Working together towards school success in a rural school context: “It works well but we are not satisfied”

Striving to help each student achieve as much as possible is the ultimate objective of public schools, but there are diverse opinions about the key features of successful education and schools, as well as the optimal ways to work and use resources to become successful. Despite well-formulated curricula and high political ambitions, approaches of schools and Local Education Authorities (LEAs) to meet these objectives and maximize students’ learning strongly vary. According to earlier research in the International Successful School Principalship Project (ISSPP), successful school principals focus on the same main working domains at aggregate level (Gurr and Moyi, 2022; Leithwood et al., 2020). However, there is a need for complementary understanding of school leaders’ responses to local contexts and cultural milieu to foster successful education for all students. As in all countries, the demographic context affects both resources and what is regarded as valuable and successful at the local level. However, most research on successful education and school leadership have been conducted in urban school contexts (Lund, 2023; Preston and Barnes, 2017), although large shares of schools in the world are located in rural areas (Fargas-Malet and Bagley, 2022). In Sweden, for example, 25% of all students in Sweden go to a small school with less than 100 pupils (Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions, 2018), many in rural settings. In this paper we therefore explore how school success and successful principalship is understood and acted in a Swedish, rural school context. Rural context means in this case about 4,000 inhabitants with a population density of about 2 inhabitants per square kilometre.

The purpose of this paper is to extend knowledge of how school actors’ conditions, understandings, and priorities influence what is regarded as school success and successful principalship in a Swedish school context. The research questions are:

The rest of the article is structured as follows. Next, we summarize previous research on advantages and challenges in rural school contexts. Then, we describe the theoretical lens, method, and analysis used in the study. Finally, we present and discuss the results, followed by conclusions and methodological reflections.

Schools are important for the well-being and socio-economic prospects, not only of individual students but also their local, regional, national and global societies. In a country with a strong welfare system such as Sweden, all schools are expected to strive to maintain high quality. The Swedish education system is supposed to include equal access to education for all students, regardless of their sex, residential locality, and socio-economic circumstances. Strong educational leadership and quality assurance work are seen as essential to develop and improve schools to attain their objectives. Despite the high national-level ambitions there are substantial variations in the approaches and success of schools and LEAs. Several reports have highlighted a lack of equity in and between Swedish schools and shown that the gaps between schools are growing (e.g. Swedish National Agency for Education, 2023). When studying successful schools this verifies the importance to study both actors and contexts. One identified set of variations is the differences between students’ performance in urban and rural school contexts (SOU, 2019, p. 40).

International research has shown that being a student in rural school contexts has both advantages and disadvantages. Some studies indicate that rural schools provide higher quality, in terms of pupils’ results (with adjustment for demographic variables), than urban schools (e.g. Åberg-Bengtsson, 2009), while others indicate the opposite (Echazarra and Radinger, 2019). Rural communities tend to have relatively high residential stability (Åberg-Bengtsson, 2009). However, low population densities and long distances between settlements hinder opportunities for exploiting economies of scale and network effects (Asthana et al., 2003). They also tend to be poorer than urban areas and emigration of young people is a common feature (Echazarra and Radinger, 2019) that can exacerbate deficiencies of school resources, threats of school closures, and difficulties in both attracting and retaining qualified staff (Fargas-Malet and Bagley, 2022). This is problematic as teacher quality and qualitative school leadership strongly influence student performance (Hattie, 2009). The socio-economic profile of the students is also lower in rural schools, which tends to negatively affect students’ school performance (Echazarra and Radinger, 2019). The generally lower socio-economic status of students in rural schools also tends to negatively affect student school performance (Byun et al., 2012). Moreover, rural students more frequently lack career models and access to highly educated jobs than urban students (Bauch, 2001).

