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Elementary schools have been confronted with large-scale educational reforms as strategies to improve the educational quality. While building school-wide capacity for improvement is considered critical for changing teachers’ classroom practices, there is still little empirical evidence for link between enhanced school capacity for improvement and instructional change. In this study, the authors examined the impact of school improvement capacity on changes in teachers’ classroom practices over a period of time. Leadership practices, school organizational conditions, teacher motivation and teacher learning were used to measure school-wide capacity for improvement. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Mixed-model analysis of longitudinal data over a four years (2005-2008) period of time from 862 teachers of 32 Dutch elementary schools were used to test the impact of school improvement capacity on changing teachers’ instructional practices.

The results showed that organizational-level conditions and teacher-level conditions play an important, but different role in changing teachers’ classroom practices. Whereas teacher factors mainly affect changes in teachers’ classroom practices, organizational factors are of significant importance to enhance teacher motivation and teacher learning.

More longitudinal research is needed to gain better insight into the opportunities and limits of building school-wide capacity to stimulate instructional change.

By encouraging teachers to question their own beliefs, facilitating opportunities for teachers to work together to solve problems, and through the promotion of shared decision making, school leaders can reinforce the personal and social identification of teachers with the organization. As a consequence, teachers will feel increasingly committed and are more willing to change their classroom practices. Additionally, school leaders can use the findings from this study and the related instrument as a tool for school self-evaluation.

This paper contributes to a deeper understanding of the nature of changes in conditions for school improvement and its influence on changes in teachers’ instructional practices over a period of time.

Although it is assumed that school district governance by districts leaders can impact schools’ capacity to improvement and educational quality, there is little systematic evidence to support this claim. The purpose of this paper is to discuss how governance goals and interventions affect school districts’ social capital.

The empirical enquiry used quantitative data on district leaders enacting governance as perceived by their school principals. These data were collected among 399 school principals of 23 Dutch school districts in elementary education, using a survey. Social network data on social capital within school districts were collected using a social network survey among educational administrators (i.e. district leaders, central office administrators and school principals). Additionally, examples of the relation between school district social capital and governance at six school districts were described.

Results suggest that district leaders can promote the organizational social capital of their school districts through focusing on educational goals. In addition, the findings show that they can reinforce their impact by using interventions varying in coercion level, of which offering support to school principals appears to be “a golden button” to make organizational social capital thrive.

Limitations to the study are the generalizability of the findings (they can be questioned because “convenience sampling” was used) and warrant a longitudinal design to examine how organization social capital develops over time.

The study is unique as it addresses the impact district leaders may have on their districts’ social capital by focusing on social network approach in the study of school district governance.

While in everyday practice, school leaders are often involved in social relationships with a variety of stakeholders both within and outside their own schools, studies on school leaders’ networks often focus either on networks within or outside schools. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the extent to which principals occupy similar positions in their school’s network and the larger district network. In addition, the authors examined whether principals’ centrality in both networks can be attributed to demographic characteristics and transformational leadership (TL).

Using social network analysis, correlational and regression analysis, and an advanced social network technique, namely p2 modeling, the authors analyzed data collected among 708 educators in 46 Dutch elementary schools. The authors also offer a visualization of the district social network to explore principals’ relationships with other principals in the district.

Results suggest that principals who occupy a central position in their school’s advice network are also more likely to occupy a central position in their district’s collaborative leadership network. Moreover, TL was found to affect the extent to which principals are central in both networks.

The study is unique as it simultaneously explores principals’ social relationships in schools and the larger district. Moreover, the authors advance the knowledge of TL as a possible mechanism that may shape the pattern of these relationships, thereby connecting two streams of literature that were until now largely disconnected. Limitations to the study warrant further qualitative and longitudinal research on principals’ social relationships in schools, districts, and the larger community.

Collaboration is viewed as an essential ingredient for education systems and school improvement. Collaborative leadership has both emergent and intentional components (Woods & Roberts, 2018). Collaborative practices can emerge over time as teachers and schools work together, and intentional interventions and decisions can either support this emergence and/or work against it. In this chapter, we discuss the New Zealand case of collaboration between schools. The context is situated in policy reform associated with an incentivized and voluntary programme that groups of schools could participate in. The programme, communities of schools (CoLs), was implemented in 2014 and continues at the time of writing this chapter. We draw on critical commentary of the programme, as well as the small number of research studies available. The experienced way of CoLs is replete with tensions. These are illustrated with the help of Hoods’ (1998) social regulation and cohesion matrix. Rather than locate the New Zealand case in one quadrant of the matrix, we illustrate how multiple aspects of Hoods’ matrix (1998) have been and are currently in play regarding collaboration between schools in New Zealand.

Examines the nature of transformational leadership and its relation to teachers’ changed practices within the context of Dutch large‐scale innovation. Presents two qualitative studies and a survey. The qualitative studies produced three dimensions of transformational leadership: vision, individual consideration, and intellectual stimulation. Within the framework of the survey, these dimensions were further operationalized and exploratively related to teachers’ concerns, teachers’ learning activities, and teachers’ changed practices. The results indicate the significance of the dimensions of transformational leadership in relation to changed teacher practices. The results also suggest the significance of intervening constructs for future research into the impact of leadership on changed teacher practices.

The growing knowledge society has caused a change in the meaning of knowledge and learning. In Dutch schools, this creates a demand for evidence-based innovation and school development and a need for working with data. This chapter focuses on leadership in changing schools including the difference between management (organizing, structuring, and budgeting things that already work); leadership (adapting things that do not run smoothly, stimulating, motivating and empowering people, and communicating vision); and relationship with interactional and transformational leadership. Consequently, inquiry-based leadership is becoming the center of interest internationally (Geijsel, Krüger, & Sleegers, 2010; Luo, 2008). The author presents a conceptual framework for deeper understanding of school leadership in the 21st century – that to be effective in their roles, they must learn how to create inquiry-based cultures in their schools and to continuously learn from data. Finally, the author identifies some challenges for school leaders in coming years and proposes ways that help strengthen their leadership including the professionalization for all leaders oriented to instructional leadership, inquiry-based leadership, higher order thinking and distributed leadership.