Allan Walker
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 3701496 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Allan Walker |
| PRENOMES | Allan |
| SOBRENOME | Walker |
| ASSINATURA | WALKER A |
| AFILIAÇÕES | Education University of Hong Kong |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1191-0419 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 39 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 62 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 39 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 1981 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 5 |
Empowering Schools in Times of Crisis
This review synthesizes findings from 226 empirical studies on school leadership practices addressing various challenges during and after the COVID‐19 pandemic. Five major foci were identified through the thematic analysis. It is evident that school leaders, regardless of context, devote significant time and effort to urgent crisis responses, including facilitating student learning, allocating resources, empowering teachers, addressing school and…
Middle leadership for teacher learning in China
A growing number of studies show the potential influence of teachers with leadership responsibilities, that is, middle leaders, on teacher learning. The study reported in this paper focused on middle leaders in China who sought to enhance teachers' capacity across various school settings. Using Hallinger's (2011) synthesised leadership for learning model, we seek to understand the relationship between school context, that is, school organisation,…
Instructional or Distributed Leadership for Culturally Responsive Teaching? Cross-National Analysis Using Talis 2018
Purpose: This study provides cross-national evidence on the direct and indirect relationships between instructional leadership (IL), distributed leadership (DL), and teacher self-efficacy in multicultural classrooms (TSMC)—a critical component of culturally responsive teaching—as mediated by collective teacher innovativeness (CTI). Research Methods: Utilizing data from the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) 2018, this study employ…
Future-ready school leadership
This study aims to develop and validate the Future-Ready School Leadership Instrument (FRSLI), a psychometrically robust instrument that measures the multifaceted dimensions of effective school leadership in an era of rapid change and uncertainty. Three independent studies were conducted to evaluate the FRSLI's psychometric properties: Study 1 used exploratory factor analysis (EFA) to identify the underlying factor structure; Study 2 employed con…
How cultural context shapes school leadership and its effectiveness
Research into the influence of leadership and how cultural context shapes school leadership has recently expanded. This study systematically synthesised literature on the intersection of Hofstede's cultural dimensions and educational leadership. It explored: (a) the extent to which Hofstede's framework is applied in educational leadership research, (b) the impact of cultural dimensions on leadership practices, and (c) the facilitative and restric…
Developing teacher professional capital
The concept of ‘professional capital’, which consists of human, social, and decisional capital, has been adopted in many countries to guide teacher development and school practice. However, more empirical research needs to be conducted to understand the concept in the Chinese context. The study investigates how teachers accumulate their professional capital in Master Teacher Studios (MTSs), a cross‐school teacher professional learning community i…
Boundary-spanning practices of system leaders in China
There is currently considerable interest in system leadership and how it can support school change at scale. System leadership aims to move learning beyond school boundaries through leveraging experience and expertise. The success of system leadership depends on how key educational players can move effectively between and across traditional educational boundaries. China's education system has long-established system infrastructure to support boun…
Challenges in implementing instructional leadership
The growing international literature on instructional leadership notes that its implementation often varies depending on cultural and contextual factors. Previous studies have indicated that while Turkish school principals demonstrate some instructional leadership behaviours, they frequently do not practice its key components such as shaping teacher professional development, goal setting, curriculum development and instructional supervision. This…
Principal-designed structures that enhance middle leaders’ professional learning
Middle leaders in schools are increasingly recognised as playing pivotal roles in school improvement. Although some school systems provide formal professional development for middle leaders, many middle leaders express a preference for job-embedded learning. Yet, international research has documented difficulties in providing intensive support from principals which instead is often ad hoc. This study examines how middle leaders’ professional lear…
How school leadership practices relate to student outcomes
The present study aims to generate broad insights from the large corpus of literature on the associations between a comprehensive range of school leadership practices and student outcomes in different school contexts. Three-level meta-analysis of 493 independent effects from 108 studies published since 2000 showed that the mean effect size was small at r = 0.14. Effect sizes for leadership practices ranged from r’s = 0.10 to .26. Results undersco…
The ‘Double-Reduction’ Education Policy in China
