{"title":"The price of popularity: Expanding EMAL to manage demand","authors":"T. Bush","doi":"10.1177/17411432221132632","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17411432221132632","url":null,"abstract":"In 20 years as editor-in-chief of Educational Management, Administration and Leadership (EMAL), I have been able to observe the growth of our field from a privileged position. Over these two decades, interest in educational leadership has grown dramatically, notably in its expansion from its Anglo-Saxon roots to become a global phenomenon. EMAL bears witness to this expansion, with submissions from 44 countries in the past 12 months. While this growth is gratifying, it provides challenges in managing the journal. As submissions have increased, from around 80 a decade ago, to more than 500 in 2022, the Editorial Board has adopted several strategies to manage demand. Initially, we changed the number of issues per volume from four to six. This was followed by increasing the page extent of each issue. Subsequently, we made the criteria for acceptance more stringent, meaning that fewer submissions were published. Despite all these changes, the gap between acceptance and allocation to an issue has grown, meaning that papers might be available online-first for more than two years before they receive volume, issue and page number details. The Editorial Board and our publisher, Sage, have responded to this problem by increasing the number of articles in each issue from eight or nine to 12, beginning with this issue. Over time, we expect this change to reduce the backlog of accepted papers. Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy reading the additional articles. The first paper in this newly expanded issue, by Se Woong Lee and Xinyi Mao, provides a systematic review of the US literature on the recruitment and selection of school principals. As these authors note, there are challenges in recruiting sufficient well-qualified applicants in several countries, including the US. Following a systematic search strategy, they identified 64 studies for inclusion in the review. They highlight four main implications of their study. First, they note the lack of attention to minority principals in the literature, a significant issue as student populations are becoming more diverse. Second, women continue to be under-represented as principals, an issue in many other national contexts. The authors recommend mentoring to address these imbalances. Third, they point to working conditions, notably long hours, as a disincentive for potential principals and as a consideration influencing principal turnover. Finally, they point to the lack of research on hiring processes in the US, but this is also true of international research. High-quality preparation may contribute to providing a pool of good applicants for principalship positions. Gavin Murphy explores leadership preparation and career pathways for novice principals in Ireland. Drawing on interviews with 12 recently appointed principals of primary and postprimary schools, the author notes that principals feel that distributed leadership is working well in their schools. He comments on the importance of anticipatory socialisation and of","PeriodicalId":47885,"journal":{"name":"Educational Management Administration & Leadership","volume":"4 1","pages":"3 - 5"},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2022-11-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86710897","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Leadership for inclusive online learning in public primary schools during COVID-19: A multiple case study in Hong Kong","authors":"T. Lee","doi":"10.1177/17411432221135310","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17411432221135310","url":null,"abstract":"Despite the increasing number of studies on educational leadership during COVID-19, little attention has been paid to the intersections of different educational experiences and perspectives of school leaders, students, and their families that occur both inside and outside of schools. Drawing on eight case studies of public primary schools in Hong Kong, this article explores the challenges and strategies of online learning with a focus on effective leadership practices for supporting economically disadvantaged students during COVID-19. To incorporate the perspectives of multiple stakeholders, a series of questionnaires were distributed to principals (n = 8), teachers (n = 150), parents (n = 775), lower primary students (n = 855), and upper primary students (n = 850) and interviews were conducted with principals (n = 8), teachers (n = 37), parents (n = 32), and students (n = 62). Findings indicated that school leaders and teacher teams demonstrated strategic leadership practices prioritising and responding to the needs and constraints of economically disadvantaged students and their families. The present study draws attention to leadership encouraging collaboration among schools, families, and the wider community, which has become necessary during the shift to online learning during COVID-19.","PeriodicalId":47885,"journal":{"name":"Educational Management Administration & Leadership","volume":"19 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2022-10-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74486363","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Editorial: System leadership in English schools: The long goodbye to local authorities?","authors":"T. Bush","doi":"10.1177/17411432221123402","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17411432221123402","url":null,"abstract":"Most of the discourse of educational leadership relates to schools, colleges and universities, and researchers often use these settings as units of analysis. They may be seen as ‘prime institutions’, central to the educational landscape, within their communities and beyond. However, these organisations may also be conceptualised as part of a wider system of schools, coordinated, and perhaps controlled, by a more senior level within the educational hierarchy. The ‘glue’ that holds such systems together, and provides a degree of coherence, is the district level. Collectively, despite their ubiquitous presence, the role of districts remains under-researched and weakly theorised. In England, local education authorities, later described just as local authorities, had a substantial role for much of the 20th century in leading educational provision. The 1944 Education Act described education as a national service, locally administered. Local education departments, headed by chief education officers, or directors of education, played major roles in defining and coordinating community education provision. Local authorities were also political entities and political values and ideologies were influential in determining the nature of schooling and further education within their boundaries. This ‘middle tier’ was an important arena for educational policy-making, with accountability to local communities through the electoral process. It is important not to romanticise this period as a ‘golden age’, because there were often political and/or bureaucratic weaknesses, but they were successful in providing a local centre for educational development. In the 21st century, as Steven Courtney and Ruth McGinity report in the first article