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The purpose of this paper is to assess leadership learning in a principalship development programme.

This case study adopted Popper's three worlds as an analytical framework to assess leadership learning in a principalship development programme. The unit of assessment of learning is knowledge – more specifically subjective and objective knowledge. The study involved participants in a principalship development programme called the Leaders in Education Programme (LEP). The LEP is designed and implemented by the National Institute of Education, Singapore with partnership from the Ministry of Education, Singapore. Since its inception in 2001, the LEP has developed more than 300 school leaders in Singapore schools.

Through the analyses linking the concepts of complexity theory and Popper's three worlds, valuable insights were gained into how participants developed practical knowledge in leadership and management.

The outcome of the analyses has implications for leadership programme design and for leadership development in countries with similar challenges to prepare a new type of school leaders for the 21st century.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the process of information communication technology (ICT) reform in a government school in Singapore. The focus is on the distributed leadership actions performed by various individuals, and how the multiple leaders and their leadership practices interacted with one another.

A naturalistic inquiry approach was adopted, involving the case study of a school in the process of implementing an instructional reform involving the use of ICT.

It was found that distributed leadership for ICT implementation requires a combination of transformational leadership and instructional leadership to develop teachers’ capacity to enhance their instruction with ICT, emotional leadership to support teachers’ effort to change, and strategic management of resources to sustain teachers’ change efforts. Transformational leadership is performed mainly by senior management (SM). Instructional leadership is performed mainly by middle management (MM). Both senior and middle management provided emotional leadership and strategic resource management. In addition, SM provided second‐order changes leadership, while MM provided first‐order changes leadership.

The paper rectifies the current disproportionate focus on the role of the Principal by uncovering the leadership actions performed by other school members, and how these leadership actions are interrelated. In particular, the paper provides insight into how leadership was distributed in a school reform involving the use of ICT for instruction.

The purpose of this paper is to present a review of empirical studies on principal leadership in Singapore. It seeks to provide a general picture of Singapore principals’ leadership qualities, styles, and roles.

This is a systematic review of empirical studies, using a “bounded” approach with a focus on the main findings of the reviewed studies. In all, 36 studies were selected for the interview. The findings of these studies were open coded, synthesized, and clustered into different themes.

The review revealed several qualities, characteristics, styles, and enacted roles of Singapore principals. While there are similarities between Singapore principals and principals elsewhere in the world, the review brought out some features unique to Singapore principals.

This review contributes to the growing literature in comparative research on principals’ leadership and their enacted roles, and concurrently functions as a guide for further research on school leadership in Singapore.