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Australian Context and Challenges

Australia has a commonwealth government that oversees six state and two territory governments. Education in Australia is a complex interplay between these different levels of government and between government and nongovernment schools. There are almost 9,500 schools serving 3.5 million students in Australia. Two thirds of students attend a government school, 20 % a Catholic school, and 14 % attend a range of independent schools (Australian Government 2011). With 34 % of students attending nongovernment schools, this means Australia is unusual. Across OECD countries, the average is 14 %, with Australia having the third highest proportion of students in nongovernment schools (OECD 2013). The responsibility for the provision of government schooling constitutionally rests with the state and territory governments, but increasingly there has been commonwealth government influence, especially in terms of significant grants to both government and nongovernment schools, the development of a national curriculum, the creation of a national accountability system through the development by the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) of a national assessment program in literacy and numeracy at years 3, 5, 7, and 9 and a national data collection and reporting program through the My School website (www.myschool.edu.au), and the provision of means-tested living allowances for students aged 16 and over. The nongovernment sector is dominated by the large system of Catholic schools coordinated through various dioceses that serve approximately 20% of all school-age children. Apart from the Catholic emphasis and a higher proportion of private income funding the schools, the Catholic system is similar to that of the government, typically adopting similar approaches to curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment. Independent schools include a range of religious (e.g., Anglican, Coptic Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, Islamic, Jewish, Lutheran, and Seventh-Day Adventist) and nonreligious (e.g., Montessori and Steiner) schools. The proportion of students attending nongovernment schools has increased, rising from about 4 % of students in 1970 to 14 % in 2010 (Australian Government 2011). In some jurisdictions, the proportion attending nongovernment schools is particularly high, with, for example, the proportion of students attending nongovernment secondary schools in Victoria standing at 43 % in 2012 (Department of Education and Early Childhood Development 2012).

The educational landscape is complex. For example, in a recent paper we (Gurr and Drysdale 2012) highlighted tensions and dilemmas principals face that are related to teaching and learning (education trends such as personalization, the construction of new learning environments (with a major Federal government initiative stimulating this – Building the Education Revolution Implementation Taskforce, 2011) and the implication of these for more collaborative teaching, and consideration of the type of leadership needed for contemporary schools), developing people (teacher quality, rewarding teachers, and leadership preparation), and external pressures (the introduction of a national curriculum and increasing accountability through initiatives such as the public reporting of school performance data). Since the publication of this paper, there have been a major review of school funding that was implemented by the previous elected Federal government and then almost abandoned by the current government, renewed interest on Australia’s performance on international tests, and consolidation of a principal leadership standard (AITSL 2011), although no movement to have mandated principal leadership credentials. Neither of these areas has changed much at the school level, but they are suggestive of a somewhat unstable policy environment that principals have to navigate. Supporting these assertions, Dinham (2014), the current President of the Australian College of Educators, has described several pressures on Australian education including: focus on the quality of teaching and related efforts to reward good performance and punish poor performance; importing school reform ideas and beliefs about education uncritically from Britain and the USA, such as the ideas that free markets, choice, and competition are good, public education is failing, and private sector involvement in education is needed; decline in universities and rise of other institutions in the provision of teacher training; continuing push for greater school autonomy; greater interest in big business controlling major aspects of education including curricula, teaching resources, teaching standards, teacher development and appraisal, and student testing; and a diminishing role for educational research and the voice of educational researchers. Dinham described these pressures as like being in the wave of a tsunami at sea and being unaware of the cataclysmic forces that can be generated as the wave hits land. We will not explore the context in further detail here as the review of research below highlights many of the issues principals face in working within the context.

Research on Australian Principals

In our reviews of successful school leadership (Gurr 2008, 2009, 2012; Gurr et al. 2010a, b), we describe how substantial Australian research on educational leadership has a 50-year history and a predominate focus on principals. The 1960s saw research and teaching on educational administration emerge, particularly fueled by the work of Walker and colleagues at the University of New England and Bassett and colleagues at the University of Queensland. The research tended to be descriptive and somewhat prescriptive, with little connection with other research. In the following decades, research and writing remained focused on principal leadership but lacking major studies. This changed with “The Australian School Principal: A National Study” (Duignan et al. 1985), a study that heralded a 25-year interest in exploring Australian school leadership. Using interviews with principals, parents, teachers, and students from government and nongovernment schools in all Australian states and territories, a survey administered to 1,600 principals, and 14 case studies of highly effective schools from across Australia, it was the first major study in Australia to explore principal leadership and effectiveness and presented a model relating principal personal and professional qualities (including leadership) and the nature of their work to improving teaching practice and, indirectly, student learning outcomes. In the ensuing years there were many more contributions such as:

  • Several books on how principals lead school improvement and success (e.g., Beare et al. 1989; Caldwell and Spinks 1992; Simpkins et al. 1987)

