented for different purposes and different motivations. Context was important in shaping the distributed leadership model. For some principals it is a deliberate intervention to include informal and formal leaders. The main thrust of this proposal is to also share the findings from the case study of one secondary school principal that centres on his experience in three schools over 30 years in successfully developing a distributed leadership model focussed on building leadership capacity. The findings from the case study of the principal were based on extensive interviews with the principal and current and former staff members who have or have had leadership formal positions in the school. This principal deliberately sought to identify talent and build the leadership capacity and capabilities of leaders in order for them to move to higher levels of leadership not only in the school but in the system.

Day, C. 2009. ‘‘Capacity Building Through Layered Leadership: Sustaining the Turnaround.’’ In Distributed School Leadership: Different Perspectives, edited by A. Harris, 121137. London: Springer. Gunter, H., and Rayner, S. 2007. ‘‘Modernizing the School Workforce in England: Challenging Transformation and Leadership?’’ Leadership 3 (1): 4764. doi:10.1177/1742715007073066. Gunter, H. M. 2012. Leadership and the Reform of Education. Bristol: Policy Press. Hallinger, P., and Heck. H.H. 2009. ‘‘Distributed Leadership in Schools: Does System Policy Make a Difference?’’ In Distributed School Leadership: Different Perspectives, edited by A. Harris, 101117. London: Springer. Harris, A. 2009. ‘‘Distributed Leadership: What We Know.’’ In Distributed School Leadership: Different Perspectives, edited by A. Harris, 1121. London: Springer. Harris, A. 2007. Distributed Leadership and School Transformation. Presentation at the 2007 Scottish International Summer School on Leadership. Edinburgh, UK: Scottish Government. Leithwood, K., Mascall, B., and Strauss. T. 2009. ‘‘What We Have Learned and Where We Go From Here.’’ In Distributed Leadership According to the Evidence, edited by K. Leithwood, B. Mascall, and T. Strauss, 269281. London: Routledge. Spillane, J. P. 2006. Distributed Leadership. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Torrance, D.(1913) Distributed leadership: challenging five generally held assumptions, School Leadership and Management, 33(4), 354-372, http://dx.doi.org?10.1080/13632434.2013.813463

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused “undeniable chaos” (Hargreaves and Fullan 2020, 334) in schools. While distributed leadership (DL) was regarded as the most commonly implemented educational leadership model prior to the Covid-19 crisis, its importance has been re-established during the pandemic as it is said to have become the default leadership style through necessity (Harris and Jones 2020). There has been a slow movement towards shared leadership practices in Ireland since the early 2000’s. Similar to many other countries, DL is endorsed in Irish post-primary school policy (Barrett 2018). Due to its current endorsement and the reported necessity of DL during the Covid-19 pandemic, a distinct need to research post-primary school personnel’s interpretations and perceptions of DL implementation was identified. The aims of this study were therefore, to explore Irish post-primary school personnel’s interpretations of DL, and to investigate the perceived prevalence of DL in Irish post-primary schools. To achieve the study focus, a two-part online questionnaire was shared with school teachers, leaders, guidance counsellors and special needs assistants currently working in Irish post-primary schools. This survey comprised an adapted version of the Distributed Leadership Inventory (Hulpia, Devos, and Rosseel 2009) comprising 21 Likert-type statements, as well as a series of open ended questions. Descriptive statistics were used to analyse the Likert-type statements while thematic analysis was used for the open-ended questions. The results of this study suggest that while there are some similarities in participants’ interpretations of DL, there are also divergences relating to who participants believe is involved in distributed practices, what exactly is shared, and how it is shared. Data analysis suggests that participants’ roles in their school, their school type, and number of years experience could be influencing their interpretations of DL. Analysis of data pertaining to the perceived prevalence of DL in Irish post-primary schools resulted in varied degrees of perceived implementation. The importance of school culture, the division of labour, and working relationships were interpreted as core factors influencing DL’s perceived implementation. The Covid-19 pandemic was reported to exacerbate the distribution of leadership practices or lack-thereof depending on the context. This study adds to the emerging body of literature on DL with potential to inform future school policy and practice. Suggestions to further conceptualise the division of labour, and school culture required for a distributed practice are presented as well as the importance of building positive relationships and a need to avoid “tick-the-box” DL.

Barrett, Alphie. 2018. "Leadership and Management in Post-pimary Schools." In, edited by Department of Education and Skills, 1-30. Hargreaves, Andy, and Michael Fullan. 2020. "Professional capital after the pandemic: Revisiting and revising classic understandings of teachers' work." Journal of Professional Capital and Community. Harris, Alma, and Michelle Jones. 2020. "COVID 19–school leadership in disruptive times." School Leadership & Management 40 (4):243-7. Hulpia, Hester, Geert Devos, and Yves Rosseel. 2009. "Development and validation of scores on the distributed leadership inventory." Educational and Psychological Measurement 69 (6):1013-34.

All networks hold a meeting during ECER. All interested are welcome.

Nowadays, both society and school organizations have become extensively digitized (Håkansson Lindqvist & Pettersson, 2019). Even if the use of technology in education has been prevalent since 1989 (U.S. Department of Education, 1996), the unexpected health crisis of COVID-19 led to a further significant surge in the usage of technology and digitalization in all school organizations across the globe. Particularly, the COVID-19 health crisis affected school organizations worldwide and changed the overall educational landscape, with nearly 1.6 billion students in more than 200 countries (Pokhler & Chhetri, 2021; UNESCO, 2020), and disrupted the way in which these students are educated. More precisely, school organizations were requested to adjust their educational materials and teaching methodologies, by transforming their teaching practice into a distance or online environment, in order to address the demands of this unknown situation and period of uncertainty. In this particular frame of digital educational development, school leaders must maintain their leadership dynamic, lead, coordinate, and facilitate their school organizations. Yet, up until now, literature has demonstrated the lack of school leaders’ preparation and leadership on digital education (e.g. Afshari et al., 2012). Since this health crisis brought to the surface the important aspect of digital education, the European Commission/EACEA/Eurydice (2019) in the report "Digital Education at School in Europe" mentioned that countries need to continually review and develop new strategic policies and measures to meet the new demands for high quality digital education. In fact, based on the report, half of the European education systems are currently reforming the curriculum related to digital competence, and only one third of the education systems have current measures for promoting school leaders’ roles in this digital transformation. Furthermore, according to a study conducted by Hkansson Lindqvist and Pettersson (2019), school leaders perceive digitalization as a broad and complex concept that encompasses many aspects of organizational management, including technical, pedagogical, administrative, and organizational challenges. Based on the aforementioned, this symposium will report on school leaders’ utilization of digital technologies both in autonomous and less autonomous educational systems (centralized and decentralized education systems) and present the technological challenges arising from this crisis, as well as the obstacles derived from the lack of digital capacity of school leaders. Following the health crisis, Tulowitzki, Gerick, and Eickelmann (2022) emphasized the significant role of school leaders as important drivers of innovation on ICT-related topics, whereas Hkansson, Lindqvist, and Pettersson (2019) argued for the need for school leaders to have a broad and comprehensive digital competency. This conference will thus offer a novel viewpoint on the subjects of school leadership and technology/digitalization by presenting data from Greece, Australia, Cyprus, and the United States.

The global pandemic associated with COVID-19 necessitated a sudden and unprecedented shift from in-person learning environments to online teaching and learning at all levels of education, in countries throughout the world. Public schools in particular, were caught off guard, and educators were faced with hastily assembling a diverse collection of computers and online lessons, many of which were difficult to navigate, or incompatible with the computers they had. The sudden shift to online learning meant that teachers had to acquire or update their skills “on the job” as they were working in these virtual environments. Many students and families, particularly those from low-income and marginalized communities, struggled to access the technology and internet access required to work in their new on-line learning environments. In the years following the onset of the pandemic, much has been learned about how to effectively integrate technology into teaching and learning. Research regarding the availability and use of the technological resources during these years has also highlighted the inequalities that have long existed in schools and society in general. These findings confirm that students, particularly those from low-income and non-English speaking households, had difficulty accessing the technology, navigating instructional programs and obtaining reliable internet connectivity. Now that most schools have resumed face-to-face instruction, educators are reporting a dramatic increase in student discipline problems, including aggressive, anti-social behavior. Many teachers and administrators are leaving the profession, citing these and other problems, such as a lack of support for public education, low pay, and increased concerns about their physical safety and socioemotional well-being. In the years following the onset of COVID, there has been very little exploration of the role of technology with respect to the continuation (or lack thereof) of practices and policies that were found useful during the pandemic. For example, little is known about whether and how technology is still being used to close the learning gaps that persist among different groups of children or to help respond to the growing teacher shortage. Our paper provides preliminary insights into these issues from one of the sites in our study—the state of Texas, in the U.S. The data were collected from personal interviews with 30 teachers and 5 administrators in urban and rural schools districts in the southwest portion of the state. (This is part of an on-going study, and as such, our conference presentation may include data obtained from additional interviews.)

