An open systems model of successful school leadership

Abstract

Purpose: Through description and consideration of 12 models developed as part of the International Successful School Principalship Project (ISSPP), a new model of successful school leadership is developed. Design/methodology/approach: The paper is necessarily descriptive in nature. For the first time, 12 ISSPP models are described together, and these descriptions are then used inductively to create a new successful school leadership model. Findings: The open systems approach adopted depicts schools as a continuous cycle of input-transformation-output with feedback loops that inform each stage of the cycle. The inputs are the variables that lead to transformation. The transformation stage is ..