Contemporary principals lead schools amidst rapidly changing and complex contexts, many of which have long histories of persisting systemic and structural racial, economic, and social inequities. Research by members of the International Successful School Principalship Project (ISSPP) from 20+ countries over the last two decades has found that, regardless of differences in contexts and conditions, successful principals’ work is predicated upon educational purposes that entail but transcend the functional, founded on principles of social justice, equity, and inclusion.

In ISSPP research, schools are considered as adaptive social systems that sit at the nexus of policy, communities, and society. Researching school leadership amidst a complex and rapidly changing society requires conceptualisations and methodologies to be sufficiently robust and dynamic to capture the nuances of the ways that multi-layered influences in society, communities, and schools shape, and are shaped by, what successful principals do.

In seeking to answer the urgent issues of defining how success is achieved and sustained in all schools and especially those serving high need communities, the ISSPP research examines school leadership through the lens of ecological systems theory (Bronfenbrenner, 1979) which theorizes individual practices and development within the context of various dynamically interacting layers of social and ecological systems and uses the complexity theory (e.g., Byrne & Callaghan, 2013) to capture the processes and actions in which school organizations operate, develop, and thrive in an increasingly unpredictable, globalized world. 

Drawing upon evidence from a sample of selected member countries, this symposium synthesizes ISSPP research findings over time and discusses how the newly developed ISSPP theoretical conceptualization and comparative methodologies enables the research to consider leadership as a multi-level phenomenon and capture the ways in which principals navigate within and between complex systems levels over time to grow and sustain success.

This symposium continues from the first part, beginning with the overview paper that explains the new conceptual and methodological directions of ISSPP research, including how we rethink the knowledge and research contributions from ISSPP to the educational leadership field; why we reconceptualise the field with new theoretical positionings and framing of successful leadership research and how we research with new methodological directions that capture the dynamics of context and leadership (e.g. mixed methods approach, comparative perspectives within and/or across countries). The next two papers present selected case studies to explain how the theoretical lens and/or methodological approach has been used to inform and make sense of the case study data in culturally and educationally relevant ways.  The final paper provides a postscript on how the new conceptualisations and methodologies work to advance knowledge and understanding of the nature, practice, and impact of successful principalship.

The symposium concludes with a discussion and concluding comments/postscript as well as questions from the audience.

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. London: Routledge.