Professor’s The Nature of School Leadership highly-praised

In researching the book, Professor Paul Miller solicited views from head teachers at primary and secondary schools from over ten countries around the world

WHATEVER the size and culture of a country and the nature of its education system, a school principal possessing all the attributes of good leadership will be an inspirational figure who makes a massive difference to pupils and their prospects.  The essential qualities are the same worldwide and are transferable, according to a University of Huddersfield expert whose new book is a global exploration of the issue.

Professor Paul Miller is the author of The Nature of School Leadership, based on interviews he conducted with school principals in 16 countries located in five continents. The research enabled him to identify and describe the qualities that successful school heads need wherever they are based.

“You can’t discount the uniqueness of culture and context, but I feel there are some qualities and skills and experiences which are able to be transferred from one context into another,” said Paul Miller, who is the University’s Professor of Educational Leadership and Management.

He has distilled the essence of school leadership into four dimensions – Environmental, Personal, Relational and Social – and within these there are seven themes, such as the need to be policy-driven, internally motivated, entrepreneurial and change-oriented.

“Regardless of location, the size or the type of school, school leadership has these same characteristics,” said Professor Miller.

In researching the new book, he submitted the same set of questions – translated where necessary – to principals of primary and secondary schools in countries that included Anguilla, Antigua, Brazil, Cyprus, Canada, Mozambique, Pakistan, Turkey and Israel.

There were three main questions, said Professor Miller.

“I asked ‘What is school leadership?’ – to get an understanding of the parameters – then ‘How do you do leadership?’ – in order to identify the strategies that the heads use to support school mission and school vision.

“The third question was ‘What underpins their leadership?’ – what makes them get up in the morning, and what are their values and attributes?”

After analysing the responses, Professor Miller wrote a nine-chapter book that he believes is useful as a teaching tool for existing and aspiring principals and for policy makers and people involved in teacher preparation.  He also believes his findings are of relevance to agencies such as the UK’s National College for Teaching and Leadership.

One of the launch events for The Nature of School Leadership is to take place on 18 April, in Professor Miller’s native Jamaica.  Organised by the country’s Institute for Educational Administration and Leadership, the event features an address by the Jamaican Minister of Education, Youth and Information, the Hon Ruel Reid.

One early review of the new book describes it as “inspiring and indispensable”, and another comments that The Nature of School Leadership “will be of interest to both school practitioners and scholars who wish to delve deeper into the ways in which the ‘meaning’ of successful school leadership varies with the context in which it is practised”.