This scoping review covers the academic literature on research utilization from its emergence in the 1970s to 2022, with a focus on empirical research conducted on K-20 education policies in the United States. John W. Kingdon’s policy process is applied to distinguish the perspectives of politicians from those of professional staff, because these two groups have different roles and responsibilities in the policy process. The findings reveal that very few empirical studies of the use of research in education policy have been conducted on politicians—those primarily responsible for creating education policy. Rather, most research has been conducted on professional staff whose primary responsibility is policy implementation. Thus, there is limited knowledge of how politicians themselves use research, calling into question the generalization of the academic literature to include politicians, a crucial group of policymaking actors.
The purpose of this study was to explore the impacts of anti-2SLGBTQIA+ sentiments in mainstream media on 2SLGBTQIA+ youth. Using the Minority Stress Framework and a case study format, qualitative interviews were conducted with 15 youth. While participants described the impact of media-driven stigma and negativity, many directly referenced Saskatchewan’s “pronoun policy,” viewing it as an institutional reinforcement of anti-2SLGBTQIA+ sentiment. The policy made discrimination feel targeted, immediate, and personal for these participants. Discussions of social exclusion, safety concerns, and institutionalized discrimination reflect the harmful influence of restrictive governance policies. These findings build on existing research on the compounding impacts of minority stress and institutional stigma in education and underscore the need for responsible and inclusive education policy and governance.
Collective efficacy is a well-established explanatory construct in education, yet research has focused primarily on teachers, leaving the collective efficacy of leadership teams less well-defined and empirically specified. Drawing on social cognitive theory and leadership scholarship, this article conceptualizes collective leader efficacy (CLE)—defined as leadership teams’ shared belief in their collective capability to influence adult and student learning—through three interdependent dimensions: shared understanding (coherence around purpose and priorities), joint work (cross-role inquiry and collaborative problem-solving), and evidence of progress (routines for interpreting whether leadership work is improving system conditions). Findings clarify CLE as a bounded leadership-team construct and foreground testable propositions regarding consistency routines, inquiry structures, and evidence cadence that can guide future measurement development and outcome-linked research.
This study examines the impact of school choice policy on spatial inequity and the segregation of secondary schools in Montréal, Canada’s second-largest city. A critical policy geography perspective is applied to understand the significance of spatial locations of secondary schools and their programs of choice. This study utilizes Canadian census data, student enrolment data, and information about schools and school choice from government, district, and school websites. These various data sets are used primarily to generate layers on maps that facilitate critical geospatial analysis of school choice patterns. Our analysis illuminates the inequitable distribution of school choice programs in spatial terms. We also illustrate how spatial inequity reinforces segregation, as those with greater resources are more likely to enroll in schools in high-status neighbourhoods.
School systems worldwide struggle with socio-economic segregation, often worsened by private schooling, which affects student learning and inequality. By dividing students along socioeconomic lines, both private schools and segregation can affect the development of essential skills for the twenty-first century. This study examines the link between private schooling, social segregation, and student global competence across 69 countries using PISA 2018 data. Multilevel models are used to estimate levels of social segregation and the association with private schooling and variations in student global competence between schools. While private school students tend to have higher global competence, countries with greater private enrolment exhibit lower average global competence, higher segregation, and wider global competence gaps between schools. Social segregation, driven by private schooling, is a key factor to explain global competence inequalities within countries.
This article examines the development of teacher leadership through the Teacher-Led Learning Circles project, a professional learning and research initiative across seven countries: Brazil, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Malaysia, South Korea, Switzerland, and Uruguay. Through targeted professional development over one academic year, the project advanced non-positional teacher leadership and confidence in four core formative assessment strategies as well as the embedded use of these strategies by teachers. Data were collected through multiple sources, including a teacher pre-survey (n = 171), a teacher post-survey (n = 121), a teacher codification framework questionnaire (n = 113), a local facilitator questionnaire (n = 27), a local union representative questionnaire (n = 10), a national researcher questionnaire (n = 7), and seven country profiles. Findings show that when teachers are supported, their influence grows, and formative assessment practices become more embedded and confident, highlighting the potential of teacher-led professional development for sustainable educational improvement.
