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This book is a longitudinal life history of the lives and work of primary school principals in Ireland. It provides a unique opportunity to peer inside the realities of leading schools in changing times. In a system that until recently did not prepare principals for the onerous roles and responsibilities, a small system with limited mobility, inter-personal relationships emerge as critical, frequently privileged over professional relationships. Consequently, principals struggle to bring about change, to build trust in order to cultivate a transformative leadership agenda, while several aspects of systemic structures and processes emerge as constraints on leadership capacity building. In the absence of comprehensive leadership portfolio development, classroom teachers, catapulted into the principal´s office, tend to be cautious and careful in ways that tend to perpetuate the status quo while putting a premium on the exercise of soft power and an over-reliance on the good will of colleagues. Several of the ´leadership lessons´ that emerge from this in-depth analysis concur with an increasing international consensus that due to complexity and increasingly performative policy demands, learning about leadership for all is an absolute necessity. However, care must be taken to avoid overly scripted programmes. Critical to the cultivation of a professionally responsible leadership disposition, rather than capitulation to ´technologies of control,´ is professional renewal cultivated through adequate attention to the Zone of Proximal Distance.

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Section I: Rhetorics, Realities and Research on School Leadership .- 1. School Leaders and Leadership: A Longitudinal Life History.- 2. School Leadership in Context: National Policies, International Influences.- Section II: Career Trajectories of Primary Principals .- 3. Perceptions of the Principal´s Role: Insider Perspectives, Change over Time.- 4. Being and Becoming a Principal; ´Navi-gotiating´ Identities.- 5. Principal Professional Learning: Sources of Sustenance?.- Section III: Policy, Practice & Principalship .- 6. Doing Leadership: The Significance of Inter-personal Relationships?.- 7. Inclusive Schools: Challenging Leadership?.- 8. More Leaders: Dissipated or Distributed Leadership?.- 9. ´Performing´ Leadership: Professional Responsibility in a Climate of Accountability?.- Section IV: Sustaining Leaders, Sustainable Leadership: Future Directions .- 10. Leadership Capacity: Cohorts, Continuity, Change.- 11. Leadership: Succession, Recruitment, Retirement.- 12. School Leadership Unmasked: (Re-)Forming Leaders, Trans-forming Leadership?.- Appendix: Biographical sketches of participants.

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