The purpose of this qualitative research study is to investigate how the seven principles of sustainable leadership by Hargreaves and Fink (2006) are used by principals to build teacher leadership capacity that will impact student achievement. The analysis of the data compared how principals perceive their behaviors as being sustainable leadership behaviors. Sustainable leaders provide the blueprint for leadership in 21st-century schools. School leaders are the ones who are held accountable and are being faced with the demands to enhance student achievement. However, to do this, it starts with the teachers as they are the first to encounter students and are given the task to get students to reach their highest level of learning possible. High demands that have been placed on school leaders are trickling down to their teachers. Therefore, for a principal to grow students, they have to start first by building teacher leaders. The principal is known to be the key to the success of a school, from the principal impacting student achievement by utilizing the seven principles of sustainable leadership. An exploratory qualitative research design with a phenomenology approach was conducted in the form of a case study to capture the perceptions of the school leader and the teacher leaders of the leadership teams. The study was conducted within one academic year and took place on three campuses. It included principal interviews and focus groups of the teacher leaders on the leadership team in order to acquire a deep knowledge of the perceptions of the school leaders (both principals and teacher leaders). The focus group was conducted in an attempt to gain a true understanding of primary school sustainable leadership that impacts student learning and inspires teachers to become leaders on their campuses. Data were collected through interviews and focus groups as well as data from the district on each school's performance scores. The researcher discovered that commonalities were evident among some of the principals and leadership team members but not all. Likewise, the researcher identified commonalities within each school as well as across schools in a cross-case analysis. The findings indicated that sustainable leadership was not viewed as maintaining current leadership, but about establishing a shared leadership in decision-making opportunities. The conclusions of the study showed that all participants in the study expressed the importance of sustainable leadership within schools to maintain student achievement while growing students and staff members. Therefore, it opened the door to future research that would address the correlation between how principals view their leadership as opposed to how their teachers perceive their leadership.
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