Building and Sustaining Improvement in Disruptive Times: School Leadership in Aotearoa New Zealand

Abstract

This chapter revisits, reinforces, and extends our view of the underpinning principles and practices of school leadership in Aotearoa New Zealand. It presents extracts from case studies of schools that illustrate the crucial role of the principal in ensuring ongoing improvement and innovation while working in increasingly complex and uncertain environments. The chapter discusses the need to understand the importance of relationships between individuals and groups, actions, contexts, environments, and cultures where processes of interaction shape principals' practices. Features of complexity thinking are used as a lens through which to understand schools as complex adaptive systems and illustrate the importance of the dynamics of the interactions among the agents and elements within the New Zealand educational system. The chapter concludes by drawing together the implications for leadership that emerge across this chapter.

Citation

Constantinides, M. (2024), "Building and Sustaining Improvement in Disruptive Times: School Leadership in Aotearoa New Zealand", DeMatthews, D.E. and Kruse, S.D. (Ed.) Reimagining School Leadership (Transforming Education Through Critical Leadership, Policy and Practice), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 13-29. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-83797-410-820241002