In July 2021 the Chinese Government unexpectedly released what has become known colloquially as the ‘Double-Reduction’ policy. The policy decreed the reduction of homework pressure on students and greater control of private tutorial companies. In this paper, we set out to understand why the Chinese central government launched the ‘Double-Reduction’ policy in mid−2021 by using narratives to analyse the three most circulated explanations for the po…
Emotional trajectory at different career stages of principalship
Emotions hover like a shadow over the lives and work of school principals. This study aimed to build an understanding of principals’ emotional trajectories across principalship career stages by investigating the life stories of four excellent principals from China who were approaching retirement. The major data source was semi-structured interviews conducted with the participating principals. This study is a first to attempt to capture the dynami…
Reconceptualizing inclusive leadership to address diversity in schools
Through combining a diversity perspective and intersectionality approach, this paper contributes to the conceptualization of inclusive leadership for addressing diversity in schools. Drawing on literature from business and management studies as well as that of educational management and leadership, the paper first theorizes inclusive school leadership and outlines the tenets of inclusive school leaders. It then highlights some of the challenges f…
Running schools on two legs
Capturing interactions between middle leaders and teacher entrepreneurial behaviour
Limited but increasing research has noted that middle leaders (MLs) play a crucial role in structuring a supportive working environment to help entrepreneurial teachers transform educational innovation into practice. This study aims to increase understanding of the extent to which MLs with different levels of experience influence teacher entrepreneurial behaviour (TEB). The study employs the three dimensions of the ‘person-environment fit model,’…
Becoming a teacher leader
As an acknowledged example of a carefully structured teacher learning system, Shanghai has a long tradition of using expert teachers to drive teacher learning both within and across schools. This article tracks the work voyages of eight expert teachers in Shanghai using three forms of capital. The purpose of the paper is to explore how these teachers obtained and accumulated their human, social and symbolic capital from when they entered the prof…
Master teachers as system leaders of professional learning
Purpose This study aims to describe and analyze an innovative mechanism of teacher-led, system-wide professional learning that has been widely adopted since the beginning of the twenty-first century in China – the Master Teacher Studio (MTS). Design/methodology/approach This paper drew from policy documents, published Chinese literature relating to MTSs and personal fieldwork experience in Shanghai, Guangdong and Zhejiang province. Findings The a…
School Principals’ Time Use for Interaction with Individual Students
To test emerging narratives of principals’ direct effect on student outcomes on a large scale, this study investigates whether school principals’ time use for interacting with individual students is associated with academic achievement and student safety at school. Built on recent research on principals’ time use, this study explores whether economic, sociocultural, and institutional features of societies influence the amount of time principals s…
Developing a model of instructional leadership in China
This paper explores instructional leadership practices in China. It has three interrelated purposes. The first purpose is to report data which contributes insights into how Chinese principals understand and enact instructional leadership. The second purpose is to examine how the societal context impacts the enactment of leadership and the third is to suggest implications for international understandings of successful school principalship. The stu…
A heuristic model for tailoring teacher development to educational reforms
School Leadership in International Schools
Weaving Curriculum Connections in International Baccalaureate (IB) Schools
In this article we discuss how school leaders address challenges when implementing innovative international education curricula, namely International Baccalaureate (IB) programs. Specifically, we frame challenges in curriculum implementation of and transition between IB programs from a “disconnection” perspective. We have often noticed when innovative programs are parceled together without preparation and thrust at great speed at schools, they be…
What Leadership Practices Are Associated with International Baccalaureate (IB) Student Achievement? An Exploratory Study of IB Schools in Southeast Asia
This article explores what leadership practices are associated with International Baccalaureate (IB) student achievement. Using a combined data set of Diploma Program (DP) exam scores and teachers’ survey responses about school leadership from 29 schools in Southeast Asia, the article reports certain leadership practices (i.e., strategic resourcing, monitoring classroom teaching and curriculum, encouraging teacher learning and development) exerci…
The education of migrant children in Shanghai
Reform Disconnection in China
This article examines many of the frustrations associated with implementing education reforms in mainland Chinese schools. Our basic argument is that when taken individually, many of the recent reforms are beneficial, but when parceled together and thrust hastily at schools, they are unwieldy and disconnected. We suggest that the inability of the reforms to impact schools is due in large part to their lack of sufficient connection to the reality …
The education of migrant children in Shanghai
Developing a model of instructional leadership in China
