Chapter 8: Leading Successfully in High-Needs Contexts: Australian and New Zealand Cases

This chapter explores Australian and New Zealand research from the International School Leadership Development Network (ISLDN). From Australia, a group of four scholars focused on the high-needs strand. In a paper published in a special issue of Management in Education, Gurr, Drysdale, Clarke, and Wildy (2014) presented the cases of two principals, one from a metropolitan school in Melbourne, Victoria and the other from a remote school in Western Australia. These cases were based on research and familiarity of the researchers with the principals, rather than full ISLDN case studies. Subsequently, the Victorian group expanded to include doctoral students Longmuir and McCrohan, and conducted four multiple perspective case studies using the ISLDN high-needs research protocol and that of the International Successful School Principalship Project (ISSPP; Gurr, Drysdale, Longmuir, & McCrohan, 2018, 2019; Longmuir, 2017, 2019); it is findings from these cases that are reported in this chapter.