This article examines the trend across the world to move towards centrally controlled education systems driven by a political desire that students might attain and schools be judged by a narrow range of measurable attainment targets with policing by inspections. It argues that this has emphasized management rather than leadership and that there is a need to refocus on more aspirational achievement aims for young people and schools. It defines and argues for integrity in both leadership and management and makes the case for the signifi cance of the way in which leaders lead. A transactional approach leads to the erosion of trust and transformational leaders in contrast build this up.
The article explains why trust is so important and explains how trust can be developed in and by leaders and mangers. It finishes by outlining the challenge of developing leaders and managers of high-trust school cultures

Author raises the issue of specificity of educational leadership trying to show that such specificity has to be based on central value of educational organizations. In educational context such central value should be individual human development. Paper describes different ways of understanding leadership and educational leadership present in literature and gives some postulates how educational leadership can be defi ned, proposing to call such type of leadership a developmental leadership. A description of such type of leadership and conditions of its introduction to education are the main aims of the paper.

The main purpose of the proposed paper is to analyze paradigms (theoretical frames) of leadership owned and used by school principals.
The analysis is based on the results of the research conducted for the purpose of defining and describing the school principals’ way of thinking about leadership for education. For the purpose of building framework for research it was assumed that four leadership paradigms might be defined.
Leadership might be understood through classic paradigm of leadership (domination of the significant person or elite group); or transactional paradigm (influence and negotiations); or visionary paradigm (called sometimes charismatic where the most import ant is clear vision); or organic paradigm (existing in multicultural and diverse world where leadership is flexible and leaders change dependently on a situation)
Three methods have been used: interview with 99 principals of schools (of different type), observation in the same number of schools and analyses of the blogs (written on-line by school principals).
It is common to ignore the mental models (or paradigms) used by people what brings certain outcomes for every initiative. It is necessary for policy making, change projects or developmental initiatives to recognize and take under consideration the diversity of possible perspectives (mental models) owned by those who are working in the concerned area, in this case head teachers.
Civilization changes influence context and demands towards schools. Those challenges impact the modernization of schools. One of the common expectation towards management are more open - participative mode of the decision making process and the involvement of employees in sharing responsibilities. Unfortunately different initiatives towards inclusion of employees into management and leadership processes bring rather disappointing results because they ignore ideologies and assumptions of people who decide about school functioning.
Analysis of the results of the research should improve the understanding of the school reality by showing strategies and decisions adequate to the state of “educational consciousness”.

Dealing with the legacy of the discourses of neo-liberalism and new managerialism on the current framing of leadership discourse provides the background to this paper. Increasingly there are strong indications at policy level that the intention of recommendations are very closely aligned to the neo-liberal worldview evidenced by the uncritical acceptance of neo liberal infused language among many key stakeholders. This paper calls for leadership development programmes that will provide for critically informed and engaged leaders who can position themselves as key mediators and evaluators of these reductive policy proposals. To this end it is necessary to make leadership and what constitutes leadership practice more explicit and to cease confl ating it with management so that the knowledge and understanding of leadership within the domain of education can develop fully. This process creates an imperative for a greater engagement with the theoretical fi elds and disciplines linked to education within leadership preparation and development programmes with more encouragement for leaders to continue to masters and doctoral levels so as to build capacity within the leadership community to mobilise the rich and diverse knowledge-base underpinning education to critique and challenge.

Paper describes a current condition of the system of improving teachers in Poland and changes planned. Analysis of the system structure of improving and the scope and aims of institutions supporting improving the functioning of schools and teachers were included in the first part of the text. In the second part planned changes including both organizational new solutions integrating all sorts institutions of a system of improving both supporting schools and teachers and the change in the way of conducting improving based on the process-based approach were described.

Accountability and evaluation have become an integral part of education systems and the day-to-day practice of educators in many countries around the world. The purpose of this presentation is to share an exploration of the links among evaluation, accountability and democracy which draws on the work of the French philosopher Jacques Rancière. It will be argued that evaluation and accountability intertwine not just as a condition for democracy and its improvement but also as a challenge for democracy. Firstly, the notion of evaluation and its relevance to accountability will be outlined. A more detailed outline of accountability will follow in order to present evaluation and accountability as ´explanatory scheme´ (Rancière, 2010); that is, an structure that primarily serves to explain and provide justification. To conclude, connections between accountability and democracy will be discussed and challenges posed by the former one to the latter one are explored.