This special issue of the IJEMon "International and comparative studies in successful school leadership" is a direct result of the International Successful School Principalship Project (ISSPP) which encompasses a range of case studies from around the world in order to identify the personal qualities and professional competencies of successful school leaders in diverse contexts through the collection of data from multiple perspectives. The ISSPP is currently the largest and most sustained network on research on successful school principalship. It began in 2001 with a meeting called by its founder and current coordinator, Professor Christopher Day of the University of Nottingham in the UK. Initially, representatives from eight countries agreed to create a range of case studies that would examine successful school principalships in Australia, Canada, China, Denmark, England, Norway, Sweden and the USA. The network now includes more than 14 countries in active research and continues to grow. The origin and methodology of the ISSPP lay in an earlier study of English schools (Day et al, 2000) that included data collected from multiple perspectives, i.e. head teachers, deputy heads, governors, parents, students, support staff and teachers; comparisons of successful leadership in diverse contexts ranging from small primary schools to large urban secondary schools; and the identification of personal qualities and professional competencies generic to successful school leaders.
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