  • A large survey-based study exploring leadership, organizational learning, and student outcomes – Leadership for Organisational Learning and Student Outcomes (LOLSO) (Mulford and Silins 2003; Mulford et al. 2004)

  • Many small-scale case studies of successful principal leadership such as exploring innovation and success (Dimmock and O’Donoghue 1997), market-centered leadership (Drysdale 2001, 2002), and leadership of a successful Christian school (Twelves 2005)

  • Publication and distribution to all Australian schools of a book of 17 stories about the exhilaration of being a principal, with all the principals highly regarded and successful school leaders – Leading Australia’s Schools (Duignan and Gurr 2007)

  • Formation of the Australian arm of the International Successful School Principalship Project through production of 14 case studies, surveys of principals and teachers, and revisiting several of the original case study principals (e.g., Drysdale 2007; Gurr 2007, 2008; Gurr and Drysdale 2007, 2008; Gurr et al. 2006a, b, 2007; Mulford and Johns 2004; Mulford et al. 2007; plus papers by Mulford and colleagues included below)

As this brief historical tour indicates, Australian research on principal leadership has accelerated from its foundation in the 1960s, and so it was timely that two substantial reviews of Australian educational leadership research were published in journals in the past few years. In 2007, Mulford published, through the Australian Council for Educational Leaders, an overview of Australian educational leadership research from 2001 to 2005 through an examination of articles published during this period in the four leading Australian-based education journals (Australian Journal of Education, Australian Educational Researcher, Leading and Managing, and Journal of Educational Administration). Through a detailed exploration of the papers, Mulford provided what he described as reliable, evidence-based conclusions in the areas of leadership, transformational leadership, distributed leadership, school organization and student outcomes, job satisfaction/stress and leader supply/demand, system and community issues, and survey instruments; we will return to these themes in the discussion. The justification for the years selected was that this period reflected “a period of major ferment in the area, and of major change in views about schooling and school leadership” (Mulford 2007, p. 4).

Eacott (2009) conducted a different type of review, focusing on the statistics of the extent to which Australian authors were publishing in 18 leading educational leadership journals over a 30-year period (1977–2007). Of the journals inspected, only two had a high proportion of Australian authors: Leading and Managing (58.93 %) and Journal of Educational Administration (28.59 %). All others had less than 14 % Australian authorship. Finding that most of the publications came from a relatively small group of academics publishing in a small number of journals, he called for a “renewed focus on undertaking research that matters to both the theoretical and practical development of the field” (page 65). Eacott’s review did not delve into the content of the articles published, as did Mulford’s review.

Review Method

In this review, we replicate most of the review of Mulford by reviewing articles published between 2006 and 2013 in the two key publication sources for Australian educational leadership authors (Leading and Managing and Journal of Educational Administration), and to maintain comparability with Mulford, the relatively minor journals for Australian educational leadership research, Australian Journal of Education and Australian Educational Researcher. All papers that are directly related to Australian principal leadership were reviewed regardless of whether they had Australian authors or not. Mulford included articles that were directly and indirectly related to Australian educational leadership (e.g., reviews of international test result data, the constructions of teachers found in policy documentation). We are only including articles that make a direct connection with Australian principals. We are not including book reviews, editorials, or other types of nonresearch-based articles. We are also not including reviews of research or topic articles unless they have a specific Australian focus. Table 10.1 shows the number of articles in each issue of each journal, the number of articles with a direct connection to principal leadership, and the number of articles with an indirect connection, focused on other aspects of school leadership such as student, teacher, middle-level, and senior leadership.

Table 10.1 The number of articles in each issue of each journal for the years 2006–2013, the number of articles with a direct connection to principal leadership, and the number of articles with an indirect connection
Full size table

There are few aspects to note other than the consistent dominance of ACEL’s academic journal, Leading and Managing, as a source for publications on the role, work, and leadership of Australian principals and the limited lack of support for publishing on this in either the Australian Educational Researcher or Australian Journal of Education (which as Wildy and Clarke (2008a, b) noted are broadly focused education journals). In terms of getting Australian research out to a world audience, it is somewhat disappointing that only 5 % of articles in the Journal of Educational Administration are focused on Australian research, given that this is both the oldest journal in the field and has a history beginning in the University of New England, Australia.

Australian Principal Research, 2006–2013

Here, we present the major thematic categories. This is based on a larger analysis that will appear in one or two journal articles. The categorization is somewhat eclectic in that we have tried to stay true to the chapter brief of providing an overview of the Australian principals’ role, work, and leadership during the twenty-first century. As such, the categories reflect our view of the important elements reflected in the research papers. Many, if not all, of the papers could be mentioned within several categories, and there could be additional categories to those we have chosen. Nevertheless, we believe that this chapter will provide a useful overview and a stimulus to our Australian colleagues to engage with this same set of information in different ways.

