This book focuses on contextual intelligence in school leadership as a critical element of sustainable school improvement. Here sustainable school improvement is conceptualised with reference to school leadership areas in which core leadership practices are carried out, namely school context, school-community engagement, teacher development and student learning.
Grounded on the existing theories of human intelligence, school leadership and contextual intelligence, the book presents a new approach in which various theories focusing on different facets of leadership integrate to produce a contextually intelligent school leadership construct. This approach emerges in response to the need to address concerns raised in the literature and leadership discourse about lack of integration in leadership theories and an insufficient attention given to the influence of context on school improvement and leadership. The new construct presented in this book represents a departure from the classical one-dimensional perspective on leadership to a multi-dimensional perspective in which leadership is viewed as an integration of all the elements that shape it and work together to respond to the dynamics and complexities of the context in which leadership is exercised.
The book illustrates by means of examples how the new integrated school leadership construct can be used to address existing problems emerging from the changing context. This, the book does by first identifying gaps emerging from existing approaches to key areas of school leadership practice and then showing how these gaps can be closed by the use of contextually intelligent leadership construct to ensure sustainable improvement.