Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to examine how instructional leadership, a concept imported from Western scholarship, has been conceptualized in the Taiwanese context and how principal instructional leadership is realized in schools. The development trajectory of principal instructional leadership is delineated by examining empirical studies in the past two decades. Design/methodology/approach -This paper adopts an exploratory approach to review the Taiwanese empirical literature on principal instructional leadership. A total of 80 studies were systematically analyzed and common themes were identified. Findings -This paper finds that a hybrid model of the conceptualization of instructional leadership has been developed in Taiwan. Principals performed more indirect than direct leadership behaviors. A gap exists between the ideal instructional leader and the reality.Research limitations/implications -The development of a formal theory of instructional leadership is expected as various substantive theories are developed and more data are accumulated.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to discuss how principals in Taiwan lead student and teacher learning at a time of leadership and learning paradigm shifts and the imminent implementation of the curriculum guideline for 12-year basic education.
Design/methodology/approach
This study interviewed 32 elementary and junior high school principals purposively sampled based on reputation and recommendation from senior principals and government officials.
Findings
As a society which values credentialism, principals in Taiwan face challenges in executing the vision of educating student as a whole person. The authors discuss how principals are solidifying whole person education as the espoused value, how they are enforcing school-based curriculum and effective instruction, and encouraging teacher professional learning. Principals are sharing power by recruiting stakeholders’ participation in guiding school development and enacting distributed leadership, while also building relationship as social capital and soliciting support from the community to establish the conditions to improve teaching and learning.
Research limitations/implications
This paper highlights how principal practices are evolving in a time of changing conception of learning from academic achievement to multiple competencies and the shifting paradigm of power from participatory decision making to distributed leadership. This paper ends with a discussion on how leadership for learning (LfL) as a community engagement has emerged.
Practical implications
With the shifting of the concept and paradigm of learning, principals in a high power distance society like Taiwan are now facing opportunities as well as challenges to lead teachers to engaging students in inquiry and collaboration.
Originality/value
This paper highlights the indigenous practices of principal LfL in a high-performing East Asian education system in a time of changing notions of learning and leadership.
In the context of educational decentralisation, school leadership encompassing different sources of leadership is significant for school performance. However, few studies have investigated the pathway regarding how principals and teachers as distinct sources of learning-centred leadership exert impact on teacher learning. To this end, survey data collected from 1340 junior high school teachers in Taiwan were analysed with structural equation modelling. The results suggest that both principal leadership and teacher leadership affect teacher learning through direct pathways, and that of teachers exhibits an even greater impact. In addition, principal leadership affects teacher learning through indirect pathways mediated by teacher leadership. By further investigating the mediating effects of different practices of teacher leadership, we found that teacher-led improvement of curriculum and instruction is a critical mediator for teacher learning.
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