Principal Development

This was a broad category that included: professional learning, support programs (mentoring, coaching, and critical friend), principal preparation, beginning principals, and succession planning. Of the articles that were directly related to the principal, six articles were from JEA, 15 from Leading and Managing, and one from the Australian Journal of Education.

Professional Learning

There were only two papers that actually explored principal professional learning. Cranston (2008) described a program to develop principal problem solving that used “real-world” leadership cases, with these proving to be an effective tool for learning. Russell and Cranston (2012) explored professional learning offered by a system and found that while principals and aspiring principals used these programs, they believed they had little impact on school or student outcomes and that their professional learning needed to be supported by other activities such as networking, mentoring, and coaching and access to university expertise, and that activities needed to be related to school tasks.

Professional Support

This area refers to programs such as mentoring and coaching and the use of critical friends to support leaders and leadership development. Principal mentoring (Hansford and Ehrich 2006; O’Mahony and Matthews 2006) and coaching (O’Mahoney and Barnett 2008) and the use of external agents or critical friends (Jetnokoff and Smeed 2012) were all shown to be beneficial to principals and schools, although not without constraints due to lack of time and personality or expertise mismatching (Hansford and Ehrich 2006). Degenhardt (2013) coined the term “professional companioning” to describe these support roles and suggested that ex-principals might be able to take on this role because of their knowledge and experience.

Preparation/Aspiring Leaders/Beginning Principals

Research on aspiring leaders, the preparation of principals, and beginning principals is included in this section. Conceptual frameworks were the focus of two research papers on beginning principals. Quong (2006) reported on how he applied an action learning methodology to his own leadership as he faced real problems in his first year as principal in a Northern Territory school. Quong described a change progress model, in which he asked questions about the rate of change based on judging, confronting, and learning. Wildy and Clarke (2008a, b) synthesized a decade of their research on novice Western Australian principals, mostly leading small schools, and described a conceptual model of principal preparation based on place, people, system, and self.

Two papers from Wildy and Clarke’s (2008a, b) review are included here. Wildy et al. (2007) compared principals’ preparation programs in England, Scotland, Australia, and Mexico. Data for the paper was mainly derived from the mapping of principal preparation programs conducted in each of the participating countries in the International Study of Principal Preparation (ISPP) that constituted the first phase of this project. Their findings showed that the apprenticeship model used in Australia and Mexico provided inadequate training and preparation. Clarke et al. (2008) reported on a qualitative study of five novice principals in Western Australia that showed how the training and support provided were not sufficient to make them feel adequately prepared for their roles. Continuing this line of research, Clarke et al. (2011) reported on a survey developed for phase three of the ISPP in Western Australia and given to 45 novice principals. The survey explored the most severe challenges experienced by principals in the first 3 years in the role and to what extent preparation programs prepared them for the challenges. They found that there was a lack of formal and appropriate preparation programs to meet the needs of beginning principals.

There were four papers related to supporting teachers to become principals. In the NSW context, Canavan (2007) and d’Arbon and Cunliffe (2007) reported on the evaluation of an innovative leadership preparation program for young aspiring leaders in the Sydney Catholic education system and concluded that succession planning and preparation should be an integral part of the long-term strategy for developing future leaders. Using autobiographical interviews with 15 recipients of the 2010 NSW Quality Teaching Award, the journey from classroom teacher to leader was explored by McCulla (2012). McCulla found that informal mentoring relationships and professional networks were highly influential in gaining leadership positions and that the journey was meandering rather than definitive. There was one paper that, on the basis of a literature review of factors that support or hinder aspirant leaders to apply for the principalship, argued for the creation of more programs to help develop leadership in aspiring leaders (Bezzina 2012).

Succession Planning

This section on succession planning provides four papers that focus on the potential large-scale retirement of principals due to the demographical profile of current Australian principals. The first two papers explore the retention of late-career principals and the last two selection processes. Marks (2012) suggested that better use of late-career principals could be a valuable resource for extending leadership capacity. Using survey and interview, Marks asked would-be retirees their opinions and found that the majority would prefer to stay on in a full-time or part-time capacity and a vast majority were interested in refocusing their work in retirement. In a second paper prompted by this research, Marks (2013) asked two questions, “Are education systems interested in retaining late-career principals beyond retirement?” and “Are late-career principals interested in staying on?” For answers, Marks conducted an Australian and overseas literature review, investigated national education policy domains, and referred to his previous research findings. While the various jurisdictions have yet to make up their minds, late-career principals indicated their willingness to remain in the workforce. Gronn and Lacey (2006) reported on two studies exploring leadership aspirant perceptions of career and the principalship using focus groups, individual interviews, and journals. The report covered the states of Victoria, Tasmania, and Queensland and focused on matters of selection such as selection bias, application risk, application writing, interview experiences, selection judgments, and feedback. They suggested that the selection process is a game of chance and emotional endurance and that selection panels are tending to be risk adverse and preferring internal applicants. Perhaps offering a way forward to build a quality selection process, Wildy et al. (2011) described the careful construction and refinement of performance-based leadership tasks and rubrics that were able to successfully differentiate performance of candidates for selection as secondary principals in Western Australia.