In contrast, relationships between school leaders, teachers, students, parents, and the surrounding community tend to be closer in rural schools (Aðalsteinsdóttir, 2008). Hence, teachers can often provide more support and care for students who are not performing well and/or have low socio-economic status (Leithwood and Jantzi, 2009). Rural students also self-report higher levels of life satisfaction than students in urban areas (OECD, 2015). Most of the cited international findings are also valid in Swedish rural schools, where there is generally strong community feeling, and most people know both each other by name and pupils’ family circumstances. It should be noted that the focal rural school here differs in some respects from the general pattern. For example, social benefits and unemployment levels are similar to national averages in the surrounding rural community, rather than lower as they are in many rural communities internationally. Hence, the study may illuminate some of the possibilities and challenges in rural school contexts, but we do not claim that all the findings will be applicable in all such contexts.

Rural school contexts present both opportunities and challenges for principals. As rural schools are often smaller than urban schools, principals need to balance central demands and local expectations more carefully (Schafft and Biddle, 2013). It can be easier for rural principals to gain support from the surrounding community, due to their schools’ closeness to the community, together with their importance for both local social cohesion (Kalaoja and Pietarinen, 2009) and employment (Sipple and Brent, 2015). However, threats of school closure and problems attracting well-qualified teachers can hinder continuous school development and improvement efforts (Wildy et al., 2014). Key elements of successful rural principalship include principals acting as change agents who promote people-centred leadership (Preston and Barnes, 2017). Successful rural principals build collaboration among and with staff, students, parents, and community stakeholders, balance local and district needs and work as instructional leaders (Preston and Barnes, 2017).

Inspired by Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory (1979), we agree with the ISSPP network’s framework to view schools and their mission as complex, interconnected with other multiple-layered systems. Hence, students’ development and learning are dependent not only on their immediate environments, in school and at home, but also on current understandings and changes in the surrounding society. Thus, it is important to consider how all contextual layers influence students’ social and academic achievements. Diverse factors of microsystem settings (such as family and classroom) will always be important, but mesosystem elements (such as the local school culture), and exosystem elements (such as national regulations) will also strongly influence how the schoolwork is conducted. So will social and cultural values, and chronological changes (chronosystem) in the schools and wider society (macrosystem).

Studying the social life in schools means studying dynamic and emergent processes (Morrison, 2002). These emergent processes could be initiated from various organizational and system levels. Correspondingly diverse kinds of empirical data are needed to understand inherent and implicit aspects that affect what is done and prioritized in the local school. Accordingly, ecological systems theory (Bronfenbrenner, 1979) together with complexity theory (Morrison, 2002) can help to illuminate the dynamic processes involved in schools’ interpretations and adaptations to national and local contexts, values, and policies, as well as the interactions and interpretations between various school actors that are crucial for school success. These interactions are ongoing, variable, dynamic, and complex. Sometimes actors (including parents, members of the surrounding community, school staff, school managers and the students themselves) have common understandings of the ideal ways to achieve successful education, but sometimes they disagree.

A complicating factor is that success can be understood and defined in various ways. In schools, efforts to meet individual students’ needs are guided both by national policy and the local structure, culture, and leadership. Thus, to elucidate what contributes to success, and how successful education is practiced and assessed, it is necessary to study these understandings and overarching patterns in schools’ complex, dynamic contexts and relational networks (Morrison, 2002), including the understanding, purposes, assessments, interactions and actions among actors in the school. Hence, it is necessary to understand how individual actors interact to build collective agency to support students’ learning (Johansson and Ärlestig, 2022; Biesta and Tedder, 2007). As agents are closely connected to structures, agency contributes to either transform or reproduce existing structures and cultures (Chen-Levi et al., 2024). This article presents such analysis, focusing on a specific rural Swedish school.

The study presented here is part of the larger International Successful School Principalship Project (ISSPP) ^[1].

The focal school, here called North valley school, is a public compulsory school in a small town in a Swedish municipality. The school was purposively selected (Cohen et al., 2018) as an example of a successful rural school according to the following three criteria. First, achievements of students exceeding expectations in terms of grades in their final year (age 15–16 years), accounting for demographic factors including parents’ average level of education, and proportions of both boys and newly immigrant students. Second, presence of an experienced principal (the focal school’s principal had been in her position for eight years and maintained or improved the school’s results). Third, presence of a deputy principal that had been nominated as a successful school leader in a national competition.