This paper explores instructional leadership practices in China. It has three interrelated purposes. The first purpose is to report data which contributes insights into how Chinese principals understand and enact instructional leadership. The second purpose is to examine how the societal context impacts the enactment of leadership and the third is to suggest implications for international understandings of successful school principalship. The stu…
Globalisation and Societal Culture
This paper highlights the importance of societal culture to developing theory, policy and practice within an increasingly globalising educational context. It argues that tensions exist between globalisation and societal culture and that globalisation makes the recognition of societal culture and cross-cultural similarities and differences more, not less, important. Consequently, the inclusion of societal culture as a factor in investigations cove…
Introduction−justifying a cross-cultural comparative approach to school leadership and management
(2000). Introduction−justifying a cross-cultural comparative approach to school leadership and management. School Leadership & Management: Vol. 20, No. 2, pp. 137-141
The ‘Double-Reduction’ Education Policy in China
In July 2021 the Chinese Government unexpectedly released what has become known colloquially as the ‘Double-Reduction’ policy. The policy decreed the reduction of homework pressure on students and greater control of private tutorial companies. In this paper, we set out to understand why the Chinese central government launched the ‘Double-Reduction’ policy in mid−2021 by using narratives to analyse the three most circulated explanations for the po…
A Cross-Cultural Approach to the Study of Educational Leadership
Although studies of educational leadership have proliferated over the last decade, they have mostly focused on Western school settings. Leadership in non-Western school settings has largely been ignored, so that little is known about the influence of culture on the beliefs and actions of school leaders across national boundaries. This article builds a case for increasing understanding of educational leadership through adopting a comparative cross…
Hong Kong's Change of Sovereignty
This study captures the thoughts and perceptions of a group of Hong Kong principals on the transfer of sovereignty and its effects on education. The investigation addressed the following guiding research question: What, according to their perceptions, have been, and will be, the effects on education policy and on school-level management and curriculum, of the transfer of sovereignty? A qualitative approach was adopted, using naturalistic methods …
Constitution and Culture
This article aims to contribute to an understanding of principalship in Hong Kong through probing the formation and preservation of the deep leadership structures that shape its practice. Deep structures are formed partly through a dynamic relationship between constitution and culture which forms bounded "codes" of understanding, conduct and behaviour which combine to shape principalship in Hong Kong and power relationships within schools and col…
Reform Disconnection in China
This article examines many of the frustrations associated with implementing education reforms in mainland Chinese schools. Our basic argument is that when taken individually, many of the recent reforms are beneficial, but when parceled together and thrust hastily at schools, they are unwieldy and disconnected. We suggest that the inability of the reforms to impact schools is due in large part to their lack of sufficient connection to the reality …
Exploring School Improvement in Hong Kong Secondary Schools
Scholars have increasingly sought to understand how the process of school improvement differs among schools operating in different school levels, conditions, and contexts. Using Rosenholtz's (1985 Rosenholtz, S. 1985. Effective schools: Interpreting the evidence. American Journal of Education, 93: 352–388. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) conception of “moving” and “stuck” schools as a framework for thinking about school improve…
Societal Culture and School Leadership Charting the Way Ahead
This paper discusses four issues emerging from the papers that make up the special edition. These are considered key issues as researchers further investigate the influence of societal culture on educational administration and leadership. The four selected issues target the definition of societal culture; possible relationships between organizational culture, personality and societal culture; the interface between school leadership, educational p…
Developing teacher professional capital
The concept of ‘professional capital’, which consists of human, social, and decisional capital, has been adopted in many countries to guide teacher development and school practice. However, more empirical research needs to be conducted to understand the concept in the Chinese context. The study investigates how teachers accumulate their professional capital in Master Teacher Studios (MTSs), a cross‐school teacher professional learning community i…
Boundary-spanning practices of system leaders in China
There is currently considerable interest in system leadership and how it can support school change at scale. System leadership aims to move learning beyond school boundaries through leveraging experience and expertise. The success of system leadership depends on how key educational players can move effectively between and across traditional educational boundaries. China's education system has long-established system infrastructure to support boun…
School Principals’ Time Use for Interaction with Individual Students
To test emerging narratives of principals’ direct effect on student outcomes on a large scale, this study investigates whether school principals’ time use for interacting with individual students is associated with academic achievement and student safety at school. Built on recent research on principals’ time use, this study explores whether economic, sociocultural, and institutional features of societies influence the amount of time principals s…