No references

One can assume that what worked well pre-pandemic, at least from an effective leadership perspective, might have also worked during the pandemic. However, during the pandemic crisis the focus of the political discourse on schools and their respective leaders has shifted several times. Having said that, this presentation will offer insights into educational leadership in relation to school principals who play an important role as leaders in this new digital environment, during the global pandemic COVID-19. Based on the five leadership styles of the Pashiardis-Brauckmann Holistic Leadership Framework (Pashiardis, 2014; Brauckmann & Pashiardis, 2011), as the theoretical background of this research study, a successful primary school principal’s actions and practices in leading the school community during times of uncertainty is presented, thus, providing an opportunity to consider lessons to be learnt. In order to reveal how school leadership in Cyprus was enacted during the COVID-19 crisis, the qualitative research paradigm was selected. As mentioned, through the five leadership styles of the Pashiardis – Brauckmann Holistic Leadership Framework which was utilized as the theoretical foundation of this study, a case study of a primary school principal in Cyprus was selected. In particular, a convenience sampling of a successful school principal was selected. The school principal successfully addressed the urgency of the pandemic crisis, referring to the digitalization of the teaching and learning process, together with the obstacles and challenges that occurred during the timeframe of the pandemic crisis. The data collection included: (1) an interview that was conducted with the school principal, (2) an in-depth shadowing was performed and finally (3) an archival research study was conducted. According to the evidence provided, the successful school principal in this particular case study widely utilized three leadership styles from the Pashiardis-Brauckmann Holistic Leadership Framework. Particularly the structuring leadership style, the personnel development style and finally the pedagogical leadership style. More precisely, through her own technological expertise and knowledge this successful school principal promoted this particular leadership styles and further support her school organization.

Pashiardis, P. (2014) (Eds.). Modeling School Leadership Across Europe: In Search of New Frontiers. Dordrecht, Heidelberg, New York, London: Springer. Brauckmann, S. & Pashiardis, P. (2011). A Validation Study of the Leadership Styles of a Holistic Leadership Theoretical Framework. International Journal of Educational Management, 25(1), 11-32.

In Australia, the introduction of digital technology, like most countries in the world over the past decade, has been a significant disruptor to school education. The pandemic accelerated the adoption of technology that few could have predicted. The consequences have been positive and negative. On the positive side technologies such as zoom have provided students with opportunities for personalised learning where learning can take place at any time or place outside the classroom. On the other hand, uneven access to technology and gaps in resourcing have led to greater inequalities. In this presentation the authors of two of the chapters combine to outline the challenges and obstacles faced by some primary and secondary school principals in adopting current and new technologies. The context for this presentation is important because of its influence on principals’ leadership on planning the future of learning. Melbourne, Australia experienced one of the most severe and prolonged lockdowns in the world due the COVID 19. While the focus for the presentation is to explore the more general challenges and obstacle for school leaders, the experience of the pandemic had such a profound impact on schools that this cannot be ignored in setting direction for the ‘new normal’. We draw in the emerging research and on interviews with principals from primary and secondary schools in the government and non-government sectors. We explore the insights and perspectives on how six principals have responded and adopted new digital technology and how they see the challenges ahead. The findings will provide an insight into how they understand what technology can include: the challenge of keeping abreast with the changes; resourcing and the cost of new technology; the use of technology in the classroom and home; teacher knowledge, competency and professional development; keeping students safe online, and issues of equity. We also will comment on the role of technology on the ‘future gap’ – what students are learning now and what and how they will be expected to learn.

No references.

The forced implementation worldwide of online education due to the Covid pandemic has resulted in an unprecedented increase in the use of information technologies in schools and a surfacing of a new form of leadership, digital leadership. Being a digital educational leader requires the ability to use information technology, to understand the dynamics of organizational change, to promote a vision about the role of technology integration and its functions in schools, and to create opportunities for relevant professional growth (e.g. Blau & Presser, 2013). Today’s leaders must be socially and digitally connected through technology and must facilitate a similar engagement by all stakeholders. Although the term “e-leadership” has been around since the early 2000s, the term “digital leadership” has emerged only recently, propelled by emerging opportunities to apply technology while working and leading from remote sites. Although online schooling existed before Covid, it was limited in scope and far from being a mainstream approach (Saultz & Fusarelli, 2017). This condition changed drastically during the pandemic, when most, if not all, schools around the world engaged to varying degrees in virtual and online learning – prompting the emergence of digital forms of leadership. These developments led to questions about optimizing the delivery and assessing the effectiveness of digital leadership in schools. These concerns, in turn, have spawned related studies in many school systems around the globe (Pollock, 2020), especially in jurisdictions that have yet to widely utilize technological means for teaching and learning. One such jurisdiction is Greece. Although the Greek school system has made huge strides in the last decade towards incorporating various echnologies in teaching and learning, school leadership is still being exercised in traditional ways. However, this changed drastically during the Covid lockdown, when whole schools were forced to shift their operations to online, distance and with no previous experience or time for adequate training, Greek school principals suddenly had to become digital leaders. With this phenomenological/hermeneutic study, I look into the lived experiences of a selected number of Greek school principals as they traversed the unfamiliar pathed road to digital leadership. Specifically: a) How do principals make sense of their role as digital leaders? b) How did they experience digital leadership? c) How effective do they believe this form of leadership is for Greek schools? d) What are the facilitators, obstacles, and limitations of digital leadership?

Blau, I. & Presser, O. (2013). e-Leadership of school principals: Increasing school effectiveness by a school data management system. British Journal of Educational Technology, 44 (6): 1000–1011. Pollock K. (2020). School leaders’ work during the COVID-19 pandemic: A two-pronged approach. International Studies in Educational Administration 48(3): 38–44. Saultz. A. and Fusarelli, L.D. (2017). Online schooling: A cautionary tale. Journal of School Choice 11(1): 29–41.

This is the first part of the symposium titled Reframing Leadership and Leading in Education: Diverse Responses from Scholars Across the Field. All the papers presented in this symposium are from the upcoming Elgar Handbook of Leadership in Education, edited by Professor Philip A. Woods, Dr Amanda Roberts, Dr Meng Tian and Dr Howard Youngs (2023).

Past decades have witnessed the rapid development of educational leadership research. Numerous educational leadership approaches and models have been devised or adopted from other fields to guide leadership practices in educational institutions and to inform education policymaking (Bush, 2020; Bush et al., 2019; Heck & Hallinger, 2005). This development has been captured and recorded in a series of educational leadership handbooks (e.g., Davies & West-Burnham, 2003; English, 2011; Stone-Johnson & Wright, 2020; Waite & Bogotch, 2017).

This Elgar Handbook of Leadership in Education aims to offer fresh approaches to understanding and practising leadership in education and to locate these within the context of education development. A total of 34 chapters were commissioned, each of which was refereed before acceptance for publication.

In this symposium, the authors of four chapters will invite the audience to reflect on, problematise and challenge some fossilised concepts used in educational leadership research such as leadership, accountability, autonomy, organisational practice, partnerships, networks, transactional, transformational and transformative leadership. Educational policies and leadership practices in Scotland, New Zealand and England are discussed.

Papers and presentations included in this symposium explore the weighty and profound responsibilities and challenges that leaders in the context of education carry. It does not offer answers which should be absorbed and stored, to be retrieved as needed. Rather, the presenters will bring forth various thinking tools. The presentations comprise a wide range of discussions that raise questions and share responses to wicked problems in education. The presenters set out ideas, provocations, arguments, considered evidence and implications for research, policy and practice. Symposium participants are invited to journey through the particular debates which draw their interest and make them think critically about leadership in education. This includes attending to the presenters’ explicit and implicit conceptualisations and assumptions concerning key concepts such as leadership and education and reflecting on what thoughts and questions this stimulates about one’s own conceptual and theoretical assumptions.

This symposium adopts the presentations, discussion and Q&A format. Chapter authors will first present their works. This is followed by a panel discussion hosted by the discussant. In the last part of the symposium, the audience will have the opportunity to engage in the conversation and ask questions to the presenters.

In recent years, educational leadership has become part of an international lexicon associated with school improvement. Much of the current academic literature and educational policy positions leadership normatively, identifying it as a distinct area of research and study, uncoupled from the concept of management. This stance has become “one of the great unquestioned assumptions of our time” (Eacott, 2013:119). The importance of this distinction has, however, been a matter of debate for many years, with lack of conceptual clarity identified regarding the positioning around leadership, which can create tensions in practice. This is a complex, contested and vague area which exemplifies a confused theoretical and policy rhetoric in action. The conceptual opacity around this is compounded both by conflations of theory and practice, and by various claims of the potential indirect and direct influences that leadership is proposed to have, often made without empirical grounding (Torrance & Humes, 2015). In this paper, the lens of an ongoing Scottish research project, The Future of Headship, is used to explore various facets of that debate. The paper begins with two key questions: whether educational leadership and educational management can be described as separate fields; and whether educational leadership can be described as a separate field from leadership. The paper then highlights both the importance of researchers’ positionality and of their working assumptions around leadership. Some of the tensions in exploring the practice realities of headteachers and other formal leaders in school contexts are discussed - drawing on empirical data - before introducing the potential of the concept of ‘leading’, which combines a focus on the socio-emotional dimensions of leadership with the organising processes of day-to-day practice. Leading comprises social practice, involves risk-taking, embraces complexity and ambiguity (Eacott, 2011), and researching educational leadership involves paradox, dilemma and debate (Close & Raynor, 2010). It is argued in this paper that the downplaying of educational management is not particularly useful in the context of contemporary challenges, particularly when educational leadership is often concerned with conformity to what could be termed a ‘marketised ideology’ (Smythe, 2021). It is also proposed that if educational leadership is to stand distinct from management and from leadership in the public sector more generally, then its specificity to educational practice i.e., the relationship between leadership and learning, needs to be made explicit, understood and strengthened in theory, policy and practice (Branson & Marra, 2022).

Branson, C.M., & Marra, M. (2022). A new theory of organizational ecology, and its implications for educational leadership. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Eacott, S. (2011). Preparing ‘educational’ leaders in managerialist times: An Australian story. Journal of Educational Administration and History, 43(1), 43-59. Eacott, S. (2013). Rethinking ‘leadership’ in education: A research agenda. Journal of Educational Administration and History, 45(2): 113-125. Close, P., & Raynor, A. (2010). Five literatures of organisation: Putting the context back into educational leadership. School Leadership & Management, 30(3), 209-224. Smythe, S. (2021). Foreword. In S.J. Courtney, H.M. Gunter, R. Niesche & T. Trujillo (Eds.), Understanding educational leadership: Critical perspectives and approaches (pp xvii-xx). London: Bloomsbury.