School Improvement Programs: IDEAS

Developed by Crowther, Andrews, Lewis, and colleagues at the University of Southern Queensland, IDEAS is an enduring, influential, and well-researched school improvement program and perhaps the most significant program of its type in Australia. There were eight papers, all in Leading and Managing, that were dedicated to reporting research associated with IDEAS, with six papers from the University of Southern Queensland research group. Teacher leadership (those teachers who influence others but are not in leadership roles) was the subject of two papers (Lewis 2006; Lewis and Andrews 2007) with both describing how these teachers were able to positively contribute to school improvement, while Dawson (2011) described how teacher facilitators of IDEAS grew professionally, especially when supported by their principals. The use of IDEAS by a newly appointed principal to revitalize a school was described by Andrews (2008), and Pilkington and Lock (2013) explored the implementation of IDEAS in seven senior secondary schools, noting improved student learning and other school changes (greater teacher collaboration, common purpose, improved teaching, and so on), and the importance of principal leadership, the work of the implementation team, and whole-school commitment. These studies relied on interview and opinion in relation to improvement. Crowther (2010) and Crowther et al. (2012) both reported on multiple method research which demonstrated the positive impact of IDEAS on student learning and teacher work outcomes. Wildy and Faulkner (2008) compare IDEAS with a similar Western Australian developed improvement program RAISe, noting similarities between the two (emphasis on teacher development, use of particular terminology to denote membership, and partnering with universities) and also noting implementation difficulties (importance of principal role, time needed for sustained change, and the messiness of change). What is noteworthy about the IDEAS research is that research has moved from descriptions of single cases to larger studies across many schools and with better evidence of improved student learning outcomes (earlier research was able to clearly demonstrate changed teacher practice but was criticized for lack of evidence of student change; Gurr 2009). What is now needed is more large-scaled evidence of success of the program, with a focus on sustainability of success, and more research from those outside the project.

Successful School Leadership

Successful principal leadership continues to be an important area of research and was a focus for a number of researchers throughout Australia, particularly evident in research connected with the International Successful School Principalship Project as shown in the following five papers. Drysdale et al. (2009, 2011) returned to two successful principals to explore their ability to sustain improvement and found that the principal’s attitude toward change (seeking continuous change or consolidating) was a key factor influencing the kinds of responses and interventions they selected in the face of internal and external forces. There were four papers based on a survey of Tasmanian principals and teachers about successful school leadership. Mulford et al. (2007) argued that the definition of school and leadership success should be widened to include student outcomes that included social outcomes and evidence gained from more than just principal perceptions. Mulford et al. (2008a, b, c) found that a common characteristic of effective schools in high poverty situations was high performance principal leadership. Mulford et al. (2008c) confirmed the validity of the decision-making index (a measure of collaborative decision-making processes) and suggested that this could be linked with student outcomes and school capacity factors. Mulford et al. (2009) showed that late-career principals can remain successful in their roles and continue to make a significant contribution to their schools.

Several papers reflected on aspects or particular features of successful school leadership. From interviews with seven independent school principals, Cranston et al. (2006) argued that dealing with complex ethical dilemmas, often deciding between two “right” options, was now a normal part of the work of principals. In a related topic, but based on 2-day observational data on NSW principals, Parkes and Thomas (2007) highlighted the importance of values in the role of the principal, particularly the value of personal relationships which effective principals placed as a priority above efficiency in order to maintain quality relationships and concern for others. From surveys of senior management team (SMT) members in Queensland and New Zealand secondary schools, Cranston and Ehrich (2009) argued for a distributed model of leadership to improve school governance and developed a TEAM Development Questionnaire for identifying areas for improvement in SMTs. Through survey and interviews with Queensland principals, Niesche and Jorgensen (2010) found that the effect of systemic reforms on leadership practices was more positive in schools where successful leadership was present. Dinham (2007) summarized several studies he has been involved in that focus on exploring how school leadership, broadly conceived, leads to improved student learning. The AESOP research project is noteworthy as an outstanding example of large-scale qualitative research that makes a powerful, argued case for the impact of leadership (in this case both middle-level and principal leadership) on student learning outcomes.