The municipality is sparsely populated with about two persons per square kilometre. More than 30% of the inhabitants live outside the densely populated centre. The local economy is based on 300 small and medium-sized companies that operate in the production (particularly forestry and mining) and service sectors. About a third of the population is engaged in the public sector. In the last 30 years the population has decreased, while larger surrounding cities have grown. The community has a lower unemployment rate, and hence higher percentage of people in the workforce (85%) than the Swedish average (80%), and higher than average tax incomes per person for the municipality.

At the time of the data collection the school had about 430 students from preschool classes up to grade nine and 52 teachers. Two percent of the students were immigrants. The staffing ratio (10.4 students per teacher) was higher than the national average (12), and the share of teachers with a teaching certificate (70.5%) was similar to the national average in Sweden (70.8%). The parents’ average level of education was high school. The principal was responsible for quality and improvement processes within the school’s budget. The school also had a deputy principal and five teacher leaders (in Swedish: förstelärare). During our visit, the school appeared to be well-equipped, calm and clean.

Empirical data for this study were collected in 2024, using ISSPP protocols formulated in 2022 and a mixed methods approach including 16 qualitative half-structured interviews and a quantitative teacher-survey (n = 48, respondent rate 92%). Complementary information was obtained from researchers’ field-notes, a student survey by the Swedish school Inspectorate (2023) and statistics compiled by the Swedish National Agency for Education (2022).

Based on our understanding of schools as complex ecological systems (Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Morrison, 2002), we interviewed the principal (n = 1), the deputy principal (n = 1), teacher leaders (n = 2), teachers (n = 3), students (n = 8), parents (n = 6), the student counsellor (n = 1), and local superintendent (n = 1) to explore how individual school actors’ conditions, understandings, and priorities contribute to what is seen as school success and successful principalship. Students and parents were interviewed in groups and the others individually. The interviews took between 45 and 100 min (19 h in total), and in combination with the complementary information provided valuable insights into the school actors’ understanding of successful education and leadership.

Both purposeful sampling (Cohen et al., 2018) and convenience sampling (Bryman, 2018) approaches were applied to recruit respondents. Students were randomly asked to participate by their teachers using a student list, parents volunteered, and both teachers and teacher leaders were purposefully invited to participate with the intention to obtain broad representation of grades, subjects, and teaching experience. The ISSPP teacher survey, distributed to all teachers in the school, focused on information about the school and school community, and the teachers’ feelings about both their teaching, themselves as teachers and the principal leadership. The participating teachers had 0.5–29 years of teaching experience.

All respondents were informed about the intentions of the study, the research procedure, and their right to withdraw from the study at any point without explanation according to ethical guidelines of the Swedish Research Council (2017). The interviews were transcribed verbatim, and all data material was anonymised and securely stored, following the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (Regulation, 2016/679).

The data was coded and reduced in several steps (Miles and Huberman, 1994), focusing on responses to the ISSPP’s overarching research questions 1, 2 and 6 (“To what extent, and in what ways, is ‘success’ in schools perceived and measured”, “What are the key enablers and constraints for achieving school ‘success’” and “How do different key stakeholders within and outside the school community and in different layers of the education system define successful school leadership practices”). Following reflexive thematic analysis procedures (Braun and Clark, 2022) we first read the interview transcripts several times and created codes based on the respondents’ descriptions of successful education. Examples included “definition of school success”, “promoting school success” and “limiting school success”. Next, codes related to successful school leadership (e.g. “crucial values”, “successful leadership practices” and “leadership for professional development”) were created by the same procedure. We derived tentative themes from the obtained codes and chose illustrative excerpts. We then read the transcriptions again and discussed them in the research group to revise and reduce the themes. This finally resulted in five themes regarding the importance of: a safe and accepting school environment; cooperation; qualified and flexible teachers who broaden students’ perspectives; development through preservation and perseverance; and a principal who values continuity and good relations.

