Resilient principals in challenging schools: the courage and costs of conviction

AbstractThe work of leaders in schools takes place in shifting and sometimes conflicting reform contexts which tend to increase and intensify their professional work and personal lives as they seek to influence a range of stakeholder groups and individuals in processes of school improvement. Such diverse and sometimes competing demands of policy, local context and educational values not only challenge the breadth of qualities, knowledge and skills possessed by leaders, but also test their adaptivity, flexibility and intellectual, and emotional energy on an everyday basis. Although much of the literature on resilience suggests that it is a necessary quality in extreme adverse circumstances – for example, physical or emotional trauma as a result of conflict – it seems obvious that everyday resilience will be an essential quality and a necessary capacity for leaders to lead to their best. However, this may be sorely tested as the range of their roles and responsibilities expands and their space to exercise 'responsible agency' at work shrinks, together with personal space outside the workplace – traditionally viewed as a time to reflect, recover and renew. A recent survey showed that, in England, for example, only 7% of secondary heads perceived that they had any time to engage in interests outside their work; it is unlikely that much will have changed in the years since then, as more recent root-and-branch reforms in the governance and curricula of schools in England and Wales demonstrate. How leaders of schools, which serve high-challenge communities of socio-economic disadvantage, sustain their resilience and the costs of doing so in raising and sustaining their levels of success has received only scant attention in the research literature. This paper reports the outcomes of research into the work of 12 successful principals who work in schools in challenging environments in different countries and were asked to talk about their contexts and the challenges which they had overcome in order to achieve their success. It uses one of these as an illustration of the role courage and conviction plays in all their lives.Keywords: resiliencesuccessful principalsteachers' lives