We end this section with two conceptual papers. Written at a time when Australia’s Federal Education Minister was wanting to increase the powers of the school principal over teacher appointments, dismissal, pay, and control of budgets, Odhiambo (2007) proposed that to be successful in the future, school principals would need to adopt a more collaborative approach which recognized the complexity of schools and rejected the notion of heroic leadership. Focused on micropolitics, Smeed et al. (2009) suggested school leaders use three types of power (with, over, and through) relating to contextual circumstances.

Catholic Schools

With one in five Australian students attending a Catholic school, there is considerable research interest focused on this sector. Much of the research has come from studies in NSW schools (seven of 11 papers exclusively and one in association with another state). Spry and Neidhart (2009) report on the construction of a system view of leadership for Catholic education, resulting in the production of model with five domains – Catholic identity, community, education, stewardship, and future focus – and four leadership capabilities: personal, professional, relational, and organizational. De Nobile and McCormick (2007) surveyed 356 NSW Catholic teachers on job satisfaction and occupational stress with findings pointing to the need for principals to be accessible, supportive (especially in regard to student issues), able to create friendly and supportive environments, and encourage innovation. Using this same data plus additional data from surveys of 568 Catholic teachers in NSW, ACT, and Queensland, De Nobile (2010) added to the earlier findings by noting that openness in communication improved the teacher work environment. Belmonte and Cranston (2007) conducted rich case studies of the experiences of six lay primary and secondary Catholic principals in a rural NSW diocese. They found challenges and dilemmas faced by these principals centered on the purpose of Catholic schools, the changing role of principals, tensions in the principal-priest relationship, and lack of preparation and support. There were two papers, previously mentioned, associated with a leadership preparation program in Sydney, NSW, targeting Catholic teachers under the age of 30 (Canavan 2007; d’Arbon and Cunliffe 2007). Turkington (2009) provided a review paper linking the Sydney Catholic school review and improvement framework with establishment of professional learning communities. Jackson and Bezzina (2010) described survey- and interview-based case studies of four NSW Catholic secondary schools in which principal engagement with pedagogy, organization, people, and vision led to improved provision for the learning needs of students with disabilities. Through insider observation and interview, Nicholas (2010) described the establishment of a new Catholic systemic secondary school in Sydney and found principal leadership was important (setting direction, establishing efficient processes, supporting staff, etc.). Nicholas argued for the construction of new school design principles that could assist in the successful establishment of new schools. The two non-NSW papers were by Pettit (2010) and Neidhart and Lamb (2013). Pettit (2010) used an interview and survey methodology to explore with principals and teachers the use of data to inform practice with principal and assistant principals being the most data informed and literate, followed by coordinators, with significantly lower affinity for data found in teachers. Using survey and interviews, Neidhart and Lamb (2013) found that Victorian principals believe their faith role is important, are aware of their own limitations in this area, and propose that faith formation needs to be part of teacher and principal development.

Small, Rural, and Remote Schools

Another research area focused on school type is that associated with principal leadership in small, rural, and remote schools. Depending on area, between 25 and 45 % of Australian schools have less than 100 students, with many of these schools in rural or remote locations (Wildy and Clarke 2004). Areas of study included: how principals creatively attracted and used resources (money, physical, human, and community resources) to support school improvement (Anderson and White 2011); how a district supported principals to lead small schools (Clarke and Wildy 2011); the job demands on Queensland rural, regional, and remote principals (Drummond and Halsey 2013) and small school principals in Tasmania (Ewington et al. 2008); the expectations on newly appointed small school female principals (Gilbert et al. 2008); exploring how space (the physical space of the school and the community it serves) and spatiality (socially produced space) are important ideas for privileging the work of leading these schools (Halsey 2013); and exploring indigenous leadership and the development of an intercultural educational leadership framework (Frawley et al. 2010). Small schools provide unique challenges associated with school culture, community expectations, role complexity, and resource attraction and allocation (especially related to staff and community), with remote school contexts intensifying the challenges and adding additional challenges associated with coping with remote locations and community cultures.

Focus on Teaching

Given the history of studying successful school leadership, it was somewhat surprising that there were only five papers that described Australian research that had some connection principal leadership for learning. Surveying Western Australian teachers about their perception of principal leadership, Cavanagh (2007) found through structural equation modeling that in an 11-element principal leadership model, giving attention to individuals (attention to individual teachers, provision of professional development, coaching of teachers, and recognition of teacher and student effort) and promoting renewal of schooling (advocating need for morally positioned changes to education) were higher order leadership functions that impacted directly on seven of the nine remaining elements. In particular, principal leadership of pedagogy was dependent on both of these elements. Pepper and Wildy (2008, 2009) explored the implementation of a sustainability initiative, noting principal understanding of the concept, sharing of leadership responsibilities, and enthusiasm for the initiative were important elements of successful implementation. Reviewing research on the influence of school leadership on student outcomes, Marsh (2012) identified the challenges faced by contemporary leaders (accountability, educational reform, ambiguity of leadership) and suggested that leadership needs to go beyond the current notion of position-based concepts of leadership through a Leadership for Learning view that was community focused and involving of anyone who had the potential to influence student outcomes. Cranston et al. (2010) reported on a national survey of government primary school principals that explored their perception of the purpose of education. Principals reported a disconnection between what they considered should be the purposes of education, the strategies for achieving them, and the realities of what was actually occurring. They concluded that principals believe schools are not orientated toward public purposes to the extent that they thought they should be, nor were they enacting practices that supported public purposes.