in this issue, local authorities have become much less significant as schools were encouraged, or cajoled, to become academies, independent of local authorities. Subsequently, a new ‘middle tier’ emerged in the form of multi-academy trusts (MATs). These authors note that MATs are now the legal entity that provides educational services across numerous sites that may or may not have a geographical basis. They say that suchMATs now constitute educational ‘systems’, led by an executive headteacher or chief executive officer (CEO). They report on a case study of a MAT in a coastal community, comprising four schools. They conclude that system leadership, epitomised by MATs, is a mechanism for depoliticization, with power located within unaccountable, para-statal institutions. Further education in England has also experienced a substantial change in the new millennium, with significant impacts on college leadership. Stephen Corbett investigates the role of further education middle managers in a distinctive way, through the lens of human resource managers, addressing the question, what are the contemporary professional expectations of further education middle managers in England? The author surveyed one HR manager from each college with a 19%","PeriodicalId":47885,"journal":{"name":"Educational Management Administration & Leadership","volume":"19 1","pages":"891 - 892"},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2022-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81891153","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Middle leadership in higher education: Challenges and opportunities","authors":"T. Bush","doi":"10.1177/17411432221112489","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17411432221112489","url":null,"abstract":"Leadership in higher education is perceived to be increasingly managerial in many contexts. Power is often centralised in a senior leadership team headed by a president or vice chancellor. Departmental leadership may then be seen as primarily a conduit for the implementation of top-down decision-making rather than an opportunity to carve out a distinctive identify linked to the academic and professional norms of subject disciplines. University reputations are based on the collective achievements of their departments, but this may not be reflected in sufficient scope for such middle leaders to define their role or the future of the sub-units they represent. Responsibility without power, for example in respect of financial and staff management, is a recipe for frustration for such academic leaders. As a consequence, being appointed as a department head may be seen as a ‘poisoned chalice’ rather than a reward. Sharon Kruse explores these issues in her study of department chair leadership in the United States. She cites Buller’s (2012: 3) comment that chairing a department in higher education is ‘probably the most important, least appreciated, and toughest administrative position in higher education’. Drawing on 45 interviews with department chairs, she focuses on chairs’ perceptions of their role. Her findings indicate that chairs struggle to balance their approaches to the work, in an unavoidable and often overwhelming political landscape, with limited institutional authority. Greeni Maheshwari and Rakkishore Nayak explore the barriers and enablers to women leadership in Vietnamese higher education. They note that women in Vietnam widely accept their traditionally ascribed roles as housewives and experience challenges when seeking leadership positions. They interviewed 21 people, 19 women and 2 men, working in higher education institutions in Ho Minh City and Hanoi, including senior leaders, middle managers and lecturers. They report that the main barriers to career enhancement were work–life imbalance, subordinates’ perceptions, social networking and personal factors. The enablers were perceived to be family and mentor support, changing mindset of employers, and the potential competency of women leaders. These factors are consistent with international research but understanding these issues in this distinctive context contributes to our understanding of this important and complex phenomenon. Promotion opportunities in higher education may also disadvantage women. Ed Dandalt and Stephane Brutus examine this issue in respect of business schools in Canada. They report that women are under-represented as full professors in Canadian business schools (only 23% are women). They conducted a survey of tenured female faculty in these business schools, followed by the analysis of faculty collective agreements between six universities and faculty unions or professional associations. They conclude that, while there is evidence of gender discrimination, often u","PeriodicalId":47885,"journal":{"name":"Educational Management Administration & Leadership","volume":"54 1","pages":"737 - 738"},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2022-08-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82233421","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Principals’ digital instructional leadership during the pandemic: Impact on teachers’ intrinsic motivation and students’ learning","authors":"I. Berkovich, Tahani Hassan","doi":"10.1177/17411432221113411","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17411432221113411","url":null,"abstract":"The COVID-19 pandemic caused education systems to embrace remote schooling and online learning. In the context of this dramatic change, the principal's role has also changed. Instead of interacting face to face, school leaders had to become distant leaders operating digitally. The field has no knowledge of digital instructional leadership. The study used new and adapted measures to explore principals’ digital instructional leadership, its mechanisms of operation, and its outcomes. In particular, the research examined how digital instructional leadership affects perceived student learning in online settings through teachers’ intrinsic motivation for digital instruction (i.e. the mediator). The study used data from 380 teachers in Bahrain. Results indicated support for mediation. This is an empirical exploratory study, and therefore it is limited in scope. Nevertheless, its concepts, measures, and findings offer valuable contributions to research and practice. The limitations, findings, and implications of the study are discussed. The significance of the study derives from the growing incorporation of hybrid schooling in education and digital instructional leadership practices in mainstream principalship.","PeriodicalId":47885,"journal":{"name":"Educational Management Administration & Leadership","volume":"18 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2022-07-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76119762","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Instructional Boundary Management during COVID-19","authors":"H. Shaked, Pascale Benoliel","doi":"10.1177/17411432221103678","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17411432221103678","url":null,"abstract":"Instructional Boundary Management is an area of school leadership comprising activities that simultaneously involve instructional leadership and boundary management. This study explores principals’ Instructional Boundary Management during COVID-19. Data collection consisted of