The paper presents the preview of a case study carried out within the framework of the ISSPP (International Successful Principalship Project), conducted in two Secondary Education Schools in the province of Granada (Spain) with specially challenging contexts. It describes, in part, the context of the school and its characteristics, as well as the history of the administration, line of work, and leadership strategies oriented toward building a commitment by the school community to improve the students’ achievements and personal developments.

Both schools are in backgrounds with big adversities to respond to as well as having a social and educational risk population. In spite of that, it responds with optimism and success, triggering cultures of change which allows a school improvement, results of learning, organization and functioning.

There are enough international views that show this idea is complex. From the ISSPP Project (Day & Gu, 2014) are working on successful leadership, specially pedagogical work with teachers and professional communities in challenging contexts. At the same time, it starts to make studies which broaden the understanding of real leaderships in middle school exactly in different contexts, within in regularity frame that the most powerful literature calls such a successful leadership (Bolívar,  2012; Day et al., 2011; Leithwood, 2006; Leithwood, 2011; Leithwood & Strauss, 2008; Louis,  Dretzke, & Wahlstrom, 2010). These studies and different international reports (OCDE, 2014; TALIS, 2013) confirm that leadership of a scholar management is essential when there is a change and a willing to improve the academic results.

There are studies which consider a successful leadership is able to straighten out a trajectory of decline of a school toward a progressive improvement based on to transform of work and attitudes by the teachers (Leithwood & Strauss, 2008).

On the other hand, others studies, Day et al., (2010) believe that in order to develop a successful leadership eight aspects must be produced on behalf the scholar management:

•   To define view, values and address, building trust.
•   To improve the teaching and learning conditions.
•   To restructure organization, redesign roles and responsibilities.
•   To redesign and enriching the curriculum.
•   To improve teacher quality.
•   To build relationship inside scholar community.
•   To build relationship outside of the scholar community.

From our point of view, a successful leadership is an ensemble of different factors that influence in the good development of a leadership like this. Based on that, it is started from teachers’ purposes and their role in teaching to actions carried out by that principals as well as a good running in their organization. Both are able to respond according to the characteristics of the school, students and social and economics contexts.

Despite to this pedagogical knowledge, in the Spanish case, as the report  TALIS (2013) affirms, principals shows a lack of training, management, leadership and organization. But there are also successful experiences in challenging contexts which have left behind traditional and bureaucratic functions and traditional roles, proposing and going ahead toward new ways that provide an effective education, benefiting the well– being of a school. These descriptions represent the two cases which we present.

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