Strategic Leadership

Eacott (2008) provided a review of research on strategy in educational leadership and argued that before there is cohesion in this area, research will need to be more theoretically inclusive and coherent and use mixed-method research designs. While a general review, it provided a call for Australian research in this area. Drawing on both his research on strategic leadership and interest in the sociological critique of schools, Eacott (2011) used a larger study involving interviews with 36 government school primary principals in NSW to show how school-based strategic planning is allowing governments to better control schools and the work of principals. Albright et al. (2012) studied minutes and transcripts of the meetings of school improvement planning committees in two NSW government schools (a primary and a secondary school) and found that presentism (having a short-term focus) was hampering school innovation and improvement. While not taking a strategic leadership perspective, the case study of the transformation of a Brisbane government primary school shows how a strategically oriented principal can lead substantial and lasting change. Through review of previous research and the personal reflection of the principal, Golding et al. (2012) described the leadership of Hinton at Buranda State School as she used critical and creative philosophical thinking to focus students, teachers, and parents in a collective improvement effort.

Governance

At a time when school self-management and concern about accountability continues to be of interest (Dinham 2014) and there is a call for research into school governance (see Gurr et al. 2012), it is somewhat surprising to only find two papers focused on school governance. Through principal interviews and school case studies of small independent schools in Western Australia, Payne (2007) found that including experts from the corporate sector onto school boards has brought a corporate mentality to governance with the result that principals had to meet expectations associated with managerial responsibilities rather than educational leadership. Payne suggested the new context and expectations may have a deleterious impact on the passion and mission that has excited principals in the past and that it may lead to increased principal turnover. Gray et al. (2013) explored the experience of the four schools in their transition from school councils to school boards as part of the newly legislated Independent Public School (IPS) in Western Australia. The IPS program was introduced to give government schools greater autonomy through authority and accountability at the local level. Data were collected from interviews with 38 board members, observational data, and document analysis. The experiences of board members were variable and problematic in terms of understanding their roles and being able to use their expertise on the board. A lack of clear guidelines and support contributed to this feeling of uncertainty.

Leadership Behavior

While many articles comment directly or indirectly on the behavior of principals, there are three that are particularly noteworthy. We have already mentioned the research of De Nobile (De Nobile and McCormick 2007; De Nobile 2010) that described how openness in communication, accessibility, teacher support, and creating friendly and supportive work environments promoted teacher job satisfaction and reduced stress. De Nobile (2013) used interviews and surveys of teaching and nonteaching primary school staff to explore upward and downward supportive communication in schools. Upward (to the principal) was less prevalent than downward (from the principal) or horizontal (with colleagues) supportive communication. Somewhat counterintuitive to the findings, De Nobile suggested that principals needed to engage in more downward supportive communication to establish an environment of communication reciprocity. Roffey’s (2007) review and interview-based research on six principals establishing caring communities resulted in a 14-element community building model that had principal vision and skills at the center.

Other Papers

There were five further papers that were not included in the previous discussion but which are relevant to Australian principal leadership. These will be briefly mentioned here.

There were three review papers. Eacott’s (2009) paper has already been mentioned above in framing this paper. Watson (2009) reviewed Australian educational leadership in light of an OECD report about future school leadership (OECD 2008), concluding that school leadership needs to be reinvented and in particular that the work of principals needs to shift from the administrative to the educational. Cranston and Kimber (2010) explored educational policy and provided an evidence-based policy framework with research, political, and technical lenses that, while not directly related to principal work, provides a helpful framework for educational leaders to understand and critique policy decisions. A conceptual paper by Bishop and Limerick (2006) explored the use of corporate style performance measures (balanced scorecard and triple bottom line accountability and sustainability) in the Queensland school system and argued that while these measures cannot be ignored, they need to be carefully adapted to educational contexts.

Trimble et al. (2012) explored principal knowledge of education law through a mixed-method study involving a survey/scenarios (n = 15) and interviews (n = 3) with primary government school principals in Tasmania. They described how principals gained knowledge about legally related routine activities and nonroutine legal problems, how there were sometimes general misconceptions, and how they deferred to expert advice for major legal issues.

