How Successful Schools Are More than Effective: Principals Who Build and Sustain Teacher and Student Wellbeing and Achievement (Studies in Educational Leadership, 28)

Arising from new research of members of the International Successful School Principalship Project, this book presents cases of school and leadership success from across 12 countries. It provides critically informed writing, informed by ecological systems theory, which questions the uncritical application of single lens, adjectival leadership models, challenges critical theorists’ views of teachers’ and leaders’ as necessarily compliant with so-called neoliberal policy agendas. In their place, the chapters provide compelling evidence not only of who successful leaders are and what they do, but how they do it as they meet and manage the challenges of building and sustaining success in uncertain times in a range of cultures and social contexts. In these schools, principals assert their broad educational values, professional identities, agency and resilience, drawing upon a range of strategies, technical and human relating qualities and skills in building and sustaining success for all.

Whilst they acknowledge the influence of cultural, policy, and community contexts, they are not oppressed by these. The chapters provide a brief description of country and school contexts, the life and work of the principal, their leadership strategies and how they contribute to teacher wellbeing and teaching quality, leadership development in others, pedagogical leadership, cultures of trust, and community engagement. There is also consideration of how school leaders manage tensions and dilemmas, how success differs from effectiveness, and the characteristics and qualities of leaders that lead to success. It is a book which will stimulate school leaders and aspiring school leaders to consider more deeply their own work and its directions. For researchers and system leaders, it provides multi-level, multiple perspective case studies as part of the largest international educational leadership project ever undertaken. It is a ‘must read’, rich, timely professionally connected book.

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Professor Christopher Day is Professor of Education and member of the Centre for Research on Educational Leadership and Management. He is also Professor of Educational Leadership, University of Sydney, Australia; Chair Professor of Educational Leadership, Beijing Normal University, China. During the last twenty years, he has led and continues to lead national, European and international research and development projects in the areas of teachers' work and lives and school leadership and to collaborate in these with colleagues in Europe, North and South America, China and Australasia, including invited keynote addresses at several national and international conferences. His abiding interests remain in teacher quality, school leadership, improvement and effectiveness; and, within these, understanding how schools, school networks and universities may provide effective management and support for teachers' and principals' long-term professional development, wellbeing and effectiveness through research and teaching. He is Editor-in-Chief of 'Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice' (TTTP); and a member of the Editorial Boards of The British Educational Research Journal (BERJ), Teaching and Teacher Education (TATE), and the Journal of Educational Administration (JEA).

 

David is a Professor in Educational at the Faculty of Education at the University of Melbourne. He teaches within the areas of educational leadership and school improvement and has supervised to graduation more than 60 higher degree research students. He is a founding member of the International Successful School Principalship Project, and the International School Leadership Development Network, two of the largest and most sustained international research groups focussed on educational leadership. He has more than 230 publications and has presented more than 220 times at international and local conferences and has led or been involved in 27 research classified grants worth more than $21,000,000. He has conducted more than 100 school reviews across government schools in Victoria, South Australia, and Hong Kong. A former Vice-President of the Australian Council for Educational Leaders, he was awarded the ACEL’s most prestigious award, the Gold Medal, in 2014