Grounding knowledge of schools in stakeholder realities: A multi-perspective study of effective school leaders

Leadership provided by the headteacher is widely acknowledged to be a crucial variable in determining the effectiveness of schools. However, the majority of leadership studies consist of either surveys or interviews which the researcher has conducted with head teachers or case studies written by the head teachers which draw heavily upon their own experience, and as such are essentially ‘autobiographical’ in the perspective they provide on leadership in schools (Ribbins & Sherratt, 1992). The objectives of this article are to: set out a new model of effective school leadership based on recently completed empirical research; demonstrate how the multi-perspective methodology adopted contributed to a critique of existing models of leadership and the development of a new grounded model and discuss the analytical issues raised by the multi-perspective methodology which involved all the stakeholders in a school community.