Overview
- Features detailed analysis of a five-year longitudinal study
- Unique comparative analysis of findings from five educational systems: those of Australia, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, England, and New York State in the USA
- Combines insights into contextual factors such as educational politics with findings on principals’ leadership actions and philosophies
- Contains fresh conclusions on the work of successful principals over time
- Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras
Part of the book series: Studies in Educational Leadership (SIEL, volume 14)
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Table of contents (13 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
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.
Reviews
This book is a pioneering effort that offers a richer understanding of how leadership contributes to school success across different national contexts. The book provides a balanced, data-driven approach that seeks to identify thematic similarities even as it honours variations in leadership practices that are linked to specific societies.
Philip Hallinger, Professor, Hong Kong Institute of Education
This book moves the educational leadership field forward on three important fronts: it provides a rare, longitudinal, picture of leadership and change in a large number of schools; it unearths some of the key leader – related factors that explain a school’s ability to sustain improvements over long periods of time and; it constitutes one of the very few international, comparative, cross-cultural data sets available about school leadership.
Kenneth Leithwood , Professor OISE, University of Toronto
'Standards and testing are a fact of life'. Or are they? It requires exceptional leaders to 'fly below the political radar'. It requires a strong grasp of moral purpose for leaders to reinterpret improvement and accountability. It requires courage and conviction to challenge conventional wisdom and to steer a course grounded in enduring educational principles. The great strength of this book is its international reach, powerfully illustrating how different cultural traditions and differing forms of leadership are responding to pervasive, and often insidious, global pressures.
John MacBeath, Professor Emeritus, University of Cambridge
The chapters in this book provide much needed longitudinal accounts of leadership in schools and they do so by attending to similarities and differences across countries. Such cross national accounts offer great promise in generating new knowledge about school leadership and management.
James P. Spillane, Professor, Northwestern University
Editors and Affiliations
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: How School Principals Sustain Success over Time
Book Subtitle: International Perspectives
Editors: Lejf Moos, Olof Johansson, Christopher Day
Series Title: Studies in Educational Leadership
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1335-2
Publisher: Springer Dordrecht
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and Law, Education (R0)
Copyright Information: Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011
Hardcover ISBN: 978-94-007-1334-5Published: 27 May 2011
Softcover ISBN: 978-94-007-3629-0Published: 15 July 2013
eBook ISBN: 978-94-007-1335-2Published: 26 May 2011
Series ISSN: 1572-3909
Series E-ISSN: 2543-0130
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: VIII, 244
Topics: Administration, Organization and Leadership, International and Comparative Education, Educational Policy and Politics