The findings are structured by the five themes that evolved from the data analysis. The results provide examples of the understandings of local actors in a rural Swedish school of school success (theme one to four) and successful principalship (theme five). Despite slight variation in the actors’ responses, they expressed general agreement on the five extracted themes, as outlined in the following text.

In field observations we noted that it was a calm school-environment. Everyone seemed to know what to do and where to go. The students strolled along the corridors towards their classrooms and the staff chatted with them as they passed. Interviewed students verified that they felt safe in the school and that the school had a familiar atmosphere. The survey by the Swedish School Inspectorate (2023) confirmed that the students had higher satisfaction with their school than the national average, and interviewed parents described the school as being safe and neither too small nor too big. The school actors emphasized the importance of good relations and frequent interactions among students, teachers, and principals in their work.

The school actors highlighted the importance of building respectful relationships and behaviours that contribute to a good learning environment and raising good citizens for the future. We found that education about the value of respecting and caring for each other was combined with classroom-rules and a teaching model where the lessons were structured in similar ways to create clarity and a good learning environment for all students. The teachers were expected to:

1. start and end the lessons in similar ways,

2. present the agenda for the lessons on the white board in the classroom

3. use fixed seating arrangements for the students

4. utilize cognitive aids

The teachers also used time-timers to create structure and clarity. Teacher C described the background to these routines as follows:

The superintendent confirmed that the school and surrounding community valued stability and claimed that both she and the local politicians were responsive to the principal’s needs and requests. She met the principals in her municipality once a week but did not go into details. Instead, she trusted that the principal and teachers could assess and handle what to do in their everyday work.

The school leaders and teachers saw their collective agreement concerning rules and organization of lessons as an element of school success, regarding schedules and other structural elements as promoting a good working environment. The students indicated that the culture contributed to good relationships and a calm environment in some ways, but sometimes teachers could provoke students when they sought to maintain the culture. Teachers who were respected and liked by the students had more opportunities to uphold the school values. Thus, by creating good and respectful relations with the students, the teachers could create a calmer and more learning-friendly environment, but promotion of the school’s values demanded continuous work from the school actors.

The principal and teachers described the importance of supporting each other and working together. The staffroom was inclusive, and anyone could participate in the ongoing conversations, covering a mixture of professional and private issues. The surveyed teachers expressed that they enjoyed working in the school (with an average rating of 5.5 out of 6; see Figure 1). The results clearly show that there was high work satisfaction and good relations among the staff.

The students, teachers, and principals talked about everyone knowing each other at the school, and both cooperation and doing things together being important. Some of the students also highlighted the importance of other students for their school performance, for example by keeping a calm working environment and motivating each other to perform well in school.

According to the deputy principal the cooperation and openness between teachers had improved in recent years, partly because the school had actively worked to strengthen a sharing culture. The teacher leaders also highlighted the importance of shared understandings:

A pattern noted in all actors’ comments was recognition of collaboration and trust in individual actors’ ability to act responsibly. In addition, several times a week the school leaders engaged in “walk-throughs” in the school to maintain close relations with staff and students and remain informed about the daily work. They also spent time with the students in the student café.

All interviewees talked about the importance of good teachers. The school had a stable group of teachers who had worked together for many years. The teacher leaders described a successful school as one that places high expectations on the students and helps them to extend their abilities. According to them, teachers must be well-prepared, goal-oriented, and open to students’ perspectives and questions. According to the principal, successful education requires flexible and responsive teachers who adapt their teaching to students’ various learning needs and motivate them to reach their potential, regardless of their socio-economic background. Supporting each student on their own level was highly prioritised:

Both the principal and deputy principal described the school having an important role to play in compensating for low academic ambitions in some homes, especially those with poorly educated fathers who value practical skills more than academic achievements. One teacher leader described how she sought to give her students more nuanced perspectives for the future:

The teachers agreed that competent teachers, stability, and continuous professional development are keys to school success in combination with clear and trust-based leadership.