School Leadership in International Schools
Hong Kong's return to mainland China
On 1 July 1997, after 150 years of British colonial rule, Hong Kong returned to its mother country, the People's Republic of China (PRC). Anticipation of reunification spawned speculation about the possibilities, prospects and problems for the political, economic and social life of Hong Kong after 1997. This paper argues that the unpredictability and uncertainty which have characterized the educational policy environment in Hong Kong for many yea…
Graduate Student Recruitment in American Public Administration
W hat efforts are currently being made by graduate programs offering master's degrees in public administration to recruit and select students? Are the recruitment efforts of graduate public administration programs indicative of complacency or do they reflect an active search for qualified students? To discern the answer to these and other questions, questionnaires were mailed to all member institutions of the National Association of Schools of Pu…
Graduate Student Recruitment in American Public Administration
W hat efforts are currently being made by graduate programs offering master's degrees in public administration to recruit and select students? Are the recruitment efforts of graduate public administration programs indicative of complacency or do they reflect an active search for qualified students? To discern the answer to these and other questions, questionnaires were mailed to all member institutions of the National Association of Schools of Pu…
Moderator influences of informal experimenter support
This study examined the effect of experimenter support during an intensive 1-year research project on teenage mothers and their infants at 1 and 3 years of age. A variety of information concerning the infants' developmental levels, the mothers' psychological and sociological status, and the mother-infant interaction was collected at both ages. Results indicated that the positive effects of informal support at 1 year of age were no longer evident …
Hong Kong's Change of Sovereignty
This study captures the thoughts and perceptions of a group of Hong Kong principals on the transfer of sovereignty and its effects on education. The investigation addressed the following guiding research question: What, according to their perceptions, have been, and will be, the effects on education policy and on school-level management and curriculum, of the transfer of sovereignty? A qualitative approach was adopted, using naturalistic methods …
Hong Kong's return to mainland China
On 1 July 1997, after 150 years of British colonial rule, Hong Kong returned to its mother country, the People's Republic of China (PRC). Anticipation of reunification spawned speculation about the possibilities, prospects and problems for the political, economic and social life of Hong Kong after 1997. This paper argues that the unpredictability and uncertainty which have characterized the educational policy environment in Hong Kong for many yea…
Valuing differences
In this article, we show that school leaders find themselves increasingly tom between pressures for conformity and diversity. We argue that pressures toward conformity undermine the ability of schools to respond effectively to diversity in their local communities. This, in turn, threatens the capacity to learn. If schools are to become learning organizations, then school leaders must recognize and challenge the confines of sameness while explorin…
A Cross-Cultural Approach to the Study of Educational Leadership
Although studies of educational leadership have proliferated over the last decade, they have mostly focused on Western school settings. Leadership in non-Western school settings has largely been ignored, so that little is known about the influence of culture on the beliefs and actions of school leaders across national boundaries. This article builds a case for increasing understanding of educational leadership through adopting a comparative cross…
Globalisation and Societal Culture
This paper highlights the importance of societal culture to developing theory, policy and practice within an increasingly globalising educational context. It argues that tensions exist between globalisation and societal culture and that globalisation makes the recognition of societal culture and cross-cultural similarities and differences more, not less, important. Consequently, the inclusion of societal culture as a factor in investigations cove…
Societal Culture and School Leadership Charting the Way Ahead
This paper discusses four issues emerging from the papers that make up the special edition. These are considered key issues as researchers further investigate the influence of societal culture on educational administration and leadership. The four selected issues target the definition of societal culture; possible relationships between organizational culture, personality and societal culture; the interface between school leadership, educational p…
Introduction−justifying a cross-cultural comparative approach to school leadership and management
(2000). Introduction−justifying a cross-cultural comparative approach to school leadership and management. School Leadership & Management: Vol. 20, No. 2, pp. 137-141
Constitution and Culture
This article aims to contribute to an understanding of principalship in Hong Kong through probing the formation and preservation of the deep leadership structures that shape its practice. Deep structures are formed partly through a dynamic relationship between constitution and culture which forms bounded "codes" of understanding, conduct and behaviour which combine to shape principalship in Hong Kong and power relationships within schools and col…
The sharp end
