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This paper argues that the success of schools in disadvantaged township communities is shaped by an interplay of four dimensions: strategy, regulation, pedagogy and compensation. The paper presents these dimensions of successful leadership in secondary schools by drawing on a research study focusing on cases of three Soweto township secondary schools. Data sources included interviews, informal discussions and focus groups. The participants included principals, other members of the school management teams, teachers and parents. The case studies generated outcomes that contributed towards an emerging model of successful school leadership in township secondary schools facing multiple factors of deprivation. The successful school leadership practices explored in this study revealed that there were three discernible ways to characterise leadership practices in the case schools: principal-driven success; participative leadership driven by senior management; and teacher-led success. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Multiple deprivation affects a large proportion of schools in South Africa. The past 20 years of democracy have tended to focus on reforming education through curricula revision and a raft of redress-directed interventions, through the application of what we call a broad-brush policy approach. The paper argues that a broad-brush policy application fails to recognise the contextualised challenges faced in specific schools. The central purpose of the research was to discover the specific challenges and leadership issues that schools in multiple deprived communities face, and to identify ways in which such schools dealt with these challenges. The research was conducted through a case study approach of three schools in one of the most impoverished provinces of the country. In total 3 principals, 3 parents and 26 teachers were interviewed. The study found that while the three schools shared many similar conditions of poverty that drove the poor to marginal performance, stories of success tended to be strongly related to four key factors: (1) leadership that went beyond an ordinary focus on instruction; (2) staff stability; (3) flexible scheduling that allowed parental involvement; and (4) a focus on a school-wide project that acted as a rallying point and a source of pride for the entire school. The paper identifies asset-based leadership and servant leadership approaches as generative in schools facing multiple deprivation. The paper concludes with a call for more school-based improvement initiatives that seek to interrogate the impact of factors of multiple deprivation, and a broad policy redirection towards school improvement rather than educational reform, which has been the focus in the past 20 years. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper reports on evidence from five school principals regarding leadership practices that work in multiple deprived contexts. The South African educational landscape is complex, often described as a cocktail of first and third world institutions. Looking at the schooling system on a continuum, on the one end there are first class schools which can compare favourably with the best in developed countries. On the other extreme there are dysfunctional schools. However, along the scale there are few schools in multiple deprived areas which display high degrees of resilience and perform at levels comparable to first class schools in terms of Matriculation examination results. This paper draws from a study based on the proposition that leadership was the greatest factor to explain such performance. The study was then informed by a quest for knowledge regarding the nature of such leadership. Such knowledge is needed as the country fights to turn around the many dysfunctional schools there are. While there is a corpus of scholarship that ‘speaks’ to this matter internationally, there remains need for home-grown insights in that regard. Two theoretical lenses (servant leadership and the asset-based approach) were applied. The study employed a qualitative approach involving individual face-to-face semi-structured interviews with five purposively selected school principals each representing their school. Findings suggest that the schools in question adopted inside-out development approaches involving the philosophy that they were masters of their own destiny. Time, commitment, and accountability were some of their greatest assets, things that did not have to come from outside the schools. Internal success paved the way for stronger and more fruitful synergies with the ‘outside world’. We conclude that schools in areas of multiple-deprivation need leadership that moves them away from notions of victimhood and deficit thinking towards asset-based approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the preparation of school principals in Malaysia, and the aspiration of the Malaysian Education Blueprint 2013-2025 to ensure high-performing school leaders in every school. It reports on the principal preparatory programme, the National Professional Qualification for Educational Leaders, which is mandatory to those who aspire to be school principals. Documentary analysis was undertaken on materials used for leadership training programmes by the National Institute of Educational Management and Leadership or Institut Aminuddin Baki (IAB), which is the country's main leadership training and development centre, equivalent to the National College for Teaching and Leadership in England. Eight primary and secondary schools, chosen by stratified purposive sampling, were selected for the study. Interviews were conducted with principals and assistant principals of the eight schools, to establish how they were selected and prepared for their leadership roles. Interviews with Ministry of Education and IAB officials offered a provider perspective while an