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Leadership has long been acknowledged as a significant dimension in effective school functioning and, indeed, school leaders can play a substantial role in professional development of staff. Here we have centred on the practices of leading as opposed to the qualities or characteristics of leaders, and this is emphasised by our use of the term 'leading' rather than 'leadership'. In this article we explicitly focus on the leading practices of practitioners we describe as middle leaders, those with an acknowledged position of leadership but also a significant teaching role. Here we present data from a cross-national study of middle leaders in Australian primary schools and Swedish pre-schools that investigates the leading practices of middle leaders in educational contexts. The article draws on interviews with 22 teachers who have been given the responsibility for leading the practice development of their colleagues; these interviews give voice to this distinctive group of school leaders. In particular, the article draws on the theory of practice architectures to examine the social nature of the language, activities and relationships of leading 'in the middle', and the particular conditions or practice architectures that enable or constrain the development of middle leading practices in education. From this analysis we conclude with a definition of middle leading that includes positional, philosophical and practice dimensions. This could then be used to inform the domains of higher education, policy development and school education globally where middle leading practices are well established.

In this article, we report on a study examining those factors which contribute to the mathematics performance of a sample of children aged between 8 and 13 years. The study was designed specifically to consider the potency of a number of mathematical affective factors, as well as background characteristics (viz., gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status), on children's mathematics performance. Data were collected by surveying the children and drawing on performance ratings from their teachers. A correlation analysis revealed that the relationships between the respective dispositional and background variables with mathematics performance were significant and in the direction as predicted. Moreover, the findings from a logistic regression showed that a combination of these variables was able to appropriately classify students who either were below-average or above-average mathematics performers. We pay particular attention to the influence of certain dispositions with respect to mathematics performance and conclude by detailing the implications of the study for teachers and researchers.

Achievement in mathematics is inextricably linked to future career opportunities, and therefore, understanding those factors that influence achievement is important. This study sought to examine the relationships among attitude towards mathematics, ability and mathematical achievement. This examination was also supported by a focus on gender effects. By drawing on a sample of Australian secondary school students, it was demonstrated through the results of a multivariate analysis of variance that females were more likely to hold positive attitudes towards mathematics. In addition, the predictive capacity of prior achievement and attitudes towards mathematics on a nationally recognised secondary school mathematics examination was shown to be large (R 2 = 0.692). However, when these predictors were controlled, the influence of gender was non-significant. Moreover, a structural equation model was developed from the same measures and subsequent testing indicated that the model offered a reasonable fit of the data. The positing and testing of this model signifies growth in the Australian research literature by showing the contribution that ability (as measured by standardised test results in numeracy and literacy) and attitude towards mathematics play in explaining mathematical achievement in secondary school. The implications of these results for teachers, parents and other researchers are then considered.

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