A noted problem was that interviewed parents expressed expectations that the school would support their children without pushing them too hard, helping them to be “good enough”. This conflicted with ambitions to help students realize their highest potential and devote more time to schoolwork. According to the school leaders this was especially apparent and challenging when parents with low academic expectations were involved, and the student counsellor expressed a belief that students are inclined to choose the same paths as their parents:

From his perspective, it was difficult for the school to influence the students’ choices for the future. However, all parents expressed beliefs that the teachers seemed to be engaged with their students and tried to do their best. In line with school leaders and teachers they underlined the importance of teaching methods adjusted to the learning needs of individual students, including those with learning difficulties. Parent B expressed it like this in an interview with parents:

Like the adults, the students highlighted the importance of well-qualified teachers but expressed views that teachers’ quality varies. They regarded good teachers as those who frequently vary their teaching methods during the lessons, are proactive by asking questions, and helping students when needed. The students appreciated opportunities to share ideas, explain, clarify things, and discuss subjects with each other. They wanted teachers to express their expectations clearly and assessments transparently.

A value-based culture has been prominent in this school over decades and is mentioned by all respondents as a characteristic of the school. For many years the principal had worked together with coworkers and students to establish and maintain an atmosphere described as kind, with well-known core values, and a slogan for more than 20 years that could be roughly translated as Respect and dignity. According to the deputy principal, these key concepts were well-grounded in the school:

The school had established common values and structures that they deemed important to achieve successful education. The school leaders and teachers talked about the need for maintaining and preserving the same topic in the improvement work instead of jumping between various development programmes. This did not mean that they refrained from developing their teaching. The school leaders and the teachers highlighted the importance of allowing disagreements and discussions about how to teach. In the preceding year they had decided to focus on “differentiated teaching”, to raise students’ academic grades by building a broad base for all students in the classrooms and increase student activity. To do this, the staff had regular in-service meetings and “pedagogical cafes” focusing on how to develop teaching. This was appreciated by the teachers and provided inspiration to try out new methods. However, new teaching methods had to correspond with the school’s key concepts and values. For example, the focus on differentiated teaching was a natural course after years of applying a teaching model where teachers focused on clarity and structure.

The principal valued and worked with continuity and relationships. She knew her school, teachers and students well. When talking about her leadership and the school’s work she frequently used the pronoun “we”. She worked closely together with the teachers, teacher leaders and (especially) the deputy principal to build common understandings of how to lead and educate successfully. She wanted to solve problems and issues quickly and spent much time in conversations and coordinating activities. She and the deputy principal worked together as a team to maintain and develop the school. They both described having complementary backgrounds and personalities.

The students said they often met the school leaders in the corridors and sometimes during the lessons. One student group described the principal as having a control function:

All adults associated with the school, including parents, highlighted the importance of available and visible school leaders. Their availability and visibility in school reportedly helped the school leaders to build close relations and connections with their staff and students, note required improvements, offer support, and follow up joint agreements. For example, the principal observed how the teachers used the agreed teaching-model, differentiated their teaching, and gave different students opportunities to learn and develop.

The principal described how she had worked to strengthen the focus on academic achievements, as follows:

According to the principal, the teachers were not initially used to the presence of principals in the daily duties, but after eight years appreciated it. She placed high expectations on her staff, and when teachers did not meet these expectations, she arranged individual meetings with them. If that did not help, she provided feedback based on classroom observations to develop their teaching. According to Teacher C, school leaders could gain valuable knowledge about the teachers’ and students’ daily work through such visits. The school leaders described both indirect and direct instructional leadership practices. Through various meetings they solved operational problems in the organization but also used the meetings to build common understandings. The principal and deputy principal tried to attend the regular teacher meetings when possible, and to keep their door open for individual meetings with teachers. By asking questions about the teachers’ teaching practices, they sought to promote reflection, and organized collective learning through pedagogical cafes, where teachers met to reflect on teaching methods and common teaching-related challenges. The leadership in these meetings was distributed among teacher leaders, thereby encouraging teachers to take more responsibility for the school’s improvement work:

According to the principal and deputy principal the system with teacher leaders was still under development. To stimulate their work and maintain the set direction they had regular monthly meetings with the teacher leaders.

