Editorial

Educational Management
Administration & Leadership
Instructional leadership in the 2025, Vol. 53(3) 481–483
© The Author(s) 2025

21st century: Building on the Article reuse guidelines:

model

Tony Bush

2025 is the 40th anniversary of the Principal Instructional Management Rating Scale (PIMRS),
developed by Philip Hallinger and Joe Murphy. Their model featured three main elements;
Defining the School Mission, Managing the Instructional Program, and Developing the School
Learning Climate (Hallinger and Murphy, 1985). PIMRS has been very popular with scholars
and research students, with more than 100 doctoral theses utilising this model. Forty years on,
and instructional leadership remains popular with policymakers, as well as academics.
Educational policies often prescribe or recommend this model (Bush et al., 2021, 2023). When
the English National College for School Leadership (NCSL) was founded in 2000, a global
study found that instructional leadership featured in principal preparation programmes in many
countries (Bush and Jackson, 2002). Robinson et al. (2008) showed that instructional leadership
had a more profound effect on student learning than other leadership models. Similarly, the
Global Education Monitoring Report (2024/25) commented on the significance of instructional
leadership for school improvement and student outcomes.
Three articles in this issue address aspects of instructional leadership. Hsieh-Chih Lai and
Hsin-Yi Lien discuss the development and validation of an instructional leadership scale for
high school principals in Taiwan. They carried out three quantitative studies with teachers to val-
idate their five-point scale, adding ‘improving curriculum and instructional quality’, and ‘enhancing
adaptive learning effectiveness’, to the constructs used in previous models, including PIMRS. They
recommend that principals use this scale in conducting self-evaluations.
The next article, by Ali Nawab and Tooba Noor, examines issues inhibiting instructional lead-
ership practices in Pakistan. The authors report that the government of Sindh province has handed
over the management of several schools to a public sector university. The university has employed
managers who are expected to work with internal leaders to develop school capacity. The authors
conducted a case-study of one such school, utilising individual and group interviews, observations
and documentary analysis. They argue that the ‘mainstream literature’ portrays instructional lead-
ership as an ideal model while they found that principals focused mainly on administrative tasks,
not instructional leadership, an outcome consistent with Bush et al.’s (2021 study in sub-Saharan
Africa.
Servet Ozdemir and colleagues examine school leadership effects on teacher instructional prac-
tices in Turkey. They surveyed 928 teachers in 87 schools in the capital city, Ankara. The authors
found significant indirect effects of school leadership on teacher practices. They conclude by noting
that the role of Turkish school principals is largely defined by bureaucratic and managerial respon-
sibilities, limiting the scope for leadership.
482 Educational Management Administration & Leadership 53(3)

Another prominent model is that of transformational leadership. Ali Cagatay and colleagues
explore how this model links to teacher commitment and alienation in Turkey. They surveyed
1193 teachers from 103 schools. The authors found a significant positive relationship between
transformational leadership and teacher commitment. This is stronger in schools with a high-
performance climate. They reach the same broad conclusion as Ozdemir et al., that hierarchy
hinders principals’ ability to execute leadership.
Junjun Chen discusses principal resilience, based on research in Hong Kong and mainland
China. She comments that principal resilience is crucial for dealing with professional challenges
and uncertainties but also to enhance well-being. The article focuses on the development and val-
idation of the Principal Resilience Inventory. The author established content and construct validity
through two studies with Hong Kong principals. She concludes that principals experience a sense of
resilience at work, and this helps to address work-family and other conflicts.
Leader well-being is also the focus of the next article, by Sebrina Doyle Focus and her collea-
gues. They surveyed school and district leaders in northeastern USA, using both quantitative and
qualitative approaches, to establish the impact of stress and participants’ self-care strategies. The
authors found high levels of workplace stress, from both internal and external pressures. Student
and family behaviour, and heavy workloads, were cited as major sources of stress. They report
five self-care strategies, including physical exercise. They conclude that leadership preparation pro-
grammes and in-service professional development should be harnessed to support resilience and
well-being.
Ying Zhang and colleagues surveyed 449 teachers in China, to explore the effects of servant
leadership on teachers’ emotional well-being. They found that servant leadership was positively
related to teacher well-being and job satisfaction. This occurred through decreasing and buffering
workplace challenges. For example, this helped teachers to overcome the negative consequences of
Covid-19, including stress, anxiety and depression. They conclude that servant leadership helps to
develop teachers’ social esteem.
Peleg Dor-Haim and Adam Nit examine perceptions of courage amongst elementary school
principals in Israel. They interviewed 20 such principals, 19 of whom are women. They identify
several aspects of courage, including being willing to change and innovate, to stand up for their
own values and beliefs, and to adapt when facing an imposed change. They comment that
school principals need to express courage when facing conditions of doubt, uncertainty and per-
sonal risk and conclude that cultures that support a sense of responsibility and autonomy are
more likely to feature acts of courage.
The significance of context in assessing school leadership is increasingly recognised (Hallinger,
2018). This is the focus of a study by Asa Hirsh and colleagues, who examine principal leadership
in schools serving low socio-economic status communities in Sweden. The authors conducted
group interviews with 20 principals leading schools in such contexts. They identify four factors
that influence how leadership is enacted by these leaders, including high mobility, and linguistic
and cultural diversity. They claim that targeted support is required from local authorities, in recog-
nition of the special circumstances of the schools being led by these principals, not a
one-size-fits-all approach.
Most of the articles in this issue focus on principals but middle leadership is also important.
Youmen Chaaban and colleagues address supports and constraints to middle leadership develop-
ment in a university in Qatar. The authors recruited 35 middle leaders to ascertain their perspectives
on the support and constraints to their development. They identified four different viewpoints about
the most important influences on their leadership development. These are institutional goals,
Bush: Instructional leadership in the 21st century 483

a culture of trust, senior leadership support, and personal development. The authors conclude that
the rigidity of the institutional structures, set policies, and automated responses, limited senior lead-
ership support for these middle leaders.
Joonkil Ahn, Yinying Wang and Yujin Lee review data from the Teaching and Learning
International Survey (TALIS) to explore the interplay between leadership and school-level condi-
tions. The authors found that collective teacher perceptions of shared leadership practices had a
larger effect size on teacher job satisfaction than individual teacher perceptions. They also note
that changes in teacher self-efficacy may exert influence on the entire network of leadership
practices.
The final article in this issue, by Gopal Midha, reports the findings of a systematic review of the
literature on unplanned principal meetings. The author identified 31 publications addressing this
topic. He comments that spontaneous, unscheduled and unplanned meetings provide a dilemma
for principals. He comments that principal time and attention shifts quickly from one topic to
another, leading to fragmentation. He concludes by noting the connection between unplanned meet-
ings and the high work intensity of principals.

Declaration of conflicting interests

Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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