Raihani and Gurr (2010) provided the only paper on an Islamic school when they explored parent involvement using interview and survey methods. Despite respondents agreeing on the importance of parent involvement, they found involvement was limited and that principal and senior leaders were responsible for this managed relationship. Suggestions for how the school leadership could develop greater parent involvement were made.

Discussion

Mulford’s (2007) review and his claims for reliable, evidence-based conclusions in seven areas have been eloquently criticized by Wildy and Clarke (2008a, b) who remind us of the contribution of Greenfield to moving our research from a positivist-centered view of certainty. We do not have space to address these issues, and while we do not want Mulford’s categorization to dominate this discussion, it is useful to offer some comments in relation to his categories of leadership, transformational leadership, distributed leadership, school organization and student outcomes, job satisfaction/stress and leader supply/demand, system and community issues, and survey instruments. The importance of positional and distributed leadership and the largely indirect influence of principals and other school leaders on student outcomes is not challenged by any of the papers reviewed. Of the research focused on Australian educational leadership, it is overwhelmingly focused on principals. For example, of the 110 papers in Leading and Managing, 51 % were focused on Australian principals and 22 % on other Australian educational leaders, with the remaining 27 % focused on other matters and/or with an overseas focus. While there were few studies that referred to transformational leadership, the importance of principals providing direction and motivating, supporting, and working with teachers, the essence of most concepts of transformational leadership, was the subject of many papers. While there rightly remains considerable interest in research about the work of principals, the work of school leaders other than the principal was evident in many papers and most notably in the papers about the IDEAS project. If we were to broaden past a principal focus, we would have included review sections on student leadership (13 papers), teacher leadership (six papers), and middle-level leadership (eight papers), further reinforcing the idea of a more dispersed view of leadership. There was limited explicit focus in the reviewed papers on how school organization impacts on student outcomes, although, again, there were obvious implications about this in the many papers that addressed school improvement initiatives. There was continuing research interest on job satisfaction/stress and role of principals in helping the work of teachers, and there were several papers that explored the leader supply/demand issue. The focus on system and community issues was not as strongly apparent as Mulford’s review indicated, perhaps reflecting the criticism by Wildy and Clarke (2008a, b) that Mulford included too many indirect papers. Finally, there continued to be research that involved the use and construction of surveys to better understand the work of principals and schools.

Our review suggests considerable interest in principal development in particular and leadership development broadly. This is of interest in a country that does not have the leadership credentialing seen in jurisdictions such as in many parts of North America, England, Sweden, and so forth. One third of the reviewed papers explored aspects of principal development such as principal preparation, support for beginning and experienced principals, the work of late-career principals, and succession planning (including programs that target early career teachers). One fifth of papers focused on large research projects about school success: the IDEAS project, the International Successful School Principalship Project and the Successful School Principal Project, AESOP, the International Study of Principal Preparation, and the Leadership for Learning project. Those context matters are shown powerfully by the continuing interest in Australian small, rural, and remote schools expressed in several papers in this review. There was a somewhat surprisingly small selection of papers focused on leading teaching and learning. If we were to include the teacher and middle-level leadership papers, this section would have been much larger, perhaps reflecting Mulford’s earlier observation of the indirect effect of principal leadership on student outcomes. At a time when many (e.g., Robinson and Timperley 2007) are calling for greater emphasis on principals as leaders of teaching and learning (often using the dated term of instructional leadership; see Gurr et al. 2007, 2010a, b, for a discussion about this), it is worth noting that there is not much research interest in this. This possibly reflects how the work of other leaders in schools is becoming increasingly important, and the IDEAS project encapsulates this in its emphasis of parallel/teacher leadership to support principal efforts in driving school improvement. Nevertheless, principals have an important role in improving teaching and learning, and it would be useful to have more research that explores this. Smaller research areas were associated with exploring strategic leadership, governance, and leadership behavior.

We included a section on Catholic schools, partly because there were a large number of papers focused on these schools (one fifth of the papers reviewed), partly because in the Australian context these schools constitute a large but somewhat loose confederation of many smaller systems that educate one fifth of all students, and partly because we thought there would be some unique findings. This section is indeed rich in knowledge, most of which is applicable to principals and to school systems broadly, but with a few papers targeting important aspects such as faith formation in principals and teachers. While not discouraging the conduct of the more broadly applicable research conducted in Catholic schools, it would be useful to have more research that targets the unique aspects of leading Catholic and other faith-based schools. Further research could, for example, explore the role of principals in the various governance models used in Australian Catholic schools (Gurr et al. 2012) and their role in the faith formation of others, the influence of faith on school-parent relations (Raihani and Gurr 2010), the work of religious principals and the religious in schools, and so forth.

