This article discusses solo and distributed leadership. Using the anniversary of Educational Management Administration & Leadership as a focal point, it looks back over the last 40 years of EMAL, using this to frame a wider discussion of the relationship between solo and distributed leadership approaches. It acknowledges other approaches to shared leadership but uses distributed leadership to see how this idea has become part of the rhetoric of both leadership practice and policy. The article then asks what we have learnt from these foci, and where the field might like to look next.

The book contains examples of how school leaders experience emotion and meaning in their daily interactions. Through stories, the reader can experience

This article reports on the first stage of a study by a group of researchers involved or interested in principal (headship) preparation in Western Australia, Canada, England, Jamaica, Mexico, Scotland, South Africa, Turkey and the United States. The study, known as the International Study of Principal Preparation (ISPP), discusses the background to the current policies in principal preparation, and examines the standards-led approach to principal preparation. This paper focuses on England and Scotland for comparative purposes, and asks how much we know about the effectiveness of current principal preparation.

This article reflects on emotion and leadership. It views emotions as the language of relationships, because it is through the language and experience of emotion that we contextualize not only our individuality but also our sense of belonging in a group. The article argues that emotion is inherent to the practice of leadership rather than separate from it, and all organizing actions are inseparable from and influenced by emotion. It is not enough for a leader to acknowledge the inherent emotions in the culture of an organization; s/he has to make them explicit through their own leadership. The article argues that the headteacher needs to understand the interconnectedness between their emotions and the affective relationships in the school. Finally, it introduces the idea of emotional coherence as a means of conceptualising emotion in primary schools.

Research to date about the English government’s policy to make schools independent of local authorities (LAs) has looked at the ‘macro’ level of national policy and at the ‘micro’ level of the institution. The study of which this article is a part, explores changes at the ‘meso’ level – the locality. The article analyses interviews in three LAs with 15 headteachers whose schools were well positioned locally. We sought to understand how and why they responded to the changing policy environment. We applied Bourdieu’s concepts of forms of capital to model the relationships between schools and to ground explanations of their responses as positioning themselves in the local field. The article develops this general approach by identifying the varieties of capital available and actually possessed. The most important was categorization as a result of the inspection process. Many of the headteachers felt impelled to lead their schools into various associations with other schools. Some individuals were becoming notably more powerful in their competition arenas. The power of these elite schools to further accumulate advantage and the withdrawal of the LA role as an arbiter of conflict between schools in the interests of the whole community are discussed.

Purpose: This paper aims to explore the extent to which the programme for principal preparation in Scotland relates to what is expected of principals once they are in post and what it is that they actually do.Design/methodology/approach: The paper analyses the professional experience of five relatively new elementary school principals reported in monthly logs maintained over a six‐month period.Findings: The preparation for headship programme appears to help develop the professional identity of aspiring headteachers, broaden their outlook and develop confidence and self‐belief. What is not clear is the extent to which the programme is developing principals with the strength of purpose required to work towards schools centred on educational values.Originality/value: The paper builds on previous work by the authors and makes a contribution to the research on principal preparation and the work of new school principals.