Successful school leadership for social justice in Spain
Identificadores
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10481/70304Metadata
Show full item recordEditorial
Emerald Publishing Limited
Materia
Successful school leadership Disadvantaged contexts Social justice Spanish school leadership Principals
Date
2021Referencia bibliográfica
Publisher version: Moral Santaella, C. (2021), "Successful school leadership for social justice in Spain", Journal of Educational Administration, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. [https://doi.org/10.1108/JEA-04-2021-0086]
Abstract
Purpose. The purpose of this article is to synthesise the findings from the investigations
that have been carried out as part of the the International Successful School
Principalship Project (ISSPP) in the Spanish school context
Design / methodology / approach - Twelve case studies have been carried out within
the three lines of research proposed by ISSPP: successful principals, underperforming
principals, and principal leadership identity. All but one school were in challenging
contexts. The methodological approach followed is based on multiple perspective case
studies using a mixture of qualitative methods (interviews, focus groups, and
observations), with some cases also including a questionnaire.
Findings - Successful principals were shown to have a strong social justice orientation,
and enacted this by combining transformation, instructional and collaborative leadership
processes to engage their school communities in a collective endeavour to reverse the
bad situation of their disadvantaged schools, seeking excellence from equity. The
identity of successful pricniapls is characterised by optimism, looking to the future with
hope and adopting a realistic utopian attitude to interpret their surrounding reality.
Originality / value - The paper adds to the considerable findings of the ISSPP through
a synthesis of the research on successful leadership in disadvantaged school contexts in
Spain. It provides further evidence about leading in challenging school contexts, and
also serves to provide a summary of the ISSPP research in Spain.