Learning through leadership, leadership through learning: Leadership for sustained school improvement

In this chapter we reflect on the British and international contexts for leadership studies, examining the centrality of leadership and the dominant models emerging from effectiveness studies (transactional leadership) and school improvement research (transformational leadership). We present an alternative view of leadership (post-transformational leadership), which has emerged from our work with consistently improving schools within the Improving the Quality of Education for All (IQEA) Project, and present some propositions and paradoxes drawn from our work with, and research in, those schools. These, we believe, offer a more dynamic set ofinsights into leadership for sustained school improvement than those which currently dominate the literature and practice in the training of school leaders.