ISSPP Building and Sustaining Successful Principalship: Messages from the Field

1. ISSPPBuilding and Sustaining Successful Principalship: Messages from the Field Paper presented at CCEAM, Cyprus, October 2006

2. Differences in Contexts and Kinds • responsive to context but not dependent • courage, heroism or distributed leadership: dispelling the myths

3. Similarities:Five Themes • Passionate commitment, care and personal accountability • Moral purpose in managing tensions and dilemmas • Being other centred and learning focussed • Emotional and rational investment • The personal and the functional

4. The Organisational and Communal Orientation of Schools Table 11.1: The Organisational and Communal Orientation of Schools (Fielding, 2003, p. 6)

5. Five Combinations of Principles and Practices in Building and Sustaining Processes of Successful School Principalship

6. Conclusions • emphasise both the functional and the personal, combining the pursuit of academic and social goals for the benefit for the personnel. • hold onto and express clear moral purposes as they manage tensions and dilemmas and these are expressed through building an individual and collective sense of identity To achieve this requires a strong sense of identity and this implies an awareness of self – "the extent to which people are conscious of various aspects of their identities and the extent to which their self-perceptions are internally integrated and congruent with the way others perceive them" (Hall, 2004, p. 154, in Gronn & Lacey, 2004) • sustain a passion of commitment with contexts of personal accountability • have a strong understanding and appreciation of the importance of emotional understanding and investment • recalibrate contextual conditions and constraints in order to use appropriate change strategies to continue to create the conditions necessary for school improvement; such conditions and constraints vary over time depending upon changes in internal and external contexts; the frequency of change varies according to internal and external contexts • prioritise genuine care for all in the community and the building and sustaining of professional trust and mutual respect e.g. dispersed leadership, collaborative structures • CONT

7. Conclusions They indicate, also, that: 7. success is relative, dependent upon the school's structure, culture (social dynamic), socio-economic setting and the beliefs and biographies of the principal, staff and students; and 8. external changes are used by successful principals as a means of raising teacher and student expectations for learning and achievement as well as satisfying external accountability criteria 9. continuing professional development of different kinds appropriate to purpose is a key part of the development strategies used by successful principals e.g. de-privatising practice, modelling, mentoring 10. the ways in which core practices emerge and how they interrelate over time is neither linear nor formulaic.

8. Conclusions:Successful principalship involves: • A focus upon social, emotional and academic goals • Changing structures and cultures in order to open schools to their local communities • Understanding and working with tensions and dilemmas inherent in personal, social and policy contexts • Responding but not being dictated to by these contexts