The purpose of this study is to understand how teachers’ perceptions of teacher leadership are formed in education practice. Based on information processing theory and findings from 873 teachers in Chinese schools, this article provides an explanation of the formation of teachers’ leadership perceptions as a function of both alterable variables within the school context and unalterable characteristics of both leaders and followers. It is concluded that alterable school conditions explain most of the variations in teachers’ perceptions of teacher leadership. The study proposes the theoretical implication that alterable variables were more powerful in the development process of teachers’ perceptions of teacher leadership. In addition, the findings indicate that school principals can control organizational factors to enhance teachers’ perceptions of teacher leadership to improve the effectiveness of leadership.
This article was developed following a ten-month case study that explored how teacher leadership was manifested in a K-12 independent school. The researchers then conducted an oral history dialogue with the school’s founder to understand how his vision influenced the establishment of this specialized school for students with learning disabilities and how that vision continues to shape the school. Five themes emerged from the oral history: 1) vision and need for a specialized school; 2) teacher knowledge and expertise; 3) relationship building and trust; 4) social and political acumen; and 5) independence to support innovation. These results highlight how educational entrepreneurship from those who are not educators can contribute to ameliorating educational challenges by establishing an environment where teacher leaders can thrive.
Teacher leadership (TL) is recognized as vital to creating effective schools with demonstrated benefits to principals, teachers, and students. Teacher leadership is defined in this study as teachers leading from within and beyond the classroom in both formal and informal capacities. TL can take the form of a variety of behaviours such as professional learning, the leading of professional development, collaboration, shared leadership, and equity leadership. While there are commonalities, the practical applications of TL can vary greatly from context to context. Even within specific policy contexts, TL can vary from school to school. This article analyzed the responses of 1,274 public school teachers in Nevada using the Survey of Teacher Leadership and shows patterns in the frequency of TL practices across contexts.
The problem of school segregation has garnered considerable attention due to its adverse effects on learning opportunities and outcomes throughout the history of mass education, and increasingly in the marketized and privatized education landscapes worldwide. In this introductory article to the special issue of the International Journal of Education Policy & Leadership (IJEPL), “The Rise of Education Marketization and the Enduring Enigma of School Segregation,” we provide a brief overview of the articles included in this issue, as well as four major aspects of school segregation in the marketization of education. In doing so, we engage with existing theories of school segregation while marketization of education and school segregation.
This article investigates the extent to which media reporting challenges or reinforces socially exclusive models of educational excellence. Media reporting is particularly important in contexts of marketization, as schools compete for students and seek to carve out market niches. Based on an analysis of articles published over five years in a major daily newspaper in the Australian state of Victoria, a highly marketized setting, the findings indicate that reporting ignored social factors contributing to school-level performance. Further, reporting offered a prominent place to socially exclusive schools despite deliberate efforts to diversify the types of school profiled. The analysis points to media appropriation of a science-oriented discourse alongside selective use of data to fit a narrative of principal-led school transformation. The findings have implications for responsible and balanced use of school improvement measures locally and in other education systems.
The relationship between private schooling and social and academic segregation varies around the world. French private schools enroll a minority of secondary students, yet social inequalities are marked in French education. This article argues that the social role of private schooling must be understood in the context of the entire panoply of resources and institutional means of managing socio-academic competition. Specifically, we explore the relationship between curriculum provision and private schooling in producing school segregation in France. Drawing on census data for all secondary education students in major cities, we compare levels of school segregation in middle school, where the curriculum is broadly comprehensive, and in high school, where it is divided. The findings show that private schooling and curriculum both contribute to social segregation.
