Leadership for Sustainability


Book Description

Solving today’s environmental and sustainability challenges requires more than expertise and technology. Effective solutions will require that we engage with other people, wrestle with difficult questions, and learn how to adapt and make confident decisions despite uncertainty. We need new approaches to leadership that empower professionals at all levels to tackle wicked problems and work towards sustainability. Leadership for Sustainability gives readers perspective and skills for promoting creative and collaborative solutions. Blending systems thinking approaches with leadership techniques, it offers dozens of strategies and specific practices that build on the foundation of three main skills: connecting, collaborating, and adapting. Inspiring case studies show how the book’s strategies and principles can be applied to diverse situations: Coordinating the activities of widely dispersed individuals and groups who may not even know they are connected, illustrated by the work of urban planners, local businesses, citizens, and other stakeholders advancing ambitious climate action goals via a Community Energy Plan in Arlington County, Virginia Collaborating with diverse stakeholders to span boundaries despite their differences of opinion, expertise, and culture, as illustrated by the bold actions of a social entrepreneur who transformed the global food service industry with the “plant-forward” movement Adapting to continuous change and confounding uncertainty, as a small nonprofit organization mobilizes partners to tackle poverty, water scarcity, sanitation, and climate change in rural India Readers will come away with a holistic understanding of how to lead from where they are by applying leadership principles and practices to a wide range of wicked situations. While the challenges we face are daunting, the authors argue that these situations present opportunities for creating a more just, healthy, and prosperous world.




Sustainable Leadership


Book Description

In Sustainable Leadership, Andy Hargreaves and Dean Fink address one of the most important and often neglected aspects of leadership: sustainability. The authors set out a compelling and original framework of seven principles for sustainable leadership characterized by Depth of learning and real achievement rather than superficially tested performance; Length of impact over the long haul, beyond individual leaders, through effectively managed succession; Breadth of influence, where leadership becomes a distributed responsibility; Justice in ensuring that leadership actions do no harm to and actively benefit students in other schools; Diversity that replaces standardization and alignment with diversity and cohesion; Resourcefulness that conserves and renews leaders' energy and doesn't burn them out; and Conservation that builds on the best of the past to create an even better future. This book is a volume in the Jossey-Bass Leadership Library in Education—a series designed to meet the demand for new ideas and insights about leadership in schools.




Introduction to Sustainable Development Leadership and Strategies in Higher Education


Book Description

This topical volume contextualizes the heightened interest in sustainable education across the globe and will be of interest to researchers, university leaders, and students interested in a sustainable future for universities and society as a whole.




From Policy to Practice


Book Description

The School Leadership Program (SLP) is a federal grant sponsored by the United States Department of Education. A hallmark of the grant is the connectivity between various agencies to provide quality leadership preparation and development programs for aspiring and current school leaders. These collaborative efforts involve community and educational stakeholders including districts, universities, city agencies, not-for-profit entities, foundations, private academic organizations, and others involved in the development of school leaders. Since its inception in 2002, over one hundred grants have been funded. This edited book’s purpose is to share innovative, research-based practices from the federally funded grants that are sustainable after the life of the grant and are able to be used throughout the field for preparing and developing aspiring and current school leaders. This book features the work of current and past grantees around their innovative practices and lessons learned about school leadership preparation and development, especially around the issue of sustainability of these practices upon completion of the grant. SLP Grantees share practical, usable lessons learned from their experiences with the grants, based on their research, project data, and practical experience.




Leadership for Green Schools


Book Description

Leadership for Green Schools provides aspiring and practicing leaders with the tools they need to facilitate the design, leadership, and management of greener, more sustainable schools. Framed by theory and research, this text draws from the fields of sustainability science, built learning environment, and educational leadership to explain what green schools look like, what role school buildings play in advancing sustainable organizational and instructional practices, and why school leaders are "greening" their leadership. Sustainability can often seem like an unreachable, utopian set of goals, but this important resource uses illustrative examples of successful schools and leaders to show how establishing and managing green schools aligns with the work they are already doing to restore engaged learning within their schools and communities. Leadership for Green Schools is a unique and important resource to help leaders reduce the environmental impact of school buildings and immerse students in purposeful, meaningful learning for a sustainable, just future. Special Features: Examples from award-winning schools and leaders—best-practices and illustrative examples throughout make whole school sustainability come to life and show how green leadership is a real possibility for the reader. Aligned with Professional Standards for Educational Leadership—provides the tools necessary for leaders to advance sustainability goals while at the same time fulfilling the core purposes of their job. End-of-chapter discussion questions—valuable pedagogical tools invite personal reflection and conversation.