This paper considers the ways in which recent English education policy has positioned autonomy as a concomitant of accountability. Over time the research community has explored, at depth, the nature of educational reforms and their impact on schools and teachers. Though rigorous in their approaches, much research tends to stress the negative consequences of reform on teacher morale, an increasing emphasis on the academic to the disadvantage of other humanistic areas of curriculum, and continuing problems of narrowing the achievement gap experienced by students from socio-economically disadvantaged communities. But the key question remains: how do some school leaders manage to successfully mediate the influences of reform and lead their teachers and pupils to survive and thrive over time, whilst others falter? Following a critical examination of the conceptual relations between accountability, autonomy and leadership, the paper investigates how secondary principals lead their schools to achieve sustainable performance despite policy shifts. The research, upon which the paper is based, has used Weick (1995; 2005) and Spillane’s (2004) cognitive sense-making approach to analyse school leaders’ policy enactment process. Such approach enables us to conceptualise policy enactment in schools as an organisational behaviour which is crafted and shaped by school leaders. How these leaders interpret and make sense, rationally and emotionally, of what a particular policy means to their schools and then decide “whether and how to ignore, adapt, or adopt” this policy locally (Spillane et al., 2002, p. 733) influences not only how the policy is interpreted by their teachers and how effectively it is implemented in the school, but importantly, the extent to which the actions of “enactment” are likely to disrupt, constrain, or advance further improvement of the school. Drawing upon longitudinal interview data from case study schools in England, the paper shows how successful secondary schools—in different socioeconomic contexts and led by principals with similar, strongly held moral purposes and principles of social justice, but with different histories and values—incorporate and use externally generated policies to support their own educational agendas, as they assert their right to apply their own educational values in practice for the improvement of teaching and learning and pupil progress and outcomes. Key in this regard is how principals broaden and deepen their organisational, social, and intellectual capacities for the improvement of quality and standards in teaching and learning, despite rather than because of externally generated reforms.

Spillane, J.P. (2004). Standards deviation: How schools misunderstand education policy. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. Spillane, J., Diamond, J., Burch, P., Hallett, T., Jita, L., & Zoltner, J. (2002). Managing in the middle: school leaders and the enactment of accountability policy. Education Policy, 16 (5), 731–762. Weick, K. (1995). Sensemaking in organizations. Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA. Weick, K.E. (2005). Organizing and the process of sense-making. Organisation Science, 16 (4), 409–421.

Inter-school partnerships and networks have been promoted in many school systems globally in recent years to facilitate: knowledge generation and dissemination; responsiveness to increasingly diverse student and societal needs; and emotional and practical peer support for educational professionals (Révai 2020). One driver of these developments has been the shifts taking place in wider societies and as a result of technological innovations (Castells 2004). This paper adopts Provan and Kenis’ definition of a ‘network’ as involving three or more ‘legally autonomous organizations that work together to achieve not only their own goals but also a collective goal’ (2008: 231). It argues that existing research and policy has prioritised a focus on leadership within individual schools, but that this Transnational Leadership Package (Thomson, Gunter and Blackmore 2021) is insufficient in the context of contemporary societies and school systems. Networks offer the potential for more inclusive and rounded models of educational provision, but this is not a given – networks can equally have a ‘dark’ side (Bidart, Degenne and Grossetti 2020). The paper identifies seven core features of networks that are seen to operate more successfully (Greany and Kamp 2022). It then discusses the implications for educational leadership theory and practice, arguing that two concepts from existing research - distributed and system leadership - provide helpful, although imperfect, tools to conceptualise leadership across inter-school networks. Distributed leadership (Lumby 2018; Gronn, 2016; Harris 2013) allows us to see leadership as a collective, shared endeavour, with all the complexity that comes with a move away from individual, positional roles. System leadership (Harris, Jones, and Hashim 2021) helps to us move beyond the focus on individual schools and to see leadership as focussed on addressing systemic and collective issues and priorities. The paper concludes by outlining three capabilities which appear central to successful network leadership: working productively with tensions and paradox, collective sensemaking, and adopting an ecological approach (Greany and Kamp 2022). Embracing paradox involves a recognition that leaders can respond to system complexities without needing to fully resolve conflicts to the point of nonexistence (O’Reilly and Reed 2011). Sensemaking, first propounded by Karl Weick, reflects how network leaders work to acknowledge ambiguities while also learning, collectively, how best to move forward (Johnson and Kruse 2019). Eco-leadership involves the leader looking ‘both ways: internally at the organizational network and externally at wider ecosystems (social, technology, and nature)’ (Western 2019: 309).

Castells, M. (1996),The Rise of the Network Society, Oxford:Blackwell. Greany, T., and Kamp, A. (2022) Leading Educational Networks: Theory, Policy and Practice. London: Bloomsbury. Gronn, P. (2016) Fit for Purpose no More? Management in Education 30(4) 168–172 Harris, A. (2013),'Distributed Leadership: Friend or Foe?', Educational Management, Administration and Leadership, 41:545–54. Harris, A., Jones, M. and Hashim, N. (2021),'System Leaders and System Leadership: Exploring the Contemporary Evidence Base', School Leadership & Management, DOI: 10.1080/13632434.2021.1889492. Johnson, B. and Kruse, S. (2019), Educational Leadership, Organizational Learning and the Ideas of Karl Weick: Perspectives on Theory and Practice, London: Routledge. Lumby, J. (2018),'Distributed Leadership and Bureaucracy', Educational Management Administration and Leadership, 47:5–19. Provan, K., and Kenis, P. (2008),’Modes of Network Governance: Structure, Management, and Effectiveness’, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 18 (2):229–52. Révai, N. (2020), What Difference do Networks Make to Teachers’ Knowledge? Literature Review and Case Descriptions, Education Working Paper 215, Paris: OECD. Thomson, P., Gunter, H. and Blackmore, J. (2021), ‘Series Editor Introduction’, in P. Landri, Educational Leadership, Management, and Administration Through Actor-Network Theory, ix–xv, London: Routledge. Western, S. (2019), Leadership. A Critical Text, 3rd edn, London: Sage Publications.

Although the term “transforming leadership” has not gained universal currency, its use, by James McGregor Burns in his volumes Leadership (1978) and Transforming Leadership (2003) has given rise to two major approaches to leadership. Sometimes conceived as synonyms, in contrast to transactional leadership, transformational and transformative leadership have emerged as two distinct theories, with different ontologies, epistemologies, and methodologies. An examination of each theory, its development, goals, assumptions and predominant practices permits an understanding of the progression to transformative leadership. Awareness of various theoretical approaches and their differences has begun to permeate educational leadership research. Blackmore (2011) argued that “transformational leadership has been framed narrowly within the school effectiveness-improvement paradigms” while “in contrast, transformative leadership discourses derive from a critical tradition, promoting emancipatory pedagogies that arise from political and social movements, feminist perspectives, and critical pedagogy” (p. 21). Starratt (2011) posited that “the distinction between transformational and transformative leadership is an important one, not only for the field of education, but also for leadership theory and research in other fields” (p. 131). Van Oord (2013) summed up the situation, stating of transformative leadership that the term is not new; for many years the concepts of transformational and transformative leadership were used as synonyms. Recognizing this conceptual murkiness, scholars such as Shields (2010, 2012) have in recent years successfully endeavored to define and theorize transformative leadership as distinctively separate from the transformational approach. Transformative leadership is characterized by its activist agenda and its overriding commitment to social justice, equality and a democratic society (p. 421-422). Transformative leadership is firmly anchored to critical perspectives. By promoting the term transformative, rather than the more common, social justice leadership, it avoids the conceptual messiness of multiple interpretations and definitions and explicitly focuses on leadership that is “an exercise of power and authority that begins with questions of justice, democracy” (Weiner, 2003, p. 89). This paper demonstrates how both theories emerged, their similarities and differences, and how, in general, transformational and transformative leadership theories focus on different concepts and lead to different outcomes. The discussion will demonstrate how this evolution responds to distinct ontological and values-based approaches to leadership and how the advantages and limitations of each theory can offer guidance for truly transformative future leadership development. It will argue that because of its explicit values-based orientation to equity and justice, transformative leadership theory best offers guidance for today’s complex and diverse schools.

Blackmore, J. (2011). Leadership in pursuit of purpose: Social, economic and political transformation. In C. M. Shields (Ed.), Transformative leadership: A reader (pp. 21–36). New York: Peter Lang Burns, J. M. (2003). Transforming leadership. New York: Grove. Burns, J.M. (1978). Leadership. New York: Harper & Row. Starratt, R. J. (2011). Preparing transformative educators for the work of leading schools in a multicultural, diverse, and democratic society. In C. M. Shields (Ed.), Transformative leadership: A reader (pp. 131–136). New York: Peter Lang. van Oord, L. (2013). Towards transformative leadership in education. International Journal of Leadership in Education: Theory and Practice, 16(4), 419-434. Weiner, E. J. (2003). Secretary Paulo Freire and the democratization of power: Toward a theory of transformative leadership, Educational Philosophy and theory, 35(1), 89-106.

This is the second part of the symposium titled Reframing Leadership and Leading in Education: Diverse Responses from Scholars Across the Field. All the papers presented in this symposium are from the upcoming Elgar Handbook of Leadership in Education, edited by Professor Philip A. Woods, Dr Amanda Roberts, Dr Meng Tian and Dr Howard Youngs (2023).

