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There is growing evidence of a worldwide shortage of persons willing to apply for vacant principal positions in schools. Reports a study about why more persons are not applying for principal positions in Catholic schools in New South Wales, Australia. An analysis of the career aspirations of those eligible and likely to apply at some stage for a principal position revealed a high level of “unwilling” respondents. Ranks and discusses ten factors identified from a study of their perceptions of issues that would discourage or encourage them to apply. The most significant negative factor is the impact on family and personal life. Others include gender issues and the nature of the selection and interview process. The significant positive factor is that principals have the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of others. Reflections on the findings include addressing the changing nature of school culture, the implications for the principalship and the need to develop a culture of leadership in schools.

Steiner schools represent a natural experiment in the provision of schooling. With a history dating back more than 100 years, leadership, leaders and the principal do not sit easily with Steiner educators. The contemporary regulatory environment requires a “principal” or legal authority at the school-building level, creating a tension for Steiner schools. This makes Steiner schools an ideal case study for understanding the contemporary role of the principal.

This paper is based on an interview-based study with 24 heads of Australian Steiner schools. Conducted on Microsoft Teams, all by the principal investigator, the interviews generated a 171,742-word corpus subjected to an inductive analytical approach. Data reduction led to four themes, and this paper focuses on one (principles not prescription) and its implications for the principalship and school governance.

Embedding the principalship in a philosophy (or theory) of education re-couples school administration with schooling and bases decision-making in principles rather than individuals. It also alters the role of data and evidence from accountability to justifying principles.

Rather than a focus on individuals or roles, this paper argues that the underlying principles of organisational decision-making should be the central focus of research.

Ensuring organisational coherence, by balancing the diversity of positions on core principles is the core task of the contemporary principal.

Exploiting natural experiments in the provision of schooling makes it possible to argue for how schooling, and specifically the principalship, can be different.

The purpose of the article is to examine knowledge about successful principalship and discuss the methodology that has emerged throughout the history of the International Successful School Principals Project (ISSPP) and their implications for future progress.

Historical analysis is used as a strategy for establishing the background, the expansion and the progress of ISSPP as a long-standing international research network and to discuss the development of three research strands and methodological variations over time. The analysis provides a basis for pointing at some areas that need more attention in the future.

The findings suggest multiple images of the meaning of key concepts in the project and multiple theoretical and methodological orientations. There is a need to pay more attention to methodologies to make the successful cases more comparable and also to clarify the underlying assumptions of the different approaches.

Successful school principalship is a complex phenomenon. Therefore, future studies of successful schools and leadership would benefit from the use of knowledge that draws on sociology, cultural studies and politics.

In this chapter, we will examine the tensions of contemporary higher education. Theoretically informed by the relational approach, our argument makes three major moves. First, we examine the intersection of competing normative purposes for higher education, while simultaneously balancing the compliance and regulated nature of university programs for the professions. Second, through the specific example of educational leadership programs in Australia, we then explore how these tensions play out in practice. This has implications for the leadership, instructional choices, student experience, and relations with school systems of both faculty and universities. In our final move, we go beyond orthodox analytical dualism to offer a generative contribution for navigating the problems and possibilities of educational leadership under neoliberal conditions. By illuminating the underlying generative assumptions under contested conditions, we demonstrate how ideas of educational leadership are both constitutive of and emergent from our image of organizing. In doing so, we not only describe what is taking place but offer how things can be different.

This study aims to present revised models and a reconceptualisation of successful school principalship for improved student outcomes.

The study's approach is qualitative and quantitative, culminating in model building and multi‐level statistical analyses.

Principals who promote both capacity building and systems of accountability and evaluation, to the extent that their teachers perceive these two factors as characterising their schools, advance student empowerment, social development and academic achievement. Other success factors include student home educational environment, the values and beliefs of teachers, and principals' years in a school and hours worked. It is demonstrated that the negative effects of socio‐economic disadvantage can be moderated.

Insights are provided into how schools and their principals can best achieve a broad range of student outcomes. For example, the most direct route for a school to achieve academic success is the indirect route through fostering student social development. For successful practice, the challenge is to create synergistic effects; the accumulation of a number of effects developed with others over time in the same direction.

This study represents the culmination of a five‐year research journey on school principalship that improves student outcomes. It employs an in‐depth qualitative and quantitative methodology culminating in model building and powerful multi‐level statistical analyses. It is one of few studies available that examines most of the factors that may influence a school's success in three categories of student outcomes: academic achievement, social development, and student empowerment.

