New Insights: How Successful School Leadership Is Sustained

Abstract

The rich data provided in this project has enabled us to provide a unique international perspective on how successful leaders sustain their success. Our case stories encompass education in six countries and stretch over a period of 5 years. They give us new and challenging knowledge, not only about the values, qualities, skills and knowledge which successful principals hold and apply in order to achieve and sustain success, but, importantly, how they influence teachers’ teaching and in student learning and achievement. The analyses and arguments in the case stories and their further development through six thematic chapters have enabled us to view sustainability from diverse perspectives. One chapter takes a communicative perspective on leadership, sustaining success through sense-making communication in the everyday practice. Another chapter takes as its point of departure a psychological perspective on school leaders’ resilience as a precondition for sustaining success in leadership. A third chapter on sustaining improvement and leadership in challenging schools takes a systemic perspective on schools. And the fourth chapter analysed two different forms of preparation for leadership. The last chapter analysed cases from Denmark, Norway, Sweden and USA (New York) in changing policy regimes for leadership and finds that the directions towards increases in contractual accountability are broadly the same.