Although there is a growing body of research on teachers’ wellbeing, research on the relationship between teacher wellbeing and leadership roles in educational contexts is limited. Improved teacher wellbeing encourages teachers to engage in leadership roles, which affects student outcomes. This article discusses the dynamic symbiotic relationship between teacher leadership and teacher wellbeing. It posits that optimizing teacher wellbeing will increase teachers’ willingness and ability to take on more formal and informal leadership positions in schools for a sustained period. Utilizing human capital theory to illustrate the importance of investing in teachers’ physical, emotional, and cognitive states, this article proposes a “CEP Power-Up” decentralized-intentional approach encompassing four strategies to enhance schoollevel teacher wellbeing, leading to an uptake of leadership positions in Singapore schools.
Since 1972, the Swedish preschool has undergone several policy reforms that state guidelines for the work in preschool where preschool teachers and caregivers work close together in work teams. Since 2010, preschool teachers have been given increased responsibility for preschool education and its pedagogical content, including lead teaching, which has been identified as a challenging and complex issue in preschool practice. This study analyzes how preschool policies have positioned preschool teachers over time and how this plays a role in making it possible for preschool teachers to take increased responsibility for preschool education. Building on positioning theory and using a qualitative research design with content analysis of seven policy documents over time, the results show that policy documents have positioned preschool teachers as invisible between 1972 and 2010 by downgrading their position and as visible from 2010 to the present by upgrading their position. The results indicate that policies either marginalize or empower preschool teachers, with insights into the broader implications of policy decisions. Policy plays a crucial role as a mechanism with the power to reshape responsibilities and redistribute power within preschools. It is essential to overcome policy ambiguities when responsibilities overlap between preschool teachers and the work team, which enables opportunities for contested positions in which preschool teachers and caregivers can reinterpret their roles and responsibilities.
Through an analysis of 289 open-ended survey responses, this study examines how teacher leaders support new teachers transitioning from teacher preparation programs to full-time teaching positions. An analysis of the responses revealed that teacher leaders support new teachers with instructional planning, professional learning, mentorship, resource sharing, assessment guidance, and inclusive teaching strategies. Through these efforts, teacher leaders foster collaborative and reflective practices, cultivate professional capital, and promote adaptive expertise. The findings emphasize the relational nature of teacher leadership, highlighting the role of teacher leaders in co-constructing professional growth and resilience among new teachers and enhancing teacher development. Implications for policy and practice include prioritizing teacher leadership initiatives to reduce new teacher attrition, promote equity, and foster sustainable professional cultures within schools.
This article presents the findings from a review of contemporary scholarly work on teacher leadership, with a focus on the international evidence concerning the relationship between teacher leadership and school/system change. The PRISMA approach (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) was applied to review contemporary scholarly evidence over ten years, resulting in the identification of 26 journal articles that fully met the inclusion and exclusion criteria set for the review. The findings from this review suggest that, under the right conditions, teacher leadership can contribute to the process of school and system change. This review also highlights the need for more consolidated empirical work on the impact and outcomes of teacher leadership.
This article reports on a case study from Australia contributing to a global research project that explores concepts and definitions of teacher leadership in 12 countries using a three-phase data collection approach: an initial literature review; a survey developed from themes in the literature and conducted in each of the countries; and semi-structured interviews designed to explore in depth the understanding of teacher leadership as perceived by the participants in each country, which is the focus of this article. The findings show a lack of coherence regarding expectations of teachers as leaders and teacher leadership, and emphasizes the need for a system-school alignment in support of teacher leadership wherein the principal and the teachers are respectfully acknowledged and supported as the custodians of their context.
This article examines the early implementation of a provincial initiative aimed at improving mental health supports in Canadian elementary and secondary schools. A content analysis of 60 proposals submitted by school jurisdictions uncovered the organizational and cultural strengths and challenges that influence the development of mental health initiatives. The analysis revealed three strengths: readiness for change, tailored mental health solutions, and strategic leadership. Five challenges also emerged: fragmented service delivery, an overreliance on external service providers, a lack of qualified staff, difficulties in forming authentic partnerships with families and communities, and impediments to establishing an effective organizational infrastructure. The findings highlight the complexity of embedding mental health initiatives in schools and the importance of sustained leadership, professional learning, and community collaboration for long-term integration.