Many forces are at play beneath the public face of organizations and particular tensions emerge when policy rhetoric encounters organizational and leadership reality. These inherent contextual tensions are explored at the sharp or operational end of leadership, the organizational space where policies are implemented, values enacted and practices evidenced. The sharp end leaves little room for intellectual introspection or detailed post hoc analys…
Secondary school vice‐principals
The study sought to investigate Hong Kong secondary school vice‐principals’ job facets leading to overall job satisfaction, and to differentiate the satisfaction of vice‐principals of different career orientations and gender groups. The findings indicated that there are four main facets of satisfaction, in rank order of influence on overall satisfaction, ‘professional commitment’, ‘level of personal challenge’, ‘sense of efficacy’ and ‘sense of s…
Secondary school principals in curriculum reform
Reform Disconnection in China
This article examines many of the frustrations associated with implementing education reforms in mainland Chinese schools. Our basic argument is that when taken individually, many of the recent reforms are beneficial, but when parceled together and thrust hastily at schools, they are unwieldy and disconnected. We suggest that the inability of the reforms to impact schools is due in large part to their lack of sufficient connection to the reality …
Exploring School Improvement in Hong Kong Secondary Schools
Scholars have increasingly sought to understand how the process of school improvement differs among schools operating in different school levels, conditions, and contexts. Using Rosenholtz's (1985 Rosenholtz, S. 1985. Effective schools: Interpreting the evidence. American Journal of Education, 93: 352–388. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) conception of “moving” and “stuck” schools as a framework for thinking about school improve…
The education of migrant children in Shanghai
A heuristic model for tailoring teacher development to educational reforms
School Leadership in International Schools
Weaving Curriculum Connections in International Baccalaureate (IB) Schools
In this article we discuss how school leaders address challenges when implementing innovative international education curricula, namely International Baccalaureate (IB) programs. Specifically, we frame challenges in curriculum implementation of and transition between IB programs from a “disconnection” perspective. We have often noticed when innovative programs are parceled together without preparation and thrust at great speed at schools, they be…
What Leadership Practices Are Associated with International Baccalaureate (IB) Student Achievement? An Exploratory Study of IB Schools in Southeast Asia
This article explores what leadership practices are associated with International Baccalaureate (IB) student achievement. Using a combined data set of Diploma Program (DP) exam scores and teachers’ survey responses about school leadership from 29 schools in Southeast Asia, the article reports certain leadership practices (i.e., strategic resourcing, monitoring classroom teaching and curriculum, encouraging teacher learning and development) exerci…
Developing a model of instructional leadership in China
This paper explores instructional leadership practices in China. It has three interrelated purposes. The first purpose is to report data which contributes insights into how Chinese principals understand and enact instructional leadership. The second purpose is to examine how the societal context impacts the enactment of leadership and the third is to suggest implications for international understandings of successful school principalship. The stu…
Master teachers as system leaders of professional learning
Purpose This study aims to describe and analyze an innovative mechanism of teacher-led, system-wide professional learning that has been widely adopted since the beginning of the twenty-first century in China – the Master Teacher Studio (MTS). Design/methodology/approach This paper drew from policy documents, published Chinese literature relating to MTSs and personal fieldwork experience in Shanghai, Guangdong and Zhejiang province. Findings The a…
School Principals’ Time Use for Interaction with Individual Students
To test emerging narratives of principals’ direct effect on student outcomes on a large scale, this study investigates whether school principals’ time use for interacting with individual students is associated with academic achievement and student safety at school. Built on recent research on principals’ time use, this study explores whether economic, sociocultural, and institutional features of societies influence the amount of time principals s…
Capturing interactions between middle leaders and teacher entrepreneurial behaviour
Limited but increasing research has noted that middle leaders (MLs) play a crucial role in structuring a supportive working environment to help entrepreneurial teachers transform educational innovation into practice. This study aims to increase understanding of the extent to which MLs with different levels of experience influence teacher entrepreneurial behaviour (TEB). The study employs the three dimensions of the ‘person-environment fit model,’…
Becoming a teacher leader
As an acknowledged example of a carefully structured teacher learning system, Shanghai has a long tradition of using expert teachers to drive teacher learning both within and across schools. This article tracks the work voyages of eight expert teachers in Shanghai using three forms of capital. The purpose of the paper is to explore how these teachers obtained and accumulated their human, social and symbolic capital from when they entered the prof…
Political science (28 obras) · Sociology (28 obras) · Pedagogy (25 obras) · Teacher Education and Leadership Studies (21 obras) · Psychology (18 obras) · Educational leadership (17 obras) · Public relations (15 obras) · Instructional leadership (14 obras) · Law (10 obras) · China (9 obras)