In this symposium, we include three chapters from the Handbook Part 2 Social justice and leadership in education and the final chapter on Disrupted Leadership in Education written by the editors.

Social justice is a much-used term, with multifaceted meanings. At its most basic, we are using it here to signify three aspects of fairness in education: relational (i.e., how individuals are treated decently in their relationships with others), procedural (i.e., how education systems are built to ensure equitable procedures) and substantive (e.g., how education content and leadership practices are designed to accommodate diverse needs). We would argue that social justice should be one of the ultimate goals guiding future leadership development and one of the fundamental values guiding leaders' daily practice. Social justice leaders endeavour to recognise discrimination and prejudice, empower marginalised groups and lead activism against inequalities and unfairness (Angelle & Torrance, 2019; Wang, 2018).

The presentations in Part 2 of the symposium offer various viewpoints on such fairness, on what social justice might look like, on what might support it and what might impede it.

The first paper challenges the colonial constructions of leadership in New Zealand. The author discusses how the diverse early childhood education sector in Aotearoa promotes Māori language and curriculum despite the lack of government provision and colonial history.

The second paper shows that in Spain, transformative leadership is used to promote social justice and inclusion in schools. The attainment gap is exacerbated by poverty in many local communities. Leaders of Spanish public schools who serve precarious families in disadvantaged areas bear more responsibility to transform local communities on the meso level and schools on the micro level. In response to this goal, the authors of chapter 25 propose a framework of Six Steps and Four Conditions for Social Justice in Schools.

The third paper consists of editors' narratives of how disruptions affect educational leadership and bring opportunities to challenge fossilised leadership concepts and patterns. More distributed leadership and disruptive leadership are needed in front of unprecedented and everyday disruptions. Leaders in education are expected to become wayfinders who work with and for people in the education sector.

The last paper discusses that leaders of schools in crises and traumatic situations face particular testing challenges. However, there is no formula to determine the capacity or qualities that leaders in such contexts require. What can be said, as the author argues, is that leading in crises and traumatic situations benefits from, amongst other things, the capacity to be critically self-reflective, to promote inclusive and anti-oppressive school contexts, to engage local communities and to exercise a moral capacity for social justice.

We hope that the audience will appreciate these diverse viewpoints on social justice and leadership in education put forward in this symposium. We join the presenters in inviting you to engage actively with the issues raised. In this way, we can continue to build a discourse around social justice leadership which impacts positively on educational practice.

This symposium adopts the presentations, discussion and Q&A format. Authors will first present their works. This is followed by a panel discussion hosted by the Chair. In the last part of the symposium, the audience will have the opportunity to engage in the conversation and ask questions to the presenters.

Early childhood care and education is recognised as being a context for emergent, collaborative leadership, particularly by women. This chapter acknowledges Aotearoa (New Zealand) as a site of two centuries of colonial encroachment on the rights, resources and wellbeing of Māori, the Indigenous people, via Euro-Western patriarchal authoritarian models of leadership imposed through the assumption of sovereignty. Since the 1840 signing of Te Tiriti o Waitangi | The Treaty of Waitangi, that had allowed for British settlement whilst undertaking to preserve Māori authority over their lands and resources, Māori have sought redress for ongoing treaty breaches. Meanwhile, the diverse early childhood education sector in Aotearoa has grown in response to community concerns and despite a lack of government provision. This positioning outside of the compulsory education sector has inherently enabled the sector to be a site of progressive resistance to ongoing colonisation. The first early childhood curriculum for Aotearoa, Te Whāriki 1996 (New Zealand Ministry of Education, 1996), was written immediately after the sesquicentennial of the signing of the Treaty, a moment of national reflection on Treaty related concerns. Te Whāriki 1996 was furthermore strongly reflective of the influence of Te Kōhanga Reo, the early childhood Māori language revitalisation movement, that sought to protect the Māori language. Te Whāriki 1996 both recognised the obligations contained within Te Tiriti o Waitangi and positioned Māori language and values as centrally important to early childhood care and education pedagogy in Aotearoa. The argument of this chapter relates to a solidarity of concern that united the early childhood sector in demonstrating leadership in the decolonisation project underpinned by a commitment to Te Tiriti o Waitangi, a decolonisation agenda that has now, twenty-five years later, been taken up more widely.

Giroux, H. A. (2021). The public imagination and the dictatorship of ignorance. Social Identities, 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504630.2021.1931089 Jackson, M. (2020). Where to next? Decolonisation and the stories in the land. In R. Kiddle (Ed.), Imagining Decolonisation (pp. 133-155). Bridget Williams Books. Manning, S., Woodhams, M., & Howsan, S. (2011). Emergent leadership in Playcentre. Journal of Educational Leadership, Policy and Practice, 26(2), 3–13. May, H. (2013). The discovery of early childhood (2nd ed.). NZCER Press. Ministry of Education. (1996/2017). Te Whāriki. He whāriki mātauranga mō ngā mokopuna o Aotearoa: Early childhood curriculum. Mitchell, L. (2019). Democratic policies and practices in early childhood education. An Aotearoa New Zealand case study. Springer Singapore. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1793-4 New Zealand Parliament. (2020). Education and Training Act. Te Tiriti o Waitangi. https://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2020/0038/latest/LMS280244.html Orange, C. (2021). The Treaty of Waitangi | Te Tiriti o Waitangi: An illustrated history. Bridget Williams Books. Skerrett, M., & Ritchie, J. (2021). Te Rangatiratanga o te Reo: Sovereignty in Indigenous languages in early childhood education in Aotearoa. Kōtuitui: New Zealand Journal of Social Sciences Online, 16(2), 250-264. Westbrook, F., & White, J. (2021). One ring to rule them all? Locating discourse in Aotearoa New Zealand early childhood education curriculum. Policy Futures in Education, 19(4), 424-437.

Spain is experiencing important changes with the increase in the level of inequality in the population. The national government and autonomous communities have responded with policies to address the challenges of education and diversity. These policies are consistent with global efforts to promote inclusion through transformative leadership. Spain presents a model of school leadership based on the school director as teacher and more recently, the school director as manager and leader. The requirements to become a school director in Spain represent a balance of teaching experience and preparation to lead. This paper presents an approach to transformative leadership for social justice. The Spanish experience is presented with reference to international implications. Six steps and four conditions are presented for schools to follow, and recommendations are made to foster critical understanding of social systems and the promotion of inclusion for all.

Angelle, P. S., & Morrison, M. (2021). Socially just school leadership in B.G. Barnett and P.A. Woods (Eds). Educational leadership for social justice and improving high-needs schools: Findings from 10 years of international collaboration, 31. Antúnez, S., Silva, P., & Slater C.L. (2019b). Factors affecting emotional management in highly complex schools: The case of two Spanish schools. In Oplatka I. & Arar, K. (eds). Emotion Management and Feelings in teaching and educational leadership: research and practice in transitional and developing societies. Emerald Publishing, 149-170. Antúnez, S., & Silva, P. (2020). La formación de directores y directoras escolares y la Inspección Educativa. Avances en Supervisión Educativa, (33), 1-21. Moral-Santaella, C., Amores-Fernández, F. J., & Ritacco-Real, M. (2016). Liderazgo distribuido y capacidad de mejora en centros de educación secundaria. Estudios sobre educación, 30, 115-143. Murillo, F. J., & Hernández-Castilla, R. (2011). Hacia un Concepto de Justicia Social. REICE. Revista Iberoamericana Sobre Calidad, Eficacia Y Cambio En Educación, 9(4), 7-23 Slater, C. L., Antúnez, S., & Silva, P. (2021). Social justice leadership in Spanish schools: Researcher perspectives. Leadership and Policy in Schools Journal, 20(1), 111-126.

Fracture and disruption span the chapters of this Handbook, where authors offer various ways of addressing this. We suggested in chapter 1 that it might be concluded that leadership in education is a fractured field. In this final chapter we locate ourselves as editors not only in this fractured state, also in the disruption that has shaped our world since 2020 through the Covid-19 pandemic. Our narratives which we share in this chapter capture snapshots of our own times, in a similar way to how the chapters, through their fresh approaches to understanding, developing and researching leadership can be seen as snapshots of different aspects of the leadership in education field. A theme of collectivism runs through this chapter as a way of experiencing relational spaces in fragmented and disruptive times. Connected to this is assemblage thinking, which we argue is a way of holding together diverse understandings and practices. An assemblage way of thinking is evident in holding both: disruption-induced disruptive leadership; disrupted leadership and disruptive leadership; distributed leadership and the possibility of hierarchy contributing to the greater good; and, service user (e.g. patient) led leadership and a partnership approach to leadership. In the light of dilemmas and wicked problems, this aligns with the first thread across the narratives - namely, the dialectic reasoning briefly discussed in the final narrative. A non-dialogical approach would argue against the co-existence of disrupted and disruptive leadership, distributed leadership in hierarchical structures, and service user (only) led leadership and a partnership. Dialectic reasoning starts a place of these co-existing simultaneously. A second thread across the narratives is embracing fluidity and what emerges, whether this is anticipated or not. However, no one person can assume that assemblage as a thinking tool is sufficient. The collective of all working together is needed, which is a third thread through the chapters of this Handbook. This brings us to the importance of relational spaces, the space between and inclusive of people, rather focusing only on individual spaces which are the basis for individual agency. Diversity cannot be embraced unless an assemblage way of thinking is active in relational spaces through dialogue, listening and the surfacing and testing of assumptions.

