In Australia, there is a national education agenda for school improvement with an increasing focus on how school leaders can fulfil this agenda. As school principals are arguably faced with increasing demands, the importance of school middle leaders is increasing. This article presents the initial findings from a larger project on middle leadership in Australian schools, the first phase of which is a documentary analysis of significant texts including policy documents, websites and reports. The purpose of the document analysis was to examine expectations placed on, and support provided for, school middle leaders in Australian schools to make explicit the potential implications for policymakers, leaders and researchers investigating this field. We argue there is a lack of clarity about the role of middle leadership across Australia, with unclear policies, and variations in expectations, titles and levels of support. What is evident is that middle leaders play a pivotal role as they lead teaching, learning, and pastoral care. They carry out these roles in subject areas, key stages and classrooms, and among teachers. While there are a range of professional development provisions for middle leaders across different states, middle leadership needs to be an area of increased focus across Australia.

Pedagogical leaders are not always the leaders of pedagogy during pedagogical reform. In this paper, I argue that pedagogical reform can be enabled or constrained by pedagogical leadership. Pedagogical leadership and pedagogical reform require careful scrutiny within specific research contexts. Pedagogy itself has different meanings among educators. Uncontested views of pedagogy within two primary schools in Australia resulted in pedagogical dissonance, confusing the reform agenda. I present case study data from 10 participants, deploying the theory of practice architectures to think about leading as a practice. This paper explores four key drivers of pedagogical change derived from the data that build towards a theory of pedagogical change. Theoretical approaches to leadership are considered and contested and assumptions about leadership and management are explained. Teachers need opportunities to deeply understand pedagogy in order to avoid production-line pedagogical reform. Pedagogical leadership requires careful re-visioning within middle leadership, principal leadership and teacher leadership debates.

This research critically examines the role of pedagogical leadership as it is distributed amongst middle leaders. It seeks to better understand the playful utility of a popular culture metaphor as a frame for understanding empirical data about pedagogical leadership in two Australian schools during a period of imposed curriculum change. Utilising ‘the theory of practice architectures’ (Kemmis, Stephen, Jane Wilkinson, Christine Edwards-Groves, Ian Hardy, Peter Grootenboer, and Laurette Bristol. 2014. Changing Practices, Changing Education. Wagga Wagga: Springer), the paper explores a direct quotation as metaphor from several pedagogical middle leaders that ‘we’re spies’ – and from one participant, ‘in a good James Bond sort of way.’ This research plays with and interprets the politics of practice including collaborating or ‘licensed trouble shooting’, and empowerment or ‘interrogation’ in everyday pedagogical leadership practice where distributing leadership may create espionage, or compliance during reform. Educational reform is espoused for ‘the good of the empire’ of education through the enabling and constraining practices of pedagogical middle leaders.

Professional learning is increasingly understood as vital for the development of educators, and for the development of a strong educational system. We argue that the most essential purpose of professional learning is for the development of critical praxis. Critical praxis is related to action that is morally, socially and politically informed. This action is undertaken with an awareness of possible consequences together with the intention to make positive contributions to society and to humankind. Critical praxis in education is an intentional action (or associated reflexivity) informed by critical questioning related to the social, moral and political purpose of education. Critical praxis is tightly connected with learning experiences. This article looks at three examples of the development of critical praxis through professional learning, across three different educational settings. We explore the practice architectures that enable and constrain critical praxis in professional practice and identify three key themes in relation to the development of critical praxis: agency, power and relational trust. We argue that the potential power of professional learning is in supporting and developing the capacity to question institutionalised habits or educational practices that may be in conflict with values, purpose and moral intentions, in order to create positive change.

This article reports on factor analyses of the Middle Leadership Roles Questionnaire – School Edition (MLRQ-SE) that were conducted to test a theoretical model. This work was completed as part of a larger study that investigated the roles of formal middle-leadership positions in public schools of New South Wales, Australia. Quantitative data from an adapted version of the MLRQ-SE, which was completed by 2608 employees in formal middle leader positions in NSW public schools, were factor analysed to identify theorised roles and thereby confirm an overarching model of middle leadership roles as well as assist with ongoing refinement of the instrument's scales. Exploratory factor analyses identified seven salient roles of middle leaders. Confirmatory factor analyses of data from the two largest position categories supported the seven-role model for assistant principals and head teachers. While the scales within the MLRQ-SE were based on a wide review of previous research, the data reported here is from one educational jurisdiction in one country. However, the findings provide evidence for the existence middle leader roles often theorised in literature but to date not confirmed empirically. The findings also hold implications for policy, practice and future research regarding leadership development and recruitment.

Pedagogical leadership is increasingly emphasised in education policies and leadership standards. Yet conceptualisations of pedagogy and pedagogical leadership vary from a focus on compliance that operationalises the role of formal school leaders, through to notions of pedagogical leadership as a praxis-oriented practice. This paper focuses on pedagogical leading practices in school settings in Sweden and Australia. Utilising the theory of practice architectures, it explores how historical notions of pedagogical leadership have changed over time in the two countries. Findings show that there are different depths of pedagogical understanding and differences between understandings of individual and collective pedagogy in policy, school leadership and practice. Both cases raise questions about the state of educational leadership and pedagogical leadership globally and the decentring of pedagogy from students, the ultimate purpose of pedagogical practice. Properly understanding pedagogy is one way of decentring the popular role title ‘pedagogical leader’.