Following the inception of the International Successful School Principalship Project (ISSPP) under the auspices of Prof Christopher Day at the University of Nottingham in 2002, findings from an initial group of countries (England, USA, Australia, Norway, Denmark, Sweden) identified successful principal practices in instructional leadership, capacity building and organisational learning, and cultural diversity. A New Zealand small-scale case study investigation of six successful primary and secondary principals adds the personal dimension of principalship to successful practices identified in other countries which, in turn, is fed back into an international database of successful school leadership practice across different countries in different policy and social contexts.

The objective of the New Zealand study was to identify the skills, strategies and dispositions which successful school leaders use in implementing leadership practices in a local context of school-based management. Accordingly, the key research question was: What particular leadership strategies and dispositions contribute to a successful principalship in a self-managing school environment?

The theoretical framework for this research project is based on interpretivism. The aim of inquiry within the interpretive paradigm is to understand and reconstruct the meanings that people hold. In the case of this research study, school principals and significant others who work closely with them, shared with researchers their understandings of factors contributing to a successful principalship. Interpretivism acknowledges also that there are multiple realities for both observer and observed, and that these may change as understandings are shared and reconstructions are formed.

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