Anderson, G. L., & Chang, E. (2019). Competing Narratives of Leadership in School: The Institutional and Discursive Turns in Organizational Theory. In M. Connolly, D. H. Eddy-Spicer, C. James, & S. D. Kruse (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook of School Organization (pp. 84–102). SAGE. Stacey, R. (2012) Tools and techniques of leadership and management: meeting the challenge of complexity. London: Routledge. Sallnow, L., Richardson, H., Murray, S. and Kellehear, A. (2016) The impact of a new public health approach to end-of-life care: a systematic review. Palliative Medicine, 30(3), 200-211. Woods, P.A. and Roberts, A. (2018) Collaborative school leadership: a critical guide. London: SAGE. Woods, P. A., Torrance, D., Donnelly, C., Hamilton, T., Jones, K., & Potter, I. (2021). Constructions and purposes of school leadership in the UK. School Leadership & Management, 41(1–2), 152–170. https://doi.org/10.1080/13632434.2020.1859999 Youngs, H. (2022). Variegated perspectives within distributed leadership: A mix(up) of ontologies and positions in construct development. In F. W. English (Ed.) The Palgrave Handbook of Educational Leadership and Management Discourse. Palgrave.

Effective leadership makes a critical contribution to the quality of an ECE programme. In turn, high-quality ECE programmes influence children's developmental trajectories, potentially impacting society's economic, social and civil outcomes (Heckman, 2011). Developing effective 'leading' and leadership within ECE sites is, therefore, an important yet underdeveloped focus within research and practice (Douglass, 2019). The sites of early childhood education and care are, however, complex. They are people-intensive, requiring high numbers of staff to ensure children's safety, well-being and healthy development (Alchin et al., 2019; Waniganayake et al., 2016). Because the children attending are very young, the duty of care of staff and the organisation is very high. The leaders of such sites must be aware of and ensure that all staff comply with many standards, but more than compliance is needed to achieve a high-quality ECE programme. Furthermore, effective leadership benefits twofold: a positive impact on children's developmental and social outcomes (Douglass, 2019) and upon the cultivation of leading, ensuring a pipeline of leaders for the future of ECE (Coleman et al., 2016; Siraj-Blatchford & Manni, 2007). This qualitative Australian study of three high-quality, diversely governed ECE services explored the emergence, cultivation, and enactment of leadership as a practice. We illustrate the enactment of leading as a set of collective, dynamic practices undertaken by both emerging and positional leaders and the conditions for cultivating leadership within ECE settings utilising the theory of practice architectures. The gathering of data and subsequent analysis conducted within a framework of the theory of practice architectures illuminated how the emergence and development of leading were enabled and constrained by the cultural-discursive, material-economic, and social-political arrangements evident at each site (Gibbs, 2020). The cultural-discursive arrangements (evident in language and culture), the material-economic arrangements (evident in action and space), and the social-political arrangements (evident in power and relationships) are prefigured and shaped by the practice architectures characteristic of the individual sites (Kemmis et al., 2014). The findings indicate that organisations should consider diverse approaches to leadership cultivation. The organisational arrangements for leadership cultivation and development must, however, be considered in the unique context of jurisdictional regulations, governance practices, and early childhood education traditions.

Alchin, I., Arthur, L., & Woodrow, C. (2019). Evidencing leadership and management challenges in early childhood in Australia. Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, 44(3), 285-297. https://doi.org/10.1177/1836939119855563 Coleman, A., Sharp, C., & Handscomb, G. (2016). Leading highly performing children’s centres. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 44(5), 775-793. https://doi.org/10.1177/1741143215574506 Douglass, A. (2019). Leadership for quality early childhood education and care. OECD Education Working Paper No. 211 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/leadership-for-quality-early-childhood-education-and-care_6e563bae-en Gibbs, L. (2020). Leadership emergence and development: Organizations shaping leading in early childhood education. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 1-22. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1177/1741143220940324 Heckman, J. (2011). The economics of inequality: the value of early childhood education. American Educator, 35(1), 31. Kemmis, S., Wilkinson, J., Edwards-Groves, C., Grootenboer, P., & Bristol, L. S. M. (2014). Changing practices, changing education. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-4560-47-4 Siraj-Blatchford, I., & Manni, L. (2007). Effective leadership in the early years sector: The ELEYS study. Institute of Education Press. Waniganayake, M., Cheeseman, S., Fenech, M., Hadley, F., & Shepherd, W. (2016). Leadership : contexts and complexities in early childhood education (Second ed.). Oxford Press

Contemporary principals lead schools for success amidst rapidly changing and complex national, state, district/municipality and community contexts with success defined by wellbeing and equity as well as academic outcomes. Complexities in a rapidly changing society require a multi-layered perspective (Author, 2020a) where schools are complex adaptive systems and societal institutions (Author, 2020b; Morrison, 2010). The conceptualization by the International Successful School Principalship Project is underpinned by complexity theory and ecological systems theory.

Complexity theory (e.g., Byrne & Callaghan, 2013) recognizes that organizations operate in a rapidly changing, globalized world. Closely related, ecological systems theory (Bronfenbrenner, 1979) posits that individuals (children) typically find themselves in various interconnected ecosystems from the most intimate (home) system to the larger school system and then to the most expansive system which includes society and culture. Together, our Project conceptualization considers schools as adaptive organizations that work within contexts of multiple changes and nested influences that are culturally and historically situated. It has enabled us to construct an analytical framework which has informed new research questions and a comparative, mixed methods case study methodology. This methodology employs a systems-oriented approach in investigating successful leadership. Key areas of focus include contexts of change that influence leadership values, efficacy and practices, how they mediate organizational change and ultimately, school improvement outcomes and sustained success

Research Questions

RQ1: To what extent, and in what ways, is ‘success’ in schools perceived and measured [similarly and/or differently within and across different countries]?

RQ2: What are the key enablers and constraints for achieving school ‘success’ in different contexts?

RQ3: To what extent, and in what ways, do diverse socioeconomic, cultural, political, and professional contexts at different levels of the education system influence systems in which schools operate?

RQ4: Are there similar and/or different personal dispositions and professional knowledge, qualities and capabilities needed in enabling leaders to be(come) successful in different contexts [within and across different countries]?

RQ5: What similarities and differences can be identified in the values, beliefs, and behaviors of successful school principals across different schools in the same country, [and across national cultures and policy contexts]?

RQ6: How do different key stakeholders within and outside the school community and at different levels of the education system define successful school leadership practices [within and across different countries]?

RQ7: Is each leadership practice identified by different key stakeholders within and outside the school community and at different levels of the education system truly essential for achieving and sustaining ‘success’ [across different schools within each country and across different countries; and over time]? In what ways?

RQ8: [How do different education systems support school principals to learn to become successful, and to sustain their success over time?]

RQ9: To what extent, and in what ways, do school principals contribute to the ‘success’ of their schools (and/or groups of schools) similarly or differently [ within and across different countries]?

Methodology

We utilize a comparative mixed methods design with a variety of data sources in order to bring multiple perspectives to bear in the inquiry (Creswell & Creswell, 2017; Patton, 2002). Sources include semi-structured qualitative interviews with the district/municipality, governors, principal, teachers, parents, students, and a whole school teacher survey. The comparative analysis of these data sources within and across different schools and countries (Authors, 2021) enables trustworthiness and enhances rigour (Denzin, 2012).

The first paper presents the new theoretical framing as well as the analytical framework and methodology. The next three papers present cases that draw upon the theoretical framing, analytical framework, and comparative mixed methods in England, Sweden, and the United States.

This paper presents the theoretical and analytical frameworks and comparative mixed methods research methodology for the new phase of the International Successful School Principalship Project (ISSPP). In so doing, the paper provides a rationale for the use of ecological systems theory in research on successful school leadership, as they lead and manage the complex interactions within and between micro, meso, macro, exon and chrono level systems (Bronfenbrenner, 2009). This paper then unpacks the comparative design and multi-perspective, multi-level approach to conducting research that enables multiple causalities, multiple perspectives, and multiple effects to be charted (Cohen et. al., 2011). The new ISSPP comparative methodology is grounded in four conceptual and methodological considerations. First, context in education is multidimensional and fluid – encompassing not only multi-layered social ecological systems of education, but also how such systems influence each other to bring about change in values and behaviour over time. Second, how context matters finds its scholarly roots in educational researchers’ intellectual, disciplinary, and professional insights, as well as their positionality and reflexivity from sociocultural and sociopolitical insider/outsider perspectives. Third, assessing the comparability of educational systems, practices, processes, and outcomes both within and across countries matters. Fourth, our comparative approach not only recognizes differences in world views, forms of knowledge and practices between different cultures but also recognizes the reality that there are also important similarities in how children are motivated to learn, how committed and enthusiastic teachers teach, and how successful leaders create and sustain the contextually relevant conditions and cultures for the learning and growth of children and adults in their schools. Methodologically, the selection of the case sites uses a purposive sampling of schools that controls for differences in accountability standards and evidence of improved student performance during the tenure of the principal under study in each national context. Data sources include semi-structured qualitative interviews with the district/municipality, governors, principal, teachers, parents, and students and a validated teacher survey in order to provide a more elaborated understanding of the phenomena i.e., school success and the principal’s leadership contribution to that success. The comparative analytical process, theoretical positioning, and comparative mixed methods provide a coherent but contextually sensitive data analysis approach. Finally, this paper previews the other papers that present findings using the new ISSPP frameworks and methodology in England, Sweden, and USA .

Authors, 2021. Author, 2020a Author, 2020b Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development: Experiments by nature and design. Harvard university press. Byrne, D., & Callaghan, G. (2013). Complexity theory and the social sciences: The state of the art. Routledge. Creswell, J. W., & Creswell, J. D. (2017). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. Sage publications. Denzin, N. K. (2012). Triangulation 2.0. Journal of mixed methods research, 6(2), 80-88. Manu, A. (2022). The Philosophy of Disruption. Bingley, Emerald Publishing. Morrison, K. (2010). Complexity theory, school leadership and management: Questions for theory and practice. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 38(3), 374-393. Patton, M. Q. (2002). Qualitative research & evaluation methods. Sage.

