Leading schools has become more challenging in recent years as the role of headteacher or principal has evolved and unprecedented challenges have arisen.  Research in England, during and after the lockdowns in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, revealed the intensity of the experience for headteachers and the longer-term impact on their well-being and career intentions (Thomson et al., 2023, Greany et al., 2022).  The research brought the sustainability of school leadership into sharp focus. 

This paper draws on early findings from an ongoing, comparative study of sustainable school leadership across the UK, which seeks a deeper understanding of i) how the UK nations recruit, train and retain school leaders, ii) how well these approaches take account of individual, local and systemic needs and sustainability.    

The focus of this paper is to introduce the conceptual framework for the study.  We show how we are exploring leadership sustainability alongside the ideas of identity and place, by highlighting each of these aspects with early findings from the first locality case studies we have conducted in Northern Ireland, Scotland and England.

We approach the study recognising that the way leadership and leadership development are defined reflect understandings of what education is ‘for’. We see leadership as culturally situated and context specific (Torrance and Angelle, 2019), distributed, and a process of influence geared towards the achievement of shared goals (Northouse, 2021). Leadership development we understand as a process of individual career-long growth involving the development of knowledge, understanding and abilities as well as shifts in aspirations, beliefs, values and/or identity.

We thus see the sustainability of school leadership as multi-dimensional and plans for realising it as reflective of values and ethics (Hargreaves and Fink, 2006). An understanding of supply is required but also consideration of diversity, equity, quality and fitness for the future, reflecting understandings of the purpose of education.  

Seeing leadership as context-specific means considering place. We take place-related issues – e.g. school catchment, history, staffing and community resources – to mean that every school is unique, and requiring specific leaders/leadership. While the local can be understood as a boundaried place, place is also a site of power, which exists in time/space, through which information, people, things, and discourses flow. Place operates at different scales - national, regional, local – which intersect and interact.   

Identity is the third aspect of the conceptual framework. While individual identities are important, we also recognise collective identities that can be organisational and/or place-based. We thus understand professional identities as dynamic and changing over time - shaped by individual, school, local, national and global dimensions. Identities are individual and collective, socially constructed, and influenced by multiple factors (biography, history, culture, emotions, and professional norms). Identities are negotiated at micro and macro levels (e.g. school and policy), and bound up with values, power and legitimacy.   

We illustrate each of these aspects with data from one of the locality case studies we have conducted, providing insights into the current experience of leadership in specific contexts in each country.  

We conclude by drawing out themes and issues that arise from applying our understanding of sustainable leadership, place and identity to the cases. In so doing we contribute to the conference theme by exploring and characterising current reality and beginning to draw out implications and indications for future development.  

Case Studies The larger mixed methods study includes seven locality case studies – two each in Northern Ireland and Scotland, and three in England in total.  In this paper we will draw on 3 of these, one each from each country. Each locality case study includes:   i. documentary and data analysis to develop a picture of the locality based on publicly available sources, ii. local leader interviews with formal system leaders and providers of leadership development to develop an understanding of local succession/development priorities, approaches and issues;   iii. employer interviews with individuals involved in recruiting and performance managing heads to understand approaches and issues;   iv. serving and potential heads; extended interviews probing leaders’ careers, work, well-being, aspirations, identities and development experiences;   v. Where possible, observations of training sessions, recruitment panels, and/or network meetings to build a rich picture of local norms and practices;   vi. Where possible, focus groups to explore recruitment, training and retention with a wider sample.  This is a comparative study and the approach we take is to consider each case not simply as a pre-defined entity which we describe, compare and contrast, but also to pay attention to ongoing processes. We attend to three ‘axes’ in our comparison (Bartlett and Vavrus, 2017): horizontal (across a case), vertical (levels of influence), and transversal (change over time).

The early findings from this comparative study in the UK nations show the current reality and intense pressure of leadership in an individual school, the way this is manifested differently in the various contexts and the relevance of considering place and identity in an exploration of sustainable leadership. Some common trends are evident, the increased care role of schools for instance and a changing relationship with parents and families. The comparative approach also demonstrates the way different histories, cultures and contexts generate unique manifestations of the trends.

BARTLETT, L. & VAVRUS, F. 2017. Comparative Case Studies: An Innovative Approach. Nordic Journal of Comparative and International Education (NJCIE), 1. GREANY, T., THOMSON, P., COUSIN, S. & MARTINDALE, N. 2022. Leading in Lockdown: Final Report. Nottingham: University of Nottingham. HARGREAVES, A. & FINK, D. 2006. Sustainable leadership, San Francisco, Jossey-Bass. NORTHOUSE, P. G. 2021. Leadership: Theory and practice, Sage Publications. THOMSON, P., GREANY, T., COUSIN, S. & MARTINDALE, N. 2023. Vox Poetica: bringing an arts-based research method to school leaders’ lockdown experiences. Journal of Educational Administration and History, 55, 215-230. TORRANCE, D. & ANGELLE, P. S. 2019. The Influence of Global Contexts in the Enactment of Social Justice. In: ANGELLE, P. S. & TORRANCE, D. (eds.) Cultures of Social Justice Leadership: An Intercultural Context of Schools. Cham: Springer International Publishing.