Based on the findings of the Principals Leadership Behaviour Project in two provinces in China, this paper provides empirical evidence from three school principals that contributes to the understanding of the factors that influence the resilience of school principals in their profession. Resilient leadership is one that is able to sustain an organisation or group's competitive advantage over time through its ability to perform two tasks simultaneously: to adapt and adjust effectively to rapid, turbulent change, and to thrive and prosper successfully against current goals (Dartey-Baah, 2015, Robb, 2000; Masten, 2012; Vera et al.,2020). If educational leaders fail to manage adversity, not only will the leaders themselves suffer psychological disorders, but students and teachers will also suffer as a result of the dysfunctional climate for all concerned.

Resilience research has been around for 50 years, but has been greatly intensified in the last 20 years (Förster & Duchek, 2017). The origins of this field of research lie in developmental psychology in the context of children at risk, suggesting that it is the protective factors with the individual, family and community that allow children at risk in adverse living conditions to thrive in their lives (Werner, 1996; Luthar, 1991). After that, resilience in the context of education is widely applied to children and teachers (Luthar, 2015; Beltman, Mansfield & Price, 2011).

Resilience in the context of education has been studied from a number of approaches to its definition. Firstly, resilience is seen as an important psychological trait associated with optimism, perseverance, adaptability, responsibility, courageous decision-making, personal ethical values, personal efficacy, personal well-being, etc. (Bennis, 2007; Lazaridou, 2020; Olmo-Extremera, Townsend and Segovia, 2022), which help individuals to bounce back from the challenges, disappointments and adversities they face. Secondly, resilience is considered as a socially constructed concept that is relative, developmental and dynamic and influenced by contexts or scenarios (Rutter, 1990; Bernard, 2002; Luthar, Cicchetti, & Becker, 2000; Henderson & Milstein, 2003; Gu & Day, 2007; Day, Johansson & Møller, 2011). In this case, resilience develops over time and is influenced by situational and personal factors and determined by individuals’ capacities to manage context-specific factors (Day, Johansson & Møller, 2011; Sarkar and Fletcher, 2014; Rutter, 2006). Apart from the two understandings mentioned above, there is another approach to explore resilient leadership. It is considered as a kind of transformational capability to demonstrate how to use resources (Dartey-Baah, 2015; Teo, Lee & Lim, 2017). Specifically, the capability perspective believes that resilient leadership is the use of social capital and financial, structural or technological resources to achieve the institution's goal so that it can thrive even in the face of adversity. (Vera et al., 2020).

Although the need and importance of resilient leadership is known, only a limited number of empirical studies have involved school principals. Some studies believe that resilience is static and resilient leadership is related to personality traits (Lazaridou & Beka, 2015; Olmo-Extremera, Townsend & Segovia, 2022), while others argue that resilience is dynamic and resilient leaders are influenced by positive and negative circumstances and are able to manage these context-specific factors (Day, Johansson & Møller, 2011). However, there is little evidence on which relevant factors, the trait variables or the context-specific variables, are more justified in Chinese principals and how such variables relate to success in the principalship.

This paper aims to portrait three resilient principals to demonstrate the range of internal and external protective factors impacting on leaders’ work which, together contribute to exercise leadership that resilience plays in enabling them to thrive, flourish and sustain their effectiveness.

The Principals Leadership Behaviour Project is an ongoing qualitative study involving 115 principals in two provinces in eastern China. The study was conducted in two phases. In the first phase, a total of 103 principals were interviewed in 11 counties of Fujian Province, including 33 principals whom we visited and interviewed in their schools and 70 principals whom we interviewed in focus groups. The second phase, currently underway, has so far visited 5 schools and interviewed 12 school leaders in three counties in Zhejiang province. The interviews mainly focus on the professional work of principals, including challenges and solutions at work, the role and values of principals, school leadership, etc. During each interview, with the consent of the interviewee, recordings were made and automatically transcribed at the same time. An initial memo and summary were written immediately after each school visit or headteacher interview. Drawing on data from the above-mentioned research project, this paper aims to explore how some school leaders are resilient to thrive in their daily work and profession. 1) Three characteristics of resilient leadership (inner motivation, academic optimism and courage to change) were summarized by reviewing the literature on resilient leadership. 2) The three characteristics are compared with the interview data in an attempt to identify resilient school leaders. Finally, three headteachers are identified, and the details can be found in Table 1. Table 1 profile of three headteachers Principals Gender Working years as a headteacher Teaching subject School location A Male 30 Chinese county B Female 18 English city C Male 5 Art village I then searched for them and their schools online and tried to find more information. I also arranged a second interview based on the following questions. 1) What difficulties or challenges are you facing or have faced and how do you deal with them? 2) What motivates you to make such a contribution? 3) What are your educational values and beliefs? Do you put those values and beliefs into practice? Constant comparative method was used to compare data from two interviews, memos and summaries and online news, and three storylines were emerged after coding and categorising. Finally, three stories were written with the subtitles of "Principal A-a retiring principal: turning days into decades with a vocational calling", "Principal B-a female principal: chasing for high standards of change with a global eye", "Principal C-a rising star: 'methods are always more than difficulties'".

Resilience plays a key role in helping principals become successful school leaders, and that trait factors contributes more to influencing resilience than contextual ones for three participants. Firstly, intrinsic motivation combined with resilient leadership underpins the steadfastness of them. The three participants consistently responded with one word, 'interesting', when asked about their work motivation as headteachers. In other words, to persevere over a long professional life requires considerable intellectual and emotional commitment (Palmer, 2017). Secondly, self-demand associated with resilient leadership generates the pursuit of excellence and success in school. The high self-demands are illustrated by three participants with different stories. As mentioned by Day (2014), leading at your best over time requires everyday resilience, which includes 'toughness', resolute persistence, hope and commitment. Thirdly, change is accompanied by resilient leadership that puts the headteacher's educational beliefs into practice. The principals made full use of local materials, resources and relationships to specialise their school, and they also combined their professional strengths to revitalise the school environment. The study also found that contextual factors had a limited impact on the resilience of the participants. For example, Principal C, who works in a village primary school, expressed that he sees few difficulties as he believes that there are always solutions as long as one wants to make a difference. The findings differ from those of Gu and Day (2007), who focused on how balance is achieved in personal, situational and professional scenarios. They suggest that the more extreme the context, the more energy an individual needed to cope, and the more likely it was to test their resilience. However, based on the research, headteachers do not simply adapt to their work; instead, they thrive by actualising their beliefs through their positional power, regardless of the context, whether it presents an opportunity or adversity.

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