Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present and discuss the findings from research on the relationship between leadership theory and policy reform in Malaysia. Distributed leadership is normatively preferred in the Malaysia Education Blueprint (MEB), the country's major policy reform document. The research was conducted in two dissimilar…

Purpose: Increased school autonomy and accountability have been a common denominator of national reforms in otherwise heterogeneous governance systems in Europe and the USA. The paper argues that because schools serving disadvantaged communities (SSDCs) often have lower average performance, they are more often sanctioned or under closer scrutiny,…

Purpose: This paper aims to identify and compare the nature of decentralization that has emerged in three important Asian societies after a decade of their involvement in the decentralization movement. Design/methodology/approach: Data from the first cycle of the program for international student assessment were analyzed to investigate educational…