semi-structured interviews with a diverse sample of 33 Israeli elementary school principals. Data analysis indicated that principals felt an increasing need to carry out most Instructional Boundary Management activities during COVID-19. The findings suggest that COVID-19 influenced principals’ needs through the following three factors: the challenges that COVID-19 posed to teachers, the challenges that COVID-19 posed to students and parents, and the transition from face-to-face instruction to distance learning. These findings reveal the mechanisms through which COVID-19 affected Instructional Boundary Management activities, explaining how and why COVID-19 has led to a greater need for principals’ Instructional Boundary Management.","PeriodicalId":47885,"journal":{"name":"Educational Management Administration & Leadership","volume":"4 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2022-05-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73026497","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Challenges facing school principals: Problems and solutions","authors":"T. Bush","doi":"10.1177/17411432221096238","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17411432221096238","url":null,"abstract":"There is widespread evidence of the demands facing school principals in many parts of the world, illustrated recently by the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the normative preference for shared and distributed leadership in many contexts, principals retain the main accountability for school improvement and for student learning and welfare. The universal requirement for schools to be led by heads or principals reflects the importance of this role, and the pressures facing these senior leaders in most countries. These demands are particularly challenging in those many countries that do not provide specialised preparation or training for current or prospective principals. In the first paper in this issue, Mireia Tintore and colleagues present the findings of a scoping review of the problems and challenges faced by school leaders. They reviewed articles, books and book chapters, using keywords ‘problems’ and ‘challenges’, linked to principal or head teacher, finding 1138 sources potentially relevant to the review. The authors identify the main conflicts facing principals, including balancing system demands with leadership for learning, navigating pressures for autonomy and accountability and increasing pressures from families and the wider society. They conclude that the role of principals continues to be challenging. Marcus Pietsch, Pierre Tulowitzki and Colin Cramer report the findings of a study of principal ambidexterity in Germany, noting the need to simultaneously pursue exploitation and exploration. They also examine the relationship between these dimensions and the degree of competition between schools. They surveyed 405 principals from across the country. They report that these principals were more exploitative than explorative, and attribute this to inter-school competition and the need for schools to survive and, preferably, to flourish. While principals are central to school improvement, it is widely recognised that their impact is mostly indirect, via teachers. In the second paper focusing on Germany, Andre Meyer, Dirk Richter and Viola Hartung-Beck examine the relationship between principal leadership and teacher collaboration. The authors sampled 630 primary and secondary school teachers in one of Germany’s federal states. They found that teachers rated their principals’ instructional and staff development activities to be below average, despite the view that higher collective efficacy is reported where principals are involved in these activities. They conclude that principals rarely find sufficient time to devote to teachers’ professional development. Despite the ongoing emphasis on principal leadership, there is also increasing interest in shared models, such as distributed and participative leadership. A similar construct is democratic leadership, discussed by Monika Pazur in respect of Zagreb, a rare contribution to school leadership research in Croatia. The author claims that democratic leadership is oriented tow","PeriodicalId":47885,"journal":{"name":"Educational Management Administration & Leadership","volume":"134 1","pages":"533 - 535"},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2022-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77745138","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Instructional leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic: The case of Israel","authors":"H. Shaked","doi":"10.1177/17411432221102521","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17411432221102521","url":null,"abstract":"The instructional leadership approach requires school principals to give top priority to the continuous improvement of teaching quality and academic outcomes. This study explored how principals of elementary schools in Israel fulfilled their instructional leadership role during COVID-19. Data collection comprised semi-structured interviews with a diverse sample of 36 principals. Data analysis identified three different theories of action. In this study, a theory of action is the conscious or unconscious set of assumptions that explain how principals act professionally in a given situation. According to the first theory of action, moratorium, principals temporarily abandoned instructional leadership. According to the second theory of action, adaptation, principals changed instructional leadership to suit the specific conditions of COVID-19. According to the third theory of action, determination, principals uncompromisingly continued to demonstrate instructional leadership. These findings expand the available knowledge on how school leaders respond and what forms of school leadership practice emerged during COVID-19.","PeriodicalId":47885,"journal":{"name":"Educational Management Administration & Leadership","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2022-05-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83717277","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Succession planning for school principals: System control or leader agency?","authors":"T. Bush","doi":"10.1177/17411432221090727","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17411432221090727","url":null,"abstract":"The recruitment and appointment of principals are one of the most important activities of school and system leaders. The compelling evidence (e.g. Leithwood et al., 2006, 2020) that talented leadership has a signi fi cant impact on school improvement provides empirical support for the proposition that careful preparation and selection of principals are vital if schools and their students are to thrive. The criteria used to appoint principals vary across jurisdictions but typically include teaching experience, instructional leadership knowledge and skills and notions of contextual ‘ fi t ’ . However, such educational considerations may be trumped in some settings by political or administrative imperatives (Xue and Bush, 2021).","PeriodicalId":47885,"journal":{"name":"Educational Management Administration & Leadership","volume":"127 1","pages":"351 - 353"},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75044429","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}