The special characteristics of small schools appear to set them apart from larger schools. In fact, small schools may be a discrete group in that their complexity may not be in direct ratio to their size. The special characteristics of small schools may include the absence of senior staff, administrative assistance on a part time basis only, conservatism and role conflict within the community, and lack of professional interaction. This paper aims to explore these issues by analysing data from a recent survey on Tasmania successful school principalship.

Results from a survey with the population of Tasmanian principals in schools of 200 or less students are compared with previous research findings from the limited literature in the area.

The study has confirmed that contextual demands result in role conflict for teaching principals, that principals of small rural schools are mobile, staying for short periods of time, and that a higher proportion are female. Statistically significant differences were found among small rural schools of 100 or fewer students and small rural and urban schools of between 101 and 200 students. These differences were best explained by combination of the “double load phenomenon” and the increasingly mandated requirements for the implementation of growing amounts of Department of Education policy, rather than rurality or socio‐economic status.

Given the combination of the expected large turnover in the principalship in Australian schools over the next five to ten years, the high proportion of small schools (at least one‐quarter) and the unlikely change to the traditional career path wherein, for many, becoming a principal of a small school is the initial step progressively moving to large schools, the findings add weight to the need for greater attention to be paid to small school principalship.

The study adds to the very limited research into successful school principalship in small schools.

This chapter examines the intricacies of researching the initial preparation of school principals. First, the case is made for the importance of researching this formative stage in a principal's career trajectory. Second, an alignment is described between theory, research, and practice for informing fruitful approaches to preparation for the principalship. Third, a framework is articulated comprising four focal points portraying the complexities of principals' work. It is suggested that this framework could be used as a heuristic tool for connecting with the realities of the principal's world and the professional knowledge, skills, and dispositions that are required to perform the role effectively.

Literature and research have substantiated a noticeable trend in the recognition of the important role the assistant principal plays in schools. Despite this awareness, the knowledge base remains inadequate to meet the needs in understanding this vital role in educational administration. Given this void, this article reviews literature on multiple dimensions of the worklives of assistant principals and analyzes survey data from 125 assistant principals in Maine to ascertain how assistant principals allocate their time, at what roles and activities they feel successful, and the relationship between perceived success and quality of worklife ratings. The findings highlight the importance of understanding functions of the role and adequate teaching experience before assuming the role. They also raise concerns about the minimal amount of time assistant principals allocate to instructional leadership and professional development, and the extent to which serving as an assistant principal prepares one for the principalship.

In 1992, Mexican authorities and Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación, (SNTE, National Education Workers Union) signed an agreement to decentralize the educational system called ANMEB (National Agreement on the Modernization of Basic Education), in which the Ministry of Education transferred basic education services to the 32 states of the country. Secretaría de Educación Pública (SEP, the Federal Ministry of Education) still had the power to allocate money and enforce a national curriculum. SNTE, considered the largest and most powerful union in Latin America with 1.5 million affiliates, allowed the reform with the condition of keeping its status as national union.

Who are late‐career school principals? Do they continue to make a positive contribution to their schools? Do they feel tired and trapped or do they maintain their commitment to education and young people? The purpose of this paper is to explore these issues, employing the results of a survey on successful school principalship with the population of Tasmanian government school principals.

Surveys on successful school principalship were distributed to a population of 195 government schools (excluding colleges and special schools) in Tasmania. Return rates were 67 per cent for principals and 12 per cent for teachers. Surveys sought responses in areas such as demographic characteristics, leadership characteristics, values and beliefs, tensions and dilemmas, learning and development, school capacity building, decision making, evaluation and accountability, and perceptions of school success.

The findings confirm other research indicating that pre‐retirement principals, when compared with other principals, are more likely to have a strong work ethic, to consult widely and to have a strong social consciousness. The findings contradict results from other research indicating that pre‐retirement principals, when compared with other principals, are more likely to be rigid and autocratic, disenchanted with and withdrawn from work, and “tired and trapped”.

Such findings lead one to conclude that pre‐retirement principals continue to be a committed and valuable resource and that therefore greater research and policy attention should be given to the issue. With education systems undergoing major and continuing change, while at the same time suffering potential shortages of effective school leaders, it is time to re‐examine educational career structures, especially for those principals approaching retirement.

The paper's originality lies in the evidence it provides about an area that is not well researched.