Successful Principal Leadership In Times Of Change

This book contributes significantly to our understanding of successful school leaders by describing similarities and differences in the work of such leaders in countries ranging from England to Australia, the United States to Norway, and Sweden to Hong Kong. Bringing together case study research, the book helps explain what all successful principals do and the ways in which context shapes some of their work.

Bringing together internationally recognised scholars this book focuses on the relationship between leadership and learning for the education community. It draws together a wealth of knowledge and research in the field across a variety of contexts, such as system leadership, professional learning communities and leading different cultures. Themes covered include: - exploring models for leadership and improvement - challenges in developing learning-focused leadership - broadening ideas of learning and knowledge work. This book will be of interest to educational leaders at all levels and in all sectors, as well as consultants, academics and those who wish to extend their knowledge in educational leadership whether engaging in further academic study or in reflective practice around the ideas presented. This book is essential for anyone taking advanced programmes in educational leadership and management.

This work represents a publishing event in education research. Genuinely groundbreaking, it is the result of longitudinal research from five nations over five years. The authors set themselves an unprecedented task: to analyze how it is that successful school principals sustain positive outcomes over a significant period of time. To find out, they initiated the International Successful School Principal Project (ISSPP) assembling 30 multinational case histories and numerous comparative analyses. In doing so, they recorded fresh perspectives on the influence school principals can have on their schools, the quality of teaching in their classrooms, and student outcomes. Revisiting the subject schools in 2007, they found many principals still in place, having steered their organizations through various minefields of political, governance and educational reform. As the most penetrating longitudinal investigation of the subject, this research has unearthed fascinating new insights into school leadership that add real substance to the sum of our knowledge. It incorporates data from educational systems in Australia, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, England and the USA. One key finding is that while all principals delegate a range of leadership tasks, successful ones distribute responsibility on a case-by-case basis founded on personal assessments of their staff as well as on organizational and policy contexts. The research also demonstrates that successful principals maintain close communication with their staff and the wider school environment, and that they are adaptive, maximizing the opportunities presented by new political contexts and expectations, yet without losing sight of their school’s core moral and ethical principles. The volume’s international thematic analysis has allowed comparative conclusions to be drawn on what the principals do to sustain and foster pedagogical and institutional success.

This book is for administrators, aspiring administrators, and those who are interested in how schools operate on a day-to-day basis. Many principals will recognize the stressors that are described and that typify a shared-leadership school. Chapter 1 focuses on communication as the foundational skill for all principals, a skill that entails as much listening as it does speaking. Chapter 2 emphasizes the need for principals to trust themselves and to trust others, both of which are important in a job that tends to isolate. The next two chapters focus on the need to be receptive to change and the need for principals to recognize that the classroom is not the only place to learn and that all of a school's resources should be used to provide a practical, real-life learning environment. Chapter 5 examines the need to be prepared for large-scale changes, whereas chapter 6 provides advice on mediating the inevitable conflicts that visit all schools. The last few chapters discuss the importance of exercising the power of the principal's office; how to assess students, staff, and schools; and the need to maintain balance in one's life. A final section offers anecdotes and tips for thriving in the difficult job that is called the principalship. (Contains 59 references and an index.) (RJM)

While considerable evidence indicates that school leaders are able to make important contributions to the success of their students, much less is known about how such contributions are made. This book provides a comprehensive account of research aimed at filling this gap in our knowledge, along with guidelines about how school leaders might use this knowledge for their own school improvement work. Leadership practices known to be effective for improving student success are outlined in the first section of the book while the remaining sections identify four “paths” along which the influence of those practices “flow” to exercise an influence on student success. Each of the Rational, Emotional, Organizational and Family paths are populated by conditions or variables known to have relatively direct effects on student success and also open to influence by effective leadership practices. While the Four Path framework narrows the attention of school leaders to a still-considerable number conditions known to contribute to student success, it leaves school leaders the autonomy to select, for improvement efforts, the sub-set of conditions that make the most sense in their own local circumstances. The approach to leadership described in this book provides evidence-based guidance on what to lead and flexibility on how to lead for purposes of improving student learning.

Educational leadership, management and administration has a rich history of epistemological and ontological dialogue and debate. However in recent times, at least since the publication of Colin Evers and Gabriele Lakomski’s trilogy – knowing, exploring and doing educational administration – there has been a distinct dearth. Educational Leadership Relationally explicitly returns matters of epistemology and ontology to the centre of the discussion. Through a sustained and rigorous engagement with contemporary thought and analysis, Scott Eacott articulates and defends a relational approach to scholarship in educational leadership, management and administration. Eacott belongs to a group of scholars in educational administration who could be called meta-sociologist. This group blends sociology, historical revisionism, managerial theories and general philosophy to emphasise the relevance of sociological analysis in the field of educational administration. Proposing a relational turn, Eacott outlines a methodological agenda for constructing an alternative approach to educational leadership, management and administration scholarship that might be persuasive beyond the critical frontier. The relational research programme is arguably the most ambitious agenda in educational leadership, management and administration coming out of Australia since Colin Evers and Gabriele Lakomski’s natural coherentism and Richard Bates’ Critical Theory of Educational Administration. As a research agenda, it engages with: the centrality of administration in constructions of the social world; the legitimation of popular labels such as ‘leadership’; the inexhaustible and inseparable grounding of administrative labour in time and space; and overcomes contemporary tensions of individualism/collectivism and structure/agency to provide a productive – rather than merely critical – space to theorise educational leadership, management and administration.

Various definitions of leadership have transformed the way that educators around the world think about teaching, administration, and policy over the years. This title investigates the changing face of educational leadership from comparative and international perspectives.