Schooling continues to be impacted by a range of change forces. In recent years, the COVID pandemic, teacher shortages and the impact of new technologies are examples of forces that have impacted, and continue to impact, schools and school leaders (Harris, 2021; Harris & Jones, 2022). To help school leaders cope with continuous and major change, various versions of systems thinking and complexity theory are being considered. In this paper we apply the ecosystem view of Diaz-Gibson et al. (2021) to a new Australian case from the International Successful School Principalship Project (ISSPP)(Hudson, 2024a, b, c).

Diaz-Gibson et al. (2021) argued that there is a need to think about schools as complex social networks, or living ecosystems for learning and flourishing, whereby principals act as weavers to enhance opportunities for all actors who interact together within a school community to learn and flourish together. The role of the school principal as a weaver is to “plant, cultivate, shape, harvest, and regenerate educational projects, learning communities, experiences, and trajectories within complex living educational ecosystems” (Diaz-Gibson et al., 2021, p. 440).

Capturing the essence of schools as ecosystems is the weaving circle model (Diaz-Gibson et al., 2021, p. 439), which is a model for systemic impact in schools and is based on the validation of the associated SchoolWeavers assessment tool. The weaving circle model sees the principal as an ecosystem gardener within the continuous cycle of ecosystemic weaving. As part of this, the principal seeks “transformative action that pursues changes across the whole ecosystem by cultivating and generating the energy flow for relationships to flourish, and facilitates the climate to thrive” (Diaz-Gibson et al., 2021, p. 440). There are three processes within the weaving circle model, each of which have several specific domains. The first process is cultivating relationships based on planting seeds within the domains of empathy, trust, and shared purpose. The second process is facilitating systemic change by watering the planted seeds through the domains of collaborative and innovative processes. The final process is orientated towards the ecosystemic support for students to thrive as active learners in a diverse society, enacted through the domains of equity and personalised learning. 

By seeing schools as ecosystems for learning and flourishing through the use of the weaving circle model, Diaz-Gibson et al. (2021) noted that principals, change leaders and education researchers can come together to collectively discuss ways in which to expand thinking on how we ‘do’ schooling, enriching local opportunities for educational change whereby broader student and school outcomes can be considered in context. There is much similarity in the premise behind the weaving circle model and the two decades of research on school success within the ISSPP. It is therefore timely to connect the two more strongly, building an awareness of how both complement each other to prompt thinking about schools as complex and adaptive systems that achieve broader school and student outcomes alongside students’ academic results. To make this connection, this paper focusses on exploring a recent ISSPP case study of a successful rural school in Australia (Hudson, 2024a, b, c), and addressed two research questions: 

1)    What is the connection between school success and an ecosystem for learning and flourishing? 

2)    What are the leadership practices of the principal that enable a school to become an ecosystem for learning and flourishing?

This study used multiple perspective, mixed method case study methodology to investigate how and why a rural primary school in Australia had come to be successful, and in what ways the school had achieved outcomes beyond students’ academic results. Selection of this school was guided by determination of the school’s rural status, and the three ISSPP criteria of good principal and school reputation, student performance at or above expectations and other evidence, such as school review reports, that indicate school success. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the principal on three separate occasions to gain a broad perspective of his leadership. Individual interviews were also conducted with 3 middle leaders, 4 classroom teachers, a system leader, and the school council president. Group interviews were conducted with 9 parents and 12 students. Interview questions were adapted from the 2021-2025 ISSPP interview protocol document (Day, 2021), with all ISSPP case studies using the same bank of questions to allow for international cross case analysis of findings (Moos et al., 2011). Questions cover different aspects of school success depending upon the participants’ position within the school community and all participants are asked about the characteristics and leadership practices of the principal. Interviews formed the main source of data in this study and were supported by document analysis, the ISSPP teacher survey, and seven hours of observation conducted in both formal and informal settings in the school. The ISSPP teacher survey featured three sections for teachers to complete: (1) information about the school and school community; (2) information about how they feel about their teaching; and (3) information about themselves as a teacher. All 16 teachers were offered the opportunity to complete the survey and 11 surveys were returned, reflecting a 69% response rate. Analysis of interview and observation data was guided by Braun and Clarke’s (2022, p. 35-36) six phases of reflexive thematic analysis, with these data analysed independently and then examined together to identify common themes related to Robert’s characteristics and leadership practices. Survey data underwent ‘descriptive analysis’ (Lodico et al., 2010), with frequencies and means reported for each survey question overall. Analysis of the survey was used to support and extend the themes that emerged from analysis of the qualitative data. Trustworthiness of the study was established through member checks of interview transcripts and data triangulation (Creswell, 2015).

When the principal started, the school was directionless and chaotic. He began by cultivating (Diaz-Gibson et al., 2021) a climate that unified the school through establishing the need for change, demonstrating a positive attitude to change, and building trust with parents through empathy, high-visibility and constant communication of the school’s values and vision. Concurrent to this, he began to facilitate and support change through focussing on building a collaborative culture in the school, distributing leadership in the school and structuring the organisation to facilitate collaboration (Leithwood et al., 2020). After establishing the school with a new sense of purpose and direction, Robert deliberately adopted a slower pace of change, where any new innovations were considered carefully in terms of their impact on students and fit with school direction. The principal had acted as an ‘ecosystem gardener’ to transform the school and reach a new order, which resulted in a more connected school community and a safe and happy learning environment where teachers, students, and parents supported one another to thrive. From the findings we describe a new successful school leadership model that adds elements of complexity theory (Morrison, 2002, 2010), and in particular the notion of ‘leadership for organisational adaptability’ (Uhl-Bien & Arena, 2018, pp. 98-101) in which leadership acts on the tension between the need to innovate and the need to produce to create responses that are adaptive and meets the needs of the organisation to survive, thrive, and grow. In doing so, it captures the complex interaction between leadership, various contextual forces, and student and school outcomes of the school. The conceptual model depicts the operation of the school as a continuous cycle from input to output, with a case for change informing leadership and subsequent order action and it will be shown in the presentation.

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