Chapter 2: Successful School Leadership That is Culturally Sensitive but not Context Constrained

This chapter reports on multiple perspective and observational case studies of the leadership of three underperforming schools, two serving communities with relatively high educational advantage, and one with low educational advantage, yet all facing challenges related to school closure and pressure to succeed. Utilizing Hallinger’s (2018) context and culture framework for school improvement to analyze the cases, it is shown that whilst these schools had very challenging contexts, they have been able to meet the needs of their local community cultures through leadership from the principal, and others, that has not been constrained by context. There was a consistency of behavior that underlined the increasing evidence that there are common leadership practices that are useful in most contexts. All three principals had clear direction, two were focused on developing staff, they were all able to redesign their schools, and there were clear foci on improving teaching and learning. So, contexts do matter but not so much in terms of the core leadership practices that lead to success, but rather in the way these practices are employed.