Schools in England have undergone considerable reform over the past two decades and their principals have had to learn to manage increased volumes of government educational-policy initiatives designed to raise standards of teaching, learning, and academic outcomes for all students. Although these initiatives are seen by governments as a means of building human, economic, and social capital in increasingly competitive and socially turbulent global environments, there are continuing concerns over how effectively they are being implemented by school leaders and teachers. The analysis of the English case study is informed by the philosophy of disruption which is deeply concerned with social changes that enhance and transform the practice and experience of everyday life of individuals and their institution (Manu, 2022). This philosophical and analytical approach sees the principal as a positive disruptor who is able to embrace external policy reforms as “opportunities” for change, aligning resources in ways that has enabled her to harness knowledge, skills and capacity of the staff and create educationally equitable, and values-based “landscapes of success” over time. In this inner-city primary school which serves a socioeconomically highly disadvantaged community, policy shifts are perceived as unavailable political realities of education. Success is not simply defined in relation to its sustained academic performance over a ten-year period – rising from one of the bottom 200 underperforming schools nationally to become a National Support School. Most importantly, it is about how the principal has incorporated and used externally generated policies to enact and reinforce her own educational agendas in the process of school improvement, and transform the mindset and culture of teachers and students who feel empowered and confident to embrace change and make the right decisions for the right reasons. Key in regard is how she has broadened and deepened the organisational, social, and intellectual capacities that for the improvement of quality and standards in teaching and learning, despite rather than because of externally generated reforms.

Authors, 2021. Author, 2020a Author, 2020b Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development: Experiments by nature and design. Harvard university press. Byrne, D., & Callaghan, G. (2013). Complexity theory and the social sciences: The state of the art. Routledge. Creswell, J. W., & Creswell, J. D. (2017). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. Sage publications. Denzin, N. K. (2012). Triangulation 2.0. Journal of mixed methods research, 6(2), 80-88. Manu, A. (2022). The Philosophy of Disruption. Bingley, Emerald Publishing. Morrison, K. (2010). Complexity theory, school leadership and management: Questions for theory and practice. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 38(3), 374-393. Patton, M. Q. (2002). Qualitative research & evaluation methods. Sage.

In Sweden as in many other countries, there is increasing segregation due to students' socio–economic background since most students go to the school closest to home. This study is done in a socioeconomic segregated area in a large city in Sweden to find out how they work towards success. The school has a history of low results and a high number of newly immigrated students. For several years there has been a high turnover of principals and teachers. The current principal is described as driven by a desire to be successful by the superintendent. Multiple aims and a fast-changing society require that we look at principals and school leadership from several perspectives (Shaked & Schechter, 2017; Johansson & Ärlestig, 2020) as schools are complex adaptive systems with prerequisites and change processes that are, nonlinear, unstable, and constantly changing (Morrison, 2002) at the same time as some of their culture and attitudes are stable and hard to change. What characterizes a successful principal in a low socio-economic area? The study seeks answers on how the principal promotes equity, equality, well-being, teacher quality, and academic optimism to create a successful school. Local actors must navigate in complexity, understand and measure improvement, to make change sustainable (Glickman, 2010). We used a mixed methods approach for interviews and a survey based on the revised ISSPP protocol. In total, one principal, five assistant principals, and six teachers were interviewed. An online survey following the revised ISSPP protocol was distributed to all to all 55 teachers with a response of 89 % (n=49) Preliminary results show that the principal communicates academic optimism (Hoy 2014) to convince her personnel of the over-arching aim for the school that every child in their school has the right to the best possible education (SOU 2010:800). This has evoked an emphasis on what is happening inside the classroom and on ways to improve teaching. The principal gives during the interview examples of multiple change processes, outlining that several small steps and processes can lead forward to better teaching and learning. Our measurements of success will be linked to changes in culture, structure, and every child’s learning optimism as well as principals' leadership.

Authors, 2021. Author, 2020a Author, 2020b Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development: Experiments by nature and design. Harvard university press. Byrne, D., & Callaghan, G. (2013). Complexity theory and the social sciences: The state of the art. Routledge. Creswell, J. W., & Creswell, J. D. (2017). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. Sage publications. Denzin, N. K. (2012). Triangulation 2.0. Journal of mixed methods research, 6(2), 80-88. Manu, A. (2022). The Philosophy of Disruption. Bingley, Emerald Publishing. Morrison, K. (2010). Complexity theory, school leadership and management: Questions for theory and practice. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 38(3), 374-393. Patton, M. Q. (2002). Qualitative research & evaluation methods. Sage. (112 words)

The United States, like many nation states, has recently experienced internal demographic shifts and global population migrations contributing to increased student diversity. Such increased diversity exists in perennial and new tensions with federal and state policies that legislate increased commonality or centralization. U.S. schools are culturally and historically situated and exist within a complex interplay among federal and state policies, schools, districts, and communities with increasingly diverse students. Additionally, all schools experienced health and social emotional concerns from the pandemic, rapid shift to online education and digitalization, and intensifying concerns about equity. The U.S. case studies in this paper utilize the new ISSPP research methodology which was recently revised to include a comparative mixed methods approach to construct mixed methods case studies of schools in diverse cultural regions of the U.S, including Alabama, Arizona, Massachusetts, and Texas. Some research teams focus on public schools while others include religious schools; some schools are situated in districts that have tighter coupling with support within accountability mandates and district systems while others have more loose coupling whereby schools seek out programs and innovations on their own initiative. Data sources include semi-structured qualitative interviews with the district leaders, principal, teachers, parents, and students in order to provide a more elaborated understanding of the phenomena i.e., school success and the principal’s leadership contribution to that success. Additionally, a survey was administered to all teachers in each of seven schools. Preliminary findings indicate schools were complex, adaptive systems and principals led change processes in ways that were non-linear and adaptive to constant changes (Morrision, 2010). Moreover, principals and other interviewees recognized that they needed to ground their work in understanding the humanistic needs of children (e.g. wellbeing, social emotional health) as well as academic needs. In other words, teachers and principals focused on pedagogical relationships as a constant but kept school improvement plans fluid in order to adapt to multiple complexities. In the final section of the paper, we consider school success in relation to complexity theory, the principal’s habitus, identity, and a language of education and pedagogy. Further, we consider more deeply educational theorizing in relation to the principal’s habitus, school, and community fields, as well as the broader complex systems in which schools and leaders educate for success. The paper concludes with implications for theorizing educational leadership, future research, leadership preparation, and development.

Authors, 2021. Author, 2020a Author, 2020b Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development: Experiments by nature and design. Harvard university press. Byrne, D., & Callaghan, G. (2013). Complexity theory and the social sciences: The state of the art. Routledge. Creswell, J. W., & Creswell, J. D. (2017). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. Sage publications. Denzin, N. K. (2012). Triangulation 2.0. Journal of mixed methods research, 6(2), 80-88. Manu, A. (2022). The Philosophy of Disruption. Bingley, Emerald Publishing. Morrison, K. (2010). Complexity theory, school leadership and management: Questions for theory and practice. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 38(3), 374-393. Patton, M. Q. (2002). Qualitative research & evaluation methods. Sage.

Overview:

Contemporary principals lead schools for success amidst rapidly changing and complex national, state, district/municipality and community contexts with success defined by wellbeing and equity as well as academic outcomes. Complexities in a rapidly changing society require a multi-layered perspective (Author, 2020a) where schools are complex adaptive systems and societal institutions (Author, 2020b; Morrison, 2010). The theoretical framework for the International Successful School Principalship Project features complexity theory and ecological systems theory.

Complexity theory (e.g., Byrne & Callaghan, 2013) recognizes that organizations operate in a rapidly changing, globalized world. Closely related, ecological systems theory (Bronfenbrenner, 1979) posits that individuals (children) typically find themselves in various ecosystems from the most intimate (home) system to the larger school system and then to the most expansive system, including society and culture. Together, our framing considers schools as adaptive organizations that work within contexts of multiple, evolving changes and nested influences that are culturally and historically situated. Drawing on this framing and ISSPP findings, we constructed an analytical framework to inform new research questions and a comparative, mixed methods case study methodology. The analytical framework provides a systems-oriented approach to investigating successful leadership, including contexts from local to transnational levels that influence leadership values, efficacy and practices mediating areas of change and ultimately, primary (academics, wellbeing) and intermediate outcomes (e.g., organizational capacity).

Research Questions

RQ1: To what extent, and in what ways, is ‘success’ in schools perceived and measured [similarly and/or differently within and across different countries]?

RQ2: What are the key enablers and constraints for achieving school ‘success’ in different contexts?

RQ3: To what extent, and in what ways, do diverse socioeconomic, cultural, political, and professional contexts at different levels of the education system influence systems in which schools operate?

RQ4: Are there similar and/or different personal dispositions and professional knowledge, qualities and capabilities needed in enabling leaders to be(come) successful in different contexts [within and across different countries]?

RQ5: What similarities and differences can be identified in the values, beliefs, and behaviors of successful school principals across different schools in the same country, [and across national cultures and policy contexts]?

RQ6: How do different key stakeholders within and outside the school community and at different levels of the education system define successful school leadership practices [within and across different countries]?

RQ7: Is each leadership practice identified by different key stakeholders within and outside the school community and at different levels of the education system truly essential for achieving and sustaining ‘success’ [across different schools within each country and across different countries; and over time]? In what ways?

