School Leadership Is Personal and Internally Motivated

Abstract

Leadership is as much about an individual as it is about rules and policies. Policies exist for the ``good order'' of the education system and to provide a framework through which principals work. However, at the end of the day, an individual will lead the way he or she knows how to and sees fit, despite such influences as their background, gender, school location and size, socio-cultural, economic and political country contexts. The main argument of this chapter is that although influenced by a range of external factors (legal, economic, social, technological, etc.) and internal factors (school size and location, number and quality of teaching staff, relationship with parents and quality of student intake), the practice of school leadership is a deeply personal activity, embedded in an individual's beliefs and values. That is, what school leadership ``looks like'' in practice is a feature of external, internal and, importantly, individual factors.