Overall, the teacher survey shows that most of the teachers felt that the school leaders supported and trusted them, highly rating the leaders’ support and encouragement for coworkers (at 5.3 on a 6-grade scale). Accordingly, the principal was proud of the school and satisfied with its work. However, she stressed that there were more problems to solve and clear deficiencies, as always in a school organization:

Our results show that actors recognized the importance of establishing a safe and accepting school environment with strong cooperation. North Valley had a long tradition of working with respectful values and relations. Well-qualified and flexible teachers who are deeply engaged and work together provided strong foundations for their work and culture, seeking to develop the school through preservation and perseverance. In their continuous development work teachers and school leaders preferred to maintain well-proven practices with small incremental steps rather than making sweeping changes. The principal was building on the existing culture and model as well as set directions towards mutual responsibility and activities. She prioritized to be present and handle issues gently as soon as possible.

In rural schools, strong and familial relations are particular important (Aðalsteinsdóttir, 2008). The principal of North Valley and her staff achieved this by building on already accepted structures, values and improvement work. The desire for stability and slow changes (chronosystem) affected what was seen as successful. Teachers and principals discussed didactic issues in both their everyday work and structured pedagogical cafes. The actors were proud of their work but also recognized and accepted that everything can and needs change and improvement.

Effects of elements of all the mentioned contextual system layers and their interactions can be discerned in the school’s internal work. Relations and interactions with the superintendent and parents, as well as the culture, events and activities in the community indirectly affected principals’ and teachers’ work and decisions. As in all schools, the mesosystem provided the foundations of what happened in the classroom. Well-established routines, ongoing dialogues and high visibility made the students feel secure. Individuals were expected to follow the established norms and act accordingly, in both the school and local community.

Although all schools are unique, successful school leaders lead in similar ways. Previous research conducted in the ISSPP (e.g. Leithwood and Day, 2007; Leithwood et al., 2020) has shown that successful school leaders tend to focus their efforts on setting directions and the organizational structure, developing people, improving instructional programs, and securing accountability. The principal in North Valley focused particularly on developing people. She used the pronoun “we”, verifying that the work was seen as a mutual responsibility with several actors and roles involved. Rules and expectations were transparent and verbalized. The adults were visible, acted together if necessary, and the closeness of relationships enabled issues to be dealt with immediately, while recognizing individual needs and differences. The school actors formed collective agency and connected the exosystem with the mesosystem by interacting and interpreting national policies in relation to the local school context.

An important part of any principal’s role is to administer their school in accordance with agreed structures and values, thereby leading the meso-system. In North Valley, the principal contributed to understandings and practices by valuing continuity, fostering productive relationships, and being available for both teachers and parents. From this perspective, her leadership resembles that of other successful rural principals described in previous research, for example by Preston and Barnes (2017). She maintained constant dialogue with other school actors, she was proactive and connected elements of different systems with each other. However, she also recognized the importance of each actor having space to manoeuvre and avoided micro-management. In turn, she gained support from the superintendent as well as national policies in the exosystem.

As schools are complex environments (Morrison, 2002), work to implement beneficial change while maintaining stability is an ongoing process. From both national and local perspectives, the focal school is successful. It delivers the social and academic results that various actors strive to achieve. However, the participating actors still identified challenges and areas they needed to improve. Several of the school’s strengths also had associated challenges which indicate opportunities to develop further. For example, striving to establish and maintain good relationships may hinder critical feedback and teaching improvement. Practices, behaviours, actions, and interactions in students’ immediate environments directly affect their academic results (Bronfenbrenner, 1979), and teachers’ pedagogical skills inevitably influence students’ engagement and results. North Valley students expressed needs to challenge the teachers’ understandings of successful education further, as not all teachers had the same ability to engage them. Strategies other than dialogue and incremental change may be required to address this challenge effectively.

