Success and Sustainability; By, With and Across Our Schools

Few of the efforts and effects of leadership succeed in being sustainable. Heroic or charismatic leaders can achieve short-term success, but it rarely survives beyond their departure. Micromanagers can lift performance, but this quickly fades once the leader is no longer breathing down people's necks.

Like sustainable development, sustainable leadership is an imperative in today's educational and social world. There must be leadership that really can foster long term school improvement and ensure lasting success. The questions are – what does it look like and how can it be implemented in education? 

Drawing on long term studies of educational change over 30 years, and his co-authored book, Sustainable Leadership, Andy Hargreaves addresses what kinds and patterns of leadership make improvement sustainable in ways that matter, spread and last.

Introduction by Mr. John Mulgrew - Chairman of the Board of Directors of Learning and Teaching Scotland.

Andy Hargreaves, The Thomas More Brennan Chair in Education at the Lynch School of Education at Boston College.

Andy Hargreaves is the Thomas More Brennan Chair of Education in the Lynch School of Education at Boston College. Before this he was the founder and co-director of the International Centre for Educational Change at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (University of Toronto).

Until he moved to North America in 1987, Andy taught primary school and lectured in several English universities, including Oxford. Andy has held visiting professorships and fellowships in England, Australia, Sweden, Spain, the United States, Hong Kong and Japan. He is holder of the Canadian Education Association/Whitworth 2000 Award for outstanding contributions to educational research in Canada.

His book, Teaching In The Knowledge Society: Education In The Age Of Insecurity received outstanding writing awards from the American Educational Research Association and the American Libraries Association. His most recent book with Dean Fink, Sustainable Leadership is published by Jossey-Bass/Wiley.

Andy was the invited editor of the 1997 ASCD Yearbook, he initiated and co-ordinated the editing of the International Handbook of Educational Change (Kluwer 1998) and he is founding Editor-in- Chief of the Journal of Educational Change (published by Kluwer).

Andy Hargreaves’ work has been translated extensively into more than a dozen languages. Professor Hargreaves’ current research interests include the emotions of teaching and leading and the sustainability of educational change and leadership. Andy is married, with two adult children. He is an avid hiker and inveterate supporter of Burnley Football Club in the UK.