Methodologically, there was a range of methods used. Mulford (2007) argued for more large-scale quantitative research, and Wildy and Clarke (2008a) were fearful that this might lead to the demise of rich multimethod and qualitative research. Neither need worry as there were examples of well-constructed survey-based research, many examples of research using both surveys and interviews, and studies using a variety of qualitative methods. Perhaps qualitative studies were overrepresented, and maybe Eacott’s (2008) call for more mixed-method research in strategic leadership is appropriate to the broader educational leadership field. If we have a criticism of the Australian research, it is that there were too many papers reporting on part of a larger study without fully describing why the authors were doing this, and the uniqueness of the contribution of Australian principal/education leadership research to larger world knowledge was not adequately reinforced (with perhaps the exception of the research on IDEAS and the small, rural, and remote schools). On this last point, we intend to extend this review by searching through other international journals that Eacott (2009) has found which include a sizable contribution by Australian academics (e.g., Journal of Educational Administration and History, International Journal of Educational Management, Journal of Educational Change, International Studies in Educational Administration, and International Journal of Leadership in Education which all have more 9 % of papers written by Australian authors).

Much of the research seems to be directed by the personal research interests of individuals or teams of researchers from a single university. This can be reflective of local, national, and international issues. For example, researching about new types of schools like the independent public schools in Western Australia reflects a local interest, the large proportion of research on Catholic schools is a national interest (although much of this driven by researchers from New South Wales), and the leadership on successful school leadership is largely linked to membership of an international research program. Less evident is research that addresses school leadership issues associated with government or community-identified national issues, such as quality teaching, community partnerships, school autonomy, new technology, and twenty-first-century schooling as detailed by the Council of Australian Governments (2014). Of course, there is often a lagged effect operating here, with the outcomes of research published some time after an event or issue. Nevertheless, to some extent it appears that research is more the product of individual researcher interests than part of a coherent and collective engagement by those researching in the educational leadership field. Importantly, Eacott’s (2009) call for more research cohesion and focus on research that matters to both the theoretical and practical development of the field needs to be considered. In matters of school reform, many are worried that the educational researcher voice is being ignored (e.g., Dinham, 2014), and so research that is across universities and contexts, focused on current theoretical and practical issues of national and world importance, is perhaps the next step in the development of the educational leadership research community.

The extent to which Australian research is influenced by overseas research is a perplexing question and difficult to answer, and here we draw on largely anecdotal arguments. There are many Australian researchers engaged in international collaborative projects, with two examples noted above: the research of Gurr and Drysdale and Mulford and colleagues in the International Successful School Principalship Project and the research of Wildy and Clarke in the International Study of Principal Preparation. Involvement in international projects by Australian researchers is a mutually beneficial partnership. In terms of where evidence and knowledge come from, there may be overreliance on overseas literature. The main journal that Australian educational leadership researchers publish in is Leading and Managing, which has a wide distribution of more than 6,000 hard copies to ACEL members, yet it is only in 2014 when it gained distribution through an electronic journal service. For those researchers (and policy makers) not members of ACEL, they may need to rely for their knowledge base on access to other journals through library subscriptions to electronic journal databases, and in these, the primary source of evidence comes from overseas and overwhelmingly from North America and the UK. So, even though there is considerable Australian research, most of it is published in a journal that currently needs a member subscription to access. This is likely to change as Leading and Managing becomes more widely accessible, but for the moment it can be argued that much of the knowledge base comes from overseas sources. Another way to consider the influence of overseas research is to consider what is being presented at major conferences. We travel regularly to major overseas conferences and find that much of the educational leadership research at conferences like those of the American Educational Research Association, Commonwealth Council for Educational Administration and Management, European Educational Research Association, and University Council for Educational Administration tends to be concentrated on principal preparation and development, school restructuring, and a range of social justice issues associated with areas like leading in disadvantaged settings, democratic leadership, equity and access, and cultural diversity. Not all of this research is relevant to the Australian context, and so much of this research agenda is either not evident in the research we have described or, if it is, it is locally specific. Importantly, the importation of ideas from overseas needs to be carefully considered. For example, while there is research interest in principal leadership preparation and support, much of the Australian research in this area is focused on the lack of preparation for the principalship and the need to provide programs for aspirant and newly appointed principals. In countries like Australia, where there is no mandatory credentialing of principals, this is understandable. However, in countries where credentialing is mandatory, such as the USA, the focus of research switches to the quality of the programs provided, rather than the need to provide programs. So, the US research is not wholly useful to the Australian context and needs careful selection and interpretation. Of course, Australian research can inform the international research agenda. For example, the Australian focus on support of principals once they are in the job provides good evidence on the worth of mentoring and coaching.

In conclusion, the Australian research on educational leadership utilizes a wide range of research methods, is both extensive and worthwhile, but also is somewhat idiosyncratic and individualistic. It could engage more with researching matters of national importance and with researchers working more collaboratively across universities and research centers. While there are good connections with the international research community, there could be greater connection with international research agendas and the greater promotion of the use of Australian research.