Another identified strength with associated challenges is the strong feeling within the local community that educational results should be “good enough”, which tends to lower ambitions among all actors. This is a community where the inhabitants live a good life that they want to pass on to their children, and value cooperation, vocational training, rich leisure time, and a good personality more than high academic knowledge. While this has advantages for promoting harmonious relationships, it conflicts with national ambitions to achieve high academic results through quick responses to school reforms. Therefore, teachers’ abilities to motivate and broaden students’ perspectives, thereby compensating for some of the challenges that rural schools encounter (eg. low social-economic profiles and lack of career models) are crucial (Bauch, 2001; Echazarra and Radinger, 2019).

The purpose of this paper has been to extend knowledge of how school actors’ conditions, understandings, and priorities influence what is regarded as school success and successful principalship. Attempting to understand the complex nature of success and the optimal approaches to achieve it, then applying and re-appraising them, are ongoing processes that are affected by all contextual layers of schools, its governance and actors working in them (i.e. Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Morrison, 2002). In this study it is clear that the school actors have a mutual understanding on what is important and how to act and lead for school success. North Valley has slowly improved its academic results and has for many years been seen as a safe and kind learning environment. The culture in the school and surrounding community emphasizes the importance of trust and sufficiently good academic results combined with students’ wellbeing. The principal’s leadership is especially important for how the school actors understand and act towards school success. She has contributed to a stable collective agency that is generating gradual progress towards shared expectations. Solving problems and maintaining good relations are prioritised, while avoiding excessively challenging the culture.

The inspiration from complexity theory and ecological systems theory both help and hinder our understanding of school success and successful principalship (Morrison, 2002; Bronfenbrenner, 1979). It reminds us of the context and organizational levels that principals and teachers must navigate in. By using Bronfenbrenner’s terminology, we see that the cronosystem and school history is used to understand, sustain and build structure and cultures to meet internal expectations. In that sense the layers are interrelated and reciprocal. As our focus has been on principals the data shows that the mesosystem has a great influence and interact with all respondents in a way that builds understanding and mutual explanation in what is seen as successful in the local context. The actor’s persistent communication and interactions were supported by the organization’s structures and culture, enabling them to gradually handle challenges and develop the school’s work. At the same time analysis of the school’s strengths indicate that it would be possible to take further steps and awaken dreams or broaden perspectives that extend beyond the community. Expectations from the exosystem (national level) is often prioritizing individual students’ academic results and innovation in teaching which here is only one ambition among many. An argument may be that the calm and respectful atmosphere is important for the students’ prospects to live a good life. The principal acts gently and in the background at the same time as she has full control and constantly communicate with everyone. Using complexity theory at the same time delimit the possibility to make predictions and generalize actors’ behaviours (Morrison, 2002). Thus, striving for success requires careful interpretation and active choices between international, national, and local expectations as well as what research lens you apply.

Our findings contribute to a more extended knowledge of how individual actors’ conditions, understandings, and priorities influence what is regarded as school success and successful school principalship. Previous research on principalship in rural schools (e.g. Hudson, 2024) has shown the importance of a principal who maintains a high profile and cooperates closely with the surrounding community. Our study extends this by highlighting the importance (at least in the focal rural setting) of a principal who prioritises strengthening of the school team and responds sensitively to the existing culture in the school and the surrounding community without being satisfied or losing focus on what is best for the students. This verifies needs to recognize the complexity of school leadership, with multiple and sometimes conflicting objectives, roles and demands. We interpret this in relation to the national Swedish tradition of requiring transparency in all decision-making and governance in a culture of trust. Combining organizational and local actors’ perspectives shows the importance of their understanding and activities for the individual schools’ success. Finally, we advocate further exploration of the nuances of principalship in similar and various contexts, both national and international.

We would like to show our gratitude to our colleagues within the Swedish ISSPP team – Associate Professor Ulf Leo, Assistant Professor Anna Rantala and Assistant Professor Elin Stark – for their participation in the data collection and their contributions to insightful conversations.