RQ8: [How do different education systems support school principals to learn to become successful, and to sustain their success over time?]

RQ9: To what extent, and in what ways, do school principals contribute to the ‘success’ of their schools (and/or groups of schools) similarly or differently [ within and across different countries]?

Methodology

ISSPP utilizes a comparative mixed methods design, in which researchers draw upon different data sources and design elements in order to bring multiple perspectives to bear in the inquiry (Creswell & Creswell, 2017; Patton, 2002). Data sources include semi-structured qualitative interviews with the district/municipality, governors, principal, teachers, parents, and students and a teacher survey. A comparative analytical process (Authors, 2021) provides a coherent but contextually sensitive data analysis approach that supports triangulation and trustworthiness (Denzin, 2012).

The first paper presents the new theoretical framing as well as an analytical framework developed from empirical knowledge about successful leadership, and the methodology. The next three papers present cases that draw upon the theoretical framing, analytical framework, and comparative mixed methods in Spain

sThe case study that arises from the new ISSPP approach, has been carried out at the successful Secondary School Iliberis, located in the town of Atarfe at the province of Granada (Spain). The purpose of this case study is to deepen the knowledge about the difficulty of implementing a successful leadership in a school that fights for social justice, avoiding a mere descriptive, simplifying or reductionist approach. In this way, it shows the complex relationships between the structure and the process that school leadership implements to achieve the success of the Illiberis school. The methodology used is the one provided by the new ISSPP approach for the study of successful leadership from the theory of complexity and ecological system. It begins by creating a contextualization to base the case study of the Iliberis school within the context of the social, political and institutional framework of the Spanish educational system. The results obtained show complex relationships between the structure and process developed by the Iliberis school leadership to respond to the challenges highlighted in the macro contextual section. Complexity is resolved through “an easy and well organized school project” that “works”. The principal of Iliberis school faces the challenges derived from the current educational system and it does so with sense and vision, with solid structures and concrete strategies from which diverse leadership types are applied. It develops simple, realistic action plans, allowing time for transformation and change, without losing sight of the objective (students) and the engine of change, which is the teaching staff. The school principal takes great care of his teaching staff, recognizing their work, giving them prominence, agency, and freedom so that they become authentic leaders, and they contribute together to a process of innovation and constant educational improvement. The study has provided a leap of knowledge about the successful leadership obtained from the understanding of the practical wisdom of the Illiberis school's professionals. Therefore, this example about the Iliberis School serves as evidence of how it is possible to lead a school through a simple and coherent project that 'works', starting from the difficulties involved in the struggle for social justice within the complexity of the current Spanish educational system.

Authors, 2021. Author, 2020a Author, 2020b Author (2018). Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development: Experiments by nature and design. Harvard university press. Byrne, D., & Callaghan, G. (2013). Complexity theory and the social sciences: The state of the art. Routledge. Creswell, J. W., & Creswell, J. D. (2017). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. Sage publications. Denzin, N. K. (2012). Triangulation 2.0. Journal of mixed methods research, 6(2), 80-88. Haggis, T. (2008). ‘Knowledge Must Be Contextual’: Some possible implications of complexity and dynamic systems theories for educational research. Educational philosophy and theory, 40(1), 158-176. Morrison, K. (2010). Complexity theory, school leadership and management: Questions for theory and practice. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 38(3), 374- 393. Patton, M. Q. (2002). Qualitative research & evaluation methods. Sage. Spillane, J. P. (2006). Towards a theory of leadership practice: A distributed perspective. In Rethinking schooling (pp. 208-242). Routledge.

The purpose of the paper is to contribute with insights about successful principalship (Day & Gurr, 2018) from a Norwegian context. The study has a s multiple perspective and is building on the voices of principals, assistant principals, middle leaders, and students from four primary and secondary schools in Norway. It builds on in depth interviews and focus group interviews, as well as a teacher survey. Following the new ISSPP protocols, the data have been subjects to contents and discourse-inspired analysis. Complexity theory (Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Haggis, 2008) serves as an analytic framework. A deeper understanding of success considers the interdependency between the different leadership levels in the school and that leadership is stretched over situations (Spillane, 2006). The aim has been to examine how successful principalship is perceived and experienced by multiple actors in the four cases. Moreover, the aims have been to identify the key enablers and constraints for achieving school ‘success’, as well as contextual features. Successful principalship is a matter of having common values and acknowledgement of the interdependency between principals, middle-leaders and teachers. The students’ wellbeing, learning and results is a prime focus in all the four cases. The analysis indicates differences in how leadership is distributed across situations (Spillane, 2006), and how principals engage in the core activities. While some principals are very close in following up the students, others lead through the middle leaders, from a distance. Involvement of multiple actors seem to be an enabling factor, as well as designing well-functioning structures while constraining factors seem to be related to lose couplings in the school community, especially in large upper secondary schools. Concerning context, we find a difference between upper secondary schools and primary and lower secondary schools in principal’s room for manoeuvre. There seems to be fewer policy demands from the regional educational authorities in the upper secondary schools, as long as they keep the budget, however, in the lower secondary and primary schools the local educational authorities are much more engaged in pedagogy.

Authors, 2021. Author, 2020a Author, 2020b Author (2018). Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development: Experiments by nature and design. Harvard university press. Byrne, D., & Callaghan, G. (2013). Complexity theory and the social sciences: The state of the art. Routledge. Creswell, J. W., & Creswell, J. D. (2017). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. Sage publications. Denzin, N. K. (2012). Triangulation 2.0. Journal of mixed methods research, 6(2), 80-88. Haggis, T. (2008). ‘Knowledge Must Be Contextual’: Some possible implications of complexity and dynamic systems theories for educational research. Educational philosophy and theory, 40(1), 158-176. Morrison, K. (2010). Complexity theory, school leadership and management: Questions for theory and practice. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 38(3), 374- 393. Patton, M. Q. (2002). Qualitative research & evaluation methods. Sage. Spillane, J. P. (2006). Towards a theory of leadership practice: A distributed perspective. In Rethinking schooling (pp. 208-242). Routledge.

This case explores the creation of a Catholic primary school in Melbourne, Australia; Patron Saint Catholic Primary School (PSCPS). The founding principal has led the creation of a recontextualised Catholic primary school over a ten-year period. This is the principal’s second principalship, having previously served for six years in a more challenging inner-city Catholic primary school. The study draws upon individual interviews with the principal (three interviews), Parish Priest, Religious Education Leader, Deputy Principal, level leaders (year 5-6, year 3-4, foundation to year 2 (two leaders) and two specialist leaders), six teachers, two group interviews each with four parents and two group interviews each with four students from years 5/6, observation of the life of the school, document analysis and a teacher survey. The case shows: • How the prinicpal’s background, education, personal philosophy and personal dispositions and characteristics that helped form his identity as a leader. • The development of the school was framed by the principal’s pedagogical leadership of 21st Century Learning and the underpinning of the school by establishing a sustainable professional learning community and a creation of a contemporary Catholic school environment with a religious identity for the school. • The principal’s ability to build the capacity of teachers and lead in and from the middle highlighted the distributive approach to his leadership. • The principal was able to navigate the various levels of context and meet and overcome the internal and external challenges. His approach and decision making were firmly based on evidence-based research. We conclude by showing how his leadership maps onto a model of successful school leadership developed from previous ISSPP cases.

Authors, 2021. Author, 2020a Author, 2020b Author (2018). Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development: Experiments by nature and design. Harvard university press. Byrne, D., & Callaghan, G. (2013). Complexity theory and the social sciences: The state of the art. Routledge. Creswell, J. W., & Creswell, J. D. (2017). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. Sage publications. Denzin, N. K. (2012). Triangulation 2.0. Journal of mixed methods research, 6(2), 80-88. Haggis, T. (2008). ‘Knowledge Must Be Contextual’: Some possible implications of complexity and dynamic systems theories for educational research. Educational philosophy and theory, 40(1), 158-176. Morrison, K. (2010). Complexity theory, school leadership and management: Questions for theory and practice. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 38(3), 374- 393. Patton, M. Q. (2002). Qualitative research & evaluation methods. Sage. Spillane, J. P. (2006). Towards a theory of leadership practice: A distributed perspective. In Rethinking schooling (pp. 208-242). Routledge.

In Italy, the creation of Comprehensive Institutes (CI) in 2002 has determined, for principals, high complexity in coordinating school contexts that could be very different from each other. This is the case of the CI 06 "Chievo-Bassona-Borgo Nuovo" in Verona (Italy), which merges one kindergarten, three primary schools and one junior secondary school spread over 10 km across three very different districts. Habitants in Chievo enjoy a comfortable standard of living in a residential district. In contrast, Borgo Nuovo constantly challenges by various waves of migration, social and economic disadvantage, unemployment and drug abuse. Bassona is instead characterised by a mix of migrant families living between farmland and an industrial zone, with an influx of middle-class families building new homes. The demographic characteristics of the territories inevitably influence the highly uneven composition of the populations of the schools included in the CI, which is expected to function as one. To cope with the complexities of individualised practices, lack of communication between and within each setting, no curriculum planning documents or processes, during the nine years of principalship, the principal worked in three directions: a) professional development for all in-service teachers to lift the quality of curriculum and pedagogy and to better understand their role in improving student engagement and wellbeing; b) enhancing internal and external communication and collaboration, to create various educational networks; c) effective administrative tools and processes to comply and work with the bureaucratic requirements and reforms mandated by the Ministry of Education.