interview with an education minister clarified the policy and political contexts of the study. The findings of the study draw attention to the need to refine the selection criteria, with a focus on higher entry standards to ensure excellent leadership in schools, an emphasis on instructional leadership to improve student learning in schools, the conflict between central direction and the importance of situational leadership, and the political imperative for programme outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I explore the relationship of democracy to educational leadership; more specifically, to the notion of distributed leadership as it unfolds within policy-mandated multi-site school collaboratives, with particular reference to practices in Malta. Under the policy framework 'For All Children To Succeed' introduced in Malta in 2005, Maltese primary and secondary state schools embarked on the process of being organized into networks, legally termed 'colleges'. I explore leadership distribution among the leaders constituting the college and the subsequent inherent tensions within this educational scenario. The notion of distributed leadership as perceived by the leaders is examined, and especially the leaders' reception of its presentation in the policy document as the leadership discourse; and its eventual (non-)enactment at both school and college level. A Foucauldian theoretical framework, specifically Foucault's concepts of power relations, governmentality, discourse, and subjectification, is used to carry out a case study of a Maltese college, collecting data via semi-structured, in-depth interviews, participant observation and documentary analysis. Narrative is both the phenomenon under study and the method of analysis. The policy discourse does not unfold in a participatory democratic manner in practice, resulting in an organizational paradox where leadership enactment in a Maltese college is 'directed' from above, rather than 'distributed'. These findings may be significant for educational practice, policy and theory in terms of the generation of problematization which may lead to further research on this contested topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Significant changes have taken place in the governance of education systems around the world. Shifts in education policy have led to a focus towards reform through leadership development and away from school management analysis. This shift in policy from management to leadership has fostered a large number of academic studies presenting a universal and decontextualised leadership discourse, which dominates the field of education research to the detriment of issues of school management and head teachers’ capacity to manage schools. This paper examines the domain of headship in the context of North Cyprus. Through the perspectives of head teachers and policy makers, it demonstrates that within the North Cyprus context, leadership, as defined in the dominant discourse, is not yet possible, and management is both difficult and sometimes inadequate. Findings suggest that there is a strong relationship between school leadership and management practices. The context within which head teachers operate influences their leadership and management practices and capacity development. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Leadership, currently prescribed as a key requirement for effective school organization and management, is examined here as a rhetorical or discursive device, as a 'turn', in the sense used in literary and sociological discussion of the linguistic turn. In the educational sphere, a tacit separation of leadership from issues of governance and management is becoming apparent. This move may be significantly related to an aestheticization of learning, and what is said to be increasingly the performative nature of its application in educational institutions in England. Leadership is inherently relational, but institutes and sustains unequal power relations. The paper argues that a significant distinction should be understood between performance and performativity, analogous to 'event' and 'possibility', which affords unrealized ethical and emancipatory opportunities for educational practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes that effective leadership in intercultural schools requires authentic understanding and related action; and that this can only be sought through a dedication to ongoing leadership learning. After briefly introducing the metaphor of authentic leadership, outlining the influence of culture on school leadership and the context of intercultural schools the paper suggests a number of learning avenues through which leaders can consciously reframe and better understand problems and solutions around these intercultural school contexts. These interrelated avenues include learning beyond standardized leadership prescriptions, simultaneously trusting and mistrusting experience, learning through student learning, learning through variation, learning through looking beyond culture and learning through curiosity. The major theme running through related discussion is that authentic intercultural leadership is particularly attuned to the values, beliefs and behavioral uniqueness of the students, teachers and others which comprise the community. In other words, it aims to acquire intercultural understanding on an ongoing basis and use this to inform leadership belief?, and practice. Therefore, authentic leadership and learning can be viewed as inseparably twinned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents abstracts of the papers published in "Management in Education" which include "A Personal BELMAS History," "The Role of the Effective Subject Leader: Perspectives From Practitioners in Secondary Schools" and "Faith in School Leadership: Conceptualising the Distinctiveness and Inclusiveness of Church School Headship."