Dual leadership in Chinese schools challenges executive principalships as best fit for 21st century educational development.

This paper examines China's dual leadership model and compares it with the more traditional (western) single leader model. It addresses an important question in educational leadership: whether singular school leadership or a dual leadership is better? It is innovative as it mobilised an international research team to collect data from 115 Chinese school leaders and compare China's dual leadership with faith-based schools in other contexts. Given so much now is written about distributed leadership within and across schools, this paper offers valuable insights, especially for readers interested in the educational leadership practices of a rising global power. • This paper looks at China's dual leadership model and compares it with the more traditional (western) single leader model. • It addresses a vital question in educational leadership: whether a singular school leader or a dual leadership model is better? • International researchers collected data from 115 school leaders in China and compared dual faith-based leadership. • It addresses the under-researched but important relationship between school principals and party secretaries in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]