Building Sustainable Leadership Capacity


Book Description

Bringing together a powerful group of leading educational thinkers, including Michael Fullan, Dennis Sparks, Linda Lambert, and Dean Fink, this volume examines how to sustain improvement through shared leadership.




Developing Sustainable Leadership


Book Description

`This book tackles the leadership question by looking both outward and inward, the latter being how to sustain oneself as a leader...Developing Sustainable Leadership is an important contribution to the field of educational leadership′ - Education Libraries `This collection of pithy analysis and insightful solutions will be easily assimilated by school leaders, policy makers and community stakeholders who will, with relative ease, be left eager to recontextualise the wisdom within to their own unique circumstances′ - ESCalate `School leaders and teachers know a lot more than they think they do. So, what prevents the release of that creative energy? Look, no further than this thought provoking collection of essays from world leading scholars. It treats us to a kaleidoscopic view of what we do know, what we ought to know and what we urgently need to do to harness the power of sustainable leadership. Policy makers, please take careful note!′ - John MacBeath, Professor Education Leadership, University of Cambridge With increasing accountability pressures, developing and sustaining leaders is a major challenge for all those involved in education today. This book brings together eleven outstanding writers to provide insights, frameworks and ideas on how we can sustain our school leaders and develop values-based leadership in order to counter the short-term management solutions that abound. Andy Hargreaves, Dean Fink, Michael Fullan, Brent Davies, Ken Leithwood, David Hopkins, Geoff Southworth, Brian Caldwell, Chris Day, Terry Deal and Gib Hentschke represent some of the most powerful thinkers and writers in the educational leadership field who respond to the challenge of how we can develop and sustain our school leaders. While a great deal has been written on preparation for leadership, this book takes leadership thinking to the next level by providing strategies for enhancing and empowering the leaders we have. This book is a key source of ideas, insights and frameworks for all those involved in sustaining our school leaders. ′Offers a clarity to complex problems that enables both the academic and general reader to identify with the issues dealt with...the book is an enjoyable insight into several leaders′ view on leadership, which Brent Davies has pulled together well and which will be of use to headteachers, aspiring leaders and academics alike′ - International Journal of Educational Management




Sustainable School Leadership


Book Description

'Finalist' 2019 Association of American Publishers PROSE Award - Education Practice and Theory We live in a complex age, with multiple challenges to the practice of educational leadership, and where there is widespread evidence of individuals wanting to retire early from leadership positions, and of fewer wishing to take up the role. This highly experienced team of cross-cultural researchers combine scholarly research with over a decade of extensive empirical research using an innovative 'portrait' methodology to investigate the challenges that educational leaders on two continents currently face. The kinds of challenges described include: · the personal (e.g. being new to the job, coping with the role, approaching retirement) · the inter-personal (e.g. power relations, personal challenges with staff, parents and children) · the local (e.g. issues faced by the school in the community) · the national (e.g. government initiatives, inspection) · the global (e.g. the impact of economic forces on political and institutional management). Sustainable School Leadership then contributes to the field of educational leadership in several ways. First, the authors bring scholarly enquiry to life by providing detailed descriptions of the challenges which individual educational leaders face in different cultures in a globalised world. Second, they show how the combined insights from individual portraits provide important and meaningful critiques of national policies and organizational functioning. Such critiques can then inform current and future leadership research by a better understanding of how links between the micro-, meso-, and macro-levels of education promote or discourage school leaders' sustainability. Finally, the authors present important cross-cultural comparisons of eastern and western approaches to educational leadership, suggesting that sustainability – or a lack of it – may have different roots in different cultures. Sustainable School Leadership is relevant to students on educational leadership and management courses, academics and researchers and school leaders.




The Power of Many


Book Description

Among the many challenges faced by educational systems in the 21st century, leadership succession is universally recognized as being a major concern. Rather than retain the current paradigm of a single figure at the top of the school hierarchy, leading researchers Patrick Duignan and Helen Cannon argue the case for a more inclusive, collaborative, and distributed leadership. In this book, they offer a series of alternative models and gather views from existing school principals to demonstrate what might be possible and what might work better than the model followed today. The Power of Many emphasizes how a new paradigm must work to retain those who are already in the job, but must also act to encourage potential candidates to apply for the job. The book offers specific recommendations and advice to system policy makers, human resource personnel, and to practitioners in schools, especially school principals and deputy principals, on new models and paradigms. Practical guidelines are proposed that offer sustainable leadership solutions and promote educational systems and schools as 'communities of learning.' Ultimately, The Power of Many shows how a shortage of principals can and must be substantially reduced, and the collective capacity of leadership in schools enhanced and sustained.