Session Information
26 SES 06 A, Successful Leadership Research: New Directions for the International Successful School Principalship Project
Symposium
Contribution
Overview:
Empirical research studies (Leithwood et al., 2006) conclude that the principal is the second most influential variable in student academic success. Over the past twenty years, the International Successful School Principalship Project (ISSPP) has conducted over 150 qualitative case studies of successful principals in 27 different countries, providing contextualized understandings of school and principal success in challenging contexts. These findings have been robust across time, region, and country, a significant finding as the phenomenon of policy transfer has increased high stakes testing globally over the past two decades.
Research Questions:
Notwithstanding Leithwood’s (e.g., 2005; 2006) work over a number of years combining the empirical and conceptual, we were intrigued by five questions which did not yet seem to have been answered:
- What similarities and differences can be identified in the beliefs and behaviours of successful school principals across national cultures and policy contexts?
- What part do local, regional, national and international policies play in influencing the work of successful principals?
- Do different countries have different ways of defining success?
- How do high-stake assessments and accountability measures influence the practices of successful principals?
- Do different socio-economic contexts in which schools operate affect the ways in which successful principals work? Are different qualities and skills needed?
- How do successful principals come to be successful? How do they learn about their work and acquire the skills needed to create and sustain school improvement?”
ISSPP Methodology
Initially, the ISSPP project utilized multi-perspective, qualitative case study methods. The selection of the case sites was done using purposive sampling of schools that controlled for differences in accountability standards and evidence of improved student performance during the tenure of the principal under study. To gain multiple perspectives about what a principal had contributed to a school’s success, the principal, teachers, school staff and parents were interviewed using a semi-structured protocol.
Findings from Two Decades of Research on Successful Leadership
Over the past twenty years, ISSPP has produced robust global findings about school leadership which ensures student success beyond narrow policy prescriptions (Author, 2007; Leithwood, Day, Sammons, Harris, & Hopkins, 2006; Author, 2006). The ISSPP project has developed a nuanced and contextually sensitive conception of success that extends beyond student outcomes on high-stakes tests to student wellness, community perceptions, and equity. Additionally, global research findings have indicated increasingly complex contexts for school leadership, including digitalization, globalization, externalized accountability policies, and increasingly diverse demographics. Closely related, across the international studies, researchers also reported multiple layers of influence on individuals (children) with regards to their education from the home to society and culture (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). Such new and perennial tensions and complexities in a rapidly changing society require a multi-level and multi-layered perspective (Author, 2020a) where schools are complex adaptive systems and societal institutions (Author, 2020b; Morrison, 2010).
Given this level of project saturation and findings about increasing complex and multi-layered contexts for schools, the ISSPP has designed the next phase of its work by developing a theoretical framework of complexity theory and ecological systems theory as well as an analytical framework to explain school and leadership success as part of a multi-level phenomenon with relations among individuals and groups from classrooms to nation state and transnational levels amidst the complex contemporary situation. Extended research methods feature a survey instrument as well as updated qualitative interview protocols.
Papers in this symposium present a synthesis of ISSPP findings, examples from the United States and Australia, and future directions for ISSPP.
References
Author, 2022 Authors, 2021. Author, 2020a Author, 2020b Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development: Experiments by nature and design. Harvard university press. Byrne, D., & Callaghan, G. (2013). Complexity theory and the social sciences: The state of the art. Routledge. Doyle, L. H. (2003). Synthesis through meta-ethnography: Paradoxes, enhancements, and possibilities. Qualitative Research, 3(3), 321–344. Leithwood, K., Day, C., Sammons, P., Harris, A., & Hopkins, D. (2006). Successful school leadership: What it is and how it influences pupil learning. Leithwood, K., & Riehl, C. (2005). What do we already know about educational leadership. A new agenda for research in educational leadership, 12. Morrison, K. (2010). Complexity theory, school leadership and management: Questions for theory and practice. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 38(3), 374-393. Shaked, H., & Schechter, C. (2017). Systems thinking for school leaders: Holistic leadership for excellence in education. Cham, Switzerland: Springer. Savin-Baden, M., & Major, C. H. (2007). Using interpretative meta-ethnography to explore the relationship between innovative approaches to learning and their influence on faculty understanding of teaching. Higher Education, 54(6), 833–852. Weed, M. (2005). Meta interpretation: A method for the interpretive synthesis of qualitative research. Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 6(1), 1–17.
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