Authors, 2021. Author, 2020a Author, 2020b Author (2018). Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development: Experiments by nature and design. Harvard university press. Byrne, D., & Callaghan, G. (2013). Complexity theory and the social sciences: The state of the art. Routledge. Creswell, J. W., & Creswell, J. D. (2017). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. Sage publications. Denzin, N. K. (2012). Triangulation 2.0. Journal of mixed methods research, 6(2), 80-88. Haggis, T. (2008). ‘Knowledge Must Be Contextual’: Some possible implications of complexity and dynamic systems theories for educational research. Educational philosophy and theory, 40(1), 158-176. Morrison, K. (2010). Complexity theory, school leadership and management: Questions for theory and practice. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 38(3), 374- 393. Patton, M. Q. (2002). Qualitative research & evaluation methods. Sage. Spillane, J. P. (2006). Towards a theory of leadership practice: A distributed perspective. In Rethinking schooling (pp. 208-242). Routledge.

Principals’ tasks are often described as complex. In Sweden as in many other countries, principals need to combine the national responsibility to lead teaching and student learning with municipal governance and administrative task such as resources and personnel. Swedish principals have a large impact on how to organize school activities, decide on resources, and school development initiatives (Ärlestig et al. 2016). Principals’ role includes close cooperation with teachers and the local educational authorities (LEA) (i.e. private school organizers as well as the 290 municipalities). The pressure to increase students’ academic results combined with a shortage of qualified teachers has rendered to more work and the number of deputy principals and other administrative support personnel has increased to assure that principals secure enough time on teaching and learning issues. However, despite country context studies show that principals still find it hard to combine quality assessment, managerial work, different steering logics and a focus on students’ teaching and learning (Leo et al 2020).

Pedagogical leadership is at the core of the principal assignment as stated in the Educational Act (SFS 2010:800). At the same time, pedagogical leadership is a broad concept, and is sometimes perceived as elusive (Svedberg, 2019). ‘Pedagogical leadership’ overlaps with what is internationally referred to as leadership for learning, instructional leadership, or supervision (see e.g., Shields, 2010; Townsead & Macbeat, 2011; Glickman et al, 2016; Seashore Louis & Thessin, 2019). They have in common that the focus is on teaching and student learning, but they differ regarding how controlling, investigative, or inclusive the leadership should be. Uljens and Smeds-Nylund (2021) describe pedagogical leadership as interrelated at all governance levels. They describe pedagogical leadership as investigative and as a strive towards creating conditions for each level to independently develop its work in supporting students' learning and their learning environment. Thus, conducted at several levels and involved different actors. In Forsstein Seisser’s study (2017) where principals’ understanding of pedagogical leadership was explored and challenged this led to changes in principals’ practice. By visualising and discussing expectations, possibilities, and challenges the principals experienced a more shared way of working with pedagogical leadership. In this paper, the aim is to understand how pedagogical leadership is understood and enacted within a school organization. We focus on several levels of leadership, and in this explorative study we ask:

• How, and in what ways, is pedagogical leadership understood, enacted, and desired?
• What differences can be discerned regarding conceptions, and expectations regarding pedagogical leadership from different actors and roles?
• How, and in what ways, can different understandings and expectations of pedagogical leadership and roles work together to strengthen the focus on student’s development and learning?

This doctoral research study explores the ways in which leaders within second level education in Ireland are experiencing mentoring and coaching and in how far (and in what ways) it impacts their leadership identities and leadership practice. It is clear from this research and literature (Riley, 2015) that a lack of consideration exists in the support and training provided for principals on how to develop their leadership identities and responsibilities. While compulsory leadership training exists for all principal teachers in Ireland ongoing provisions that assist principals by incorporating the necessary practical supports and supportive frameworks in developing fundamental leadership ideologies within their school are frequently lacking (CSL Report, 2015). Significant evidence from international research recognises mentoring and coaching supports as positive influences on productivity and longevity in the career of school leaders and as important contributors to the development of leadership proficiencies as well as the improvement of school culture (Riley, 2009; Searby, 2009; McCallum & Price, 2010; Gurr, 2015). Given the additional challenges that the Covid-19 pandemic has created for educators and learners in building human connection (Soskil, 2021), mentoring supports for educational leaders provides valuable opportunities in reconnecting and rebuilding our education system. The Centre of School Leadership in Ireland firmly identifies mentoring and coaching as integral components to all school leadership programmes and has introduced mentoring supports since 2016. However, the impact of mentoring supports for educational leaders in Ireland has, so far, not been researched. This study explores the following research questions:

“What are the expectations, experiences and motivations of mentors and mentees in/for school leaders(hip) in Ireland. What mentoring approaches are currently used and what are the implications of mentoring experiences for practices in second-level school leadership in Ireland?

With coaching and mentoring services still in its infancy for newly appointed and existing school principals in Ireland, the findings from this research identify expectations and experiences of mentors and mentees as well as benefits and challenges related to mentoring relationships among school leaders. Additionally, this research can support the design and delivery of mentoring programmes and/or guidelines that seek to enhance professional development for school leaders. With a growing consensus that leadership in schools must focus on teaching, learning and people (CSL Report, 2015), findings from this research also identify the wide spectrum of professional supports available for educational leaders which nearly all participants regarded as ad-hoc, disjointed and lacking any system-wide framework. The urgent need for diverse supports is further compounded by the pace of change for school leaders and challenges that include the aftermath of a global pandemic, the cost-of-living crisis, restrained leadership roles, positions and resources, school accountability and self-evaluation, curricular reform, addressing disadvantage, diversity within school communities and child wellbeing and welfare. Findings from this study explore in depth the impact that mentoring experiences have on bridging the gap for newly appointed school leaders in Ireland in order to support them in dealing with the complexity and extensive nature of the expectations of their leadership roles.

Research on educational leadership signifies its importance regarding school success, such as prosperous professional development and lucrative student’s outcome and wellbeing (Hargreaves and Shirley, 2022; Leithwood et al., 2019; Leithwood & Louis, 2012). They also manifest the importance of leadership practices of districts and municipalities. They highlight the importance of both political (municipal council, school boards) and professional actors (superintendents, other specialists), accentuating that all those parties need to build up a governance mindset for the enhancement of coherence and leadership of all (Campbell & Fullan, 2019). At the same time, it is argued that leadership development needs to be sensitive to environmental and cultural factors as well as to focus on distributed leadership and instructional leadership (Harris & Jones, 2021). Such desirable leadership practices at the local level have been described by Louis et al. (2010) as focusing on setting directions, developing people, refining and aligning the organisation, and improving teaching and learning programmes.

As a Nordic country in Europe that despite certain New Public Management tendencies has a tradition of “strong state and local authorities, clinging to comprehensive education, collaborative and deliberative leadership and cohesive schools” (Moos, 2013, pp. 222), Iceland provides an interesting case for exploring such local level leadership. In Iceland, municipalities are responsible for the operation of the compulsory schools and are in 98% instances also the schools’ owners. Alongside, they are responsible for ensuring the schools with appropriate school support services. The services must provide various support for children in preschools and compulsory schools and their parents. In line with international research emphasises (see Leithwood and Louis, 2012) the services must also "focus on promoting schools as professional organizations that can solve most of the issues that arise in schoolwork and provide school staff with guidance and assistance in their work as appropriate" (Reglugerð um skólaþjónustu sveitarfélaga við leik- og grunnskóla og nemendaverndarráð í grunnskólum No. 444/2019, Article 2).

Little research has focused on municipal educational leadership in Iceland, including that of the school support services. However, in a national survey research (Sigurðardóttir et al., 2022) on school support services educational leadership practices, this leadership was measured against desirable leadership practices at the local level (see Leithwood et al., 2008, 2020; Louis et al., 2010). The results indicate limited leadership and sparse initiatives on the municipal’s school support services behalf, especially regarding school improvement and staff development (Sigurðardóttir et al., 2022).

Although that survey provides important information on the leadership at the local governance level, it lacks deeper insights on those leadership activities and the way that they play out in the different municipal contexts. Thus, the study presented in this paper describes what characterizes municipal leadership practices in different Icelandic contexts by using the organization and leadership of school support services as a frame and reference.

While distributed leadership has no universally accepted definition, it is largely accepted as a form of shared leadership that is spread across leaders, followers, and the situation (Spillane 2005). The model has been regularly researched over the last twenty years and has been the cause of much debate among the educational leadership academic community. Its elusive nature has added to challenges in researching the topic as this has led to theorists talking past each other causing misunderstandings (Mayrowetz 2008). Distributed leadership has been described as a potential case of “old wine in new bottles” (Spillane 2005, 149) and concerns have been raised about the suitability of the shared model in the bureaucracy of schools (Hartley 2010). Nonetheless, it has become the most frequently implemented school leadership theory internationally and is commonly accepted as good practice among researchers, practitioners, and policymakers alike.

The distributed leadership model has recently become embedded in Irish policy (Barrett 2018; Department of Education 2022), like many other countries internationally. Yet, little is known about post-primary school leaders’ lived experiences of this shared model of leadership. The aim of this study was therefore to explore the lived experience of post-primary school principals and deputy principals of distributed leadership as set out in policy.

As this paper is part of the first author’s doctoral thesis, this aim was achieved using a conceptual framework developed as part of her doctoral thesis. This comprises interacting elements relating to features of distributed leadership, policy, and practice. The policy element of the conceptual framework relates to two government documents discussing school leadership; Leadership and management in post-primary schools (Barrett 2018) and Looking at our school 2022: A quality framework for post-primary schools (Department of Education 2022). The practice element of the conceptual framework comprises school culture, context, and situation including organisational routines, structures, and tools as outlined by Spillane (2005). Lastly, the characteristics of distributed leadership relate to various concepts found within research that aid in explaining aspects of distributed leadership. This includes building leadership capacity, power and empowerment, accountability, division of labour, sustainability, and trust. This conceptual framework helped to inform the research questions as well as aid in data analysis.