Editorial

The collection of articles in this issue of School Leadership & Management cover a range of topics investigated from a number of interesting methodological perspectives.

The first article by Frawley and Fasoli explores the concept of interculturalism and its complementary relationship with the idea that Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal staff in Australia need to learn to become intercultural teachers and leaders, and this demands the acquisition of new leadership capacities. The second article turns our attention to the process of Information Communication Technology (ICT) reform in a Singapore school. Ho and Ng use a naturalistic inquiry approach to focus on the distributed leadership actions and the factors which enabled and constrained the distribution of leadership during the reform process.

The third article by Graham revisits the important and well-researched area of school ethos. The author takes an interesting perspective, drawing on a case study of a Scottish school to focus on student perspectives of school ethos in their final year of schooling, and considers the implications of student views for broader issues of school improvement.

The final two articles take us back to Australia. Sandt turns our attention from student voice to another well-established and key issue for educational change and improvement, teacher professional development. Drawing on findings from an action research project focusing on the contribution of peer observation to professional growth, this article highlights both the potential for collaborative learning through peer observation and some of the challenges associated with this approach. Wood, Spandagou, and Evans report the findings of a quantitative survey exploring principals’ confidence in managing disruptive student behaviour and how this relates to the geographical context of the school.

The concluding contribution to this issue is a book review of Leadership for Quality and Accountability in Education by Brundrett and Rhodes (2011). This review offers a balanced set of reflections and highlights the complexity faced by modern school leaders seeking to improve the quality of outcomes in decentralised market-based cultures. Finally, it is worthy of mention that in addition to revisiting the aims and scope of the journal, the editorial board has decided to broaden the remit of our review contributions. In addition to book reviews, School Leadership & Management is actively seeking submissions providing state-of-the-art reviews of the field or aspects of the field. These should be submitted in the usual way through our e-submission system. We look forward to receiving and reviewing your submissions.