Mapping four leadership styles in Japan: how has the role of the principal been shaped by policies?

What is it about?

For the first time, I analyzed national legislation and policy documents in Japan by using transactional, instructional, transformational, and distributed leadership styles. It reveals an increasing focus on these styles over time, and distinct policy contexts in which each style has emerged, while making the connection to Western views on school leadership.

Featured Image

Why is it important?

It points to the susceptibility of the role of the principal in Japan and western countries alike to broader structural reforms but with different implications and distinct timing of the advent of leadership styles among them. Additionally, Japan has adopted a modified approach to distributed leadership style, which is somewhat similar to delegation, to make a compromise between the emergent theory and the centrality of the principal in the school hierarchy. Furthermore, instructional leadership seems to be a “late bloomer” in Japan because of its practice-based nature and unsuitability to daily realities of the principal.

Perspectives