Introduction and objectives.

The work we submit is included within the ISSP (International Successful School Principalship Project) and follows on the research carried out during an initial course of research study in four secondary schools located within disadvantaged contexts in the province of Granada (Spain). This study is aimed to analyse the characteristics and strategies of a successful leadership focused on the improvement of learning (Moral, Romero, Valdivia y Olmo, forthcoming).

The results of the first year research  (Moral, Romero, Valdivia and Olmo, forthcoming) indicate that principals show common features with respect to their values and beliefs in secondary schools with satisfactory and unsatisfactory academic results, but they present differences in relation to the strategies used to manage the learning processes and the degree they are able to achieve with respect to leadership collaboration and distribution, which is higher in those secondary schools showing satisfactory academic results. 

Taking into account these results, the study we submit is trying to show to what extent those schools that we started to analyse in the first stage of the ISSPP research project during 2013 and 2014, have made changes, or not, regarding the strategies aimed to improving learning results and the principal characteristic features.

Theoretical framework 

The research carried out on successful leadership (Day, et al, 2010a) points out to the need to pay attention to the learning variable in order to accomplish improvements in student achievements and places the focus on the improvement of instruction (Hallinger, 2011). The completed research studies on leadership within challenging contexts (Chapman and Harris, 2004) reveal the difficulties involved in attending to learning in this kind of schools.

For Day et al. (2010a), those principalsthat are able to lead their schools to success with respect to learning results present common features, which are: they are consultative and approachable, provide support, are caring and listening, present coaching and counselling skills, understand the needs of staff and pupils, have strong vision and values and are firm, fair and flexible.

In order to improve the learning results, the schools go through a path that follows a series of phases (Hopkins et al, 2014), which Day et al (2010b) specify in the principals' performance in the following way (Day, 2010b, et al, p. 12).

“In the early phase, heads practised:

-       improving the physical environment of the school to create more positive, supportive conditions for teaching and learning..;

-       setting, communicating and implementing school-wide standards for pupil behaviour restructuring the senior leadership team…

-       implementing performance management systems for all staff…. This had the effect of distributing leadership….

In the middle phase, heads prioritised:

-       the wider distribution of leadership roles ...

-       a more regular and focused use of data to inform decision-making about pupil progress....

In the later phase, heads’ key strategies related to personalising and enriching the curriculum, as well as wider distribution of leadership”.

Based on these research studies, of course we are not able to show the course of the improvement process, but we can indeed show the accomplished changes in this period (2013-2014 – 2015-2016), the achieved improvements, the modified characteristics and strategies, etc., taking into account that our Spanish context maintains a model of pedagogical leadership (Bolívar, 2013; González, 2013) using as reference points the Nordic and Anglo-Saxon contexts mentioned by Moss (2013), who identifies "the Nordic model as 'progressive' and the American model as 'efficient'" (p. 196). In addition in our Spanish context there is individualist culture (Viñao, 2004) which is less favourable for a collaborative work and for the development of a distributed or shared leadership (Moral, Amores y Ritacco, 2016).

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