Leadership in Asian international schools: Mapping a research agenda

A robust body of international research has now conclusively shown that among school-level factors, leadership stands second only to classroom teaching in terms of influence on student outcomes (Leithwood, Harris & Hopkins, 2008). This impact is commonly analyzed as indirect because school leaders’ impact occurs through their influence over and shaping of learning and teaching conditions (Hallinger & Heck, 1996; Leithwood et al., 2008; Louis et al., 2010). Syntheses of research that examine the work of successful principals have identified that school leaders tend to enact their leadership through a common set of practices, although how they do this may vary (Day et al., 2010). Among these practices is the tendency of school principals to distribute their leadership to other formal leaders (senior and middle managers) and to informal leaders, such as identified teacher leaders. “Taking a distributive perspective means analyzing how multiple leaders co-perform leading and managing, particularly those organizational routines that are critical for the fulfillment of core organizational functions” (Spillane & Coldren, 2011, p. 35). Copyright © 2018 selection and editorial matter, Kerry J. Kennedy and John Chi-Kin Lee; individual chapters, the contributors.