There is no “universally best” leadership style, but, on the basis of different legal frameworks, national policies and history, it is possible to identify a limited number of reference leadership styles, as shown in the following table:

If in the past it was relatively easy to categorise each country’s leadership style, the effects of globalization are such that features of various styles co-exist. The question, though, is whether these features are combined efficiently and effectively, and how leadership styles can be improved for the benefit of students’ performance and well-being.
The paper reviews existing concepts and definitions of school leadership and its key components.
Moreover, it identifies the components already addressed in international student surveys (especially TIMSS) and explores data and quality issues by exploring the relationship between school leadership characteristics, other school characteristics, and the achievement of 4th and 8th graders in an international comparative context.
Specifically,  the paper tackles the following research questions:

1. To what degree do countries emphasise different aspects of school leadership at primary and lower secondary level?
2. How are these emphases distributed among schools, and within countries?
3. Do the results of the study confirm the expectation that schools emphasising instructional leadership will have better student achievement results in the TIMSS subjects (within and between country analyses)?
4. Is it possible to identify the malleable factors (school characteristics related to achievement and adjusted for student background) to work on for improving management and leadership quality?
5. Can profiles of school leadership for each country be reasonably related to characteristics of the educational system (qualitative analysis)?

The result is an analysis of the effects of the educational leadership on student achievement. Such types of effects can be direct, in the sense that good school leadership leads directly to better learning results, or can influence directly other variables such as teaching work, participation, and engagement, which have a direct influence on the response variable.

Italy’s educational system is predominately public.  Besides schools for infants, only 5% of students attend private schools, and these long-standing, traditional private institutions are characterized as denominational.  Other than the public and private sectors, new recent laws allow for citizens, family members and other social entities to directly intervene in the management of educational services.  This new development of social participation in Italy allows for avenues of growth, probably bringing the Italian educational system to new heights, involving families to the point where they are privy to services offered, and, therefore, giving schools a greater competitive edge for attracting students.

What are the institutional and organizational characteristics of these emerging schools?

How do these schools differentiate themselves from the institutional models, i.e. state and denominational/private?

More specifically, what are the characteristic aspects in relation to finalism, governance, stakeholder relations and teacher management?

This paper responds to the above questions through an online questionnaire completed by a sample of approximately 200 Italian schools. In particular, this survey looked at the management of educational activities, student, family, and stakeholder relations, human resources and governance, or rather the decision-making system and accountability.