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Principals’
Principals’ succession and succession
educational change
Dean Fink
Dean Fink Consulting Associates, Ancaster, Ontario, Canada, and 431
Carol Brayman
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto,
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Keywords Leadership, Succession planning, Principals, Schools, Education, Canada
Abstract A demographic time bomb is ticking in many school jurisdictions. Up to 70 per cent of
present leaders in the private and public sectors will retire within the next five to ten years as the
“baby boomers” move on. While succession planning has become a major initiative in the private
sector, leadership succession in education tends to hew to old paths. Where are new educational
leaders to come from? How should their succession be orchestrated? The traditional source of
succession at the secondary level, the department headship, is no longer an attractive route for
many teachers. Many potential leaders do not perceive the role of principal or assistant principal in
a positive light. These roles are increasingly being associated with managing the
standards/standardization agenda with which many professionals profoundly disagree. While it
is premature to declare a leadership crisis in education, it is not too early to call on policy makers to
attend to the growing need for succession planning at all levels in education. Based on an
examination of change over times in four schools in Ontario, this article addresses issues of
leadership succession in education and, more precisely, examines the influence of principals’
succession on the principals themselves and their schools.

This article will address issues of leadership succession in education and, more
precisely, examine the influence of principals’ succession on the principals themselves
and their schools. Leadership succession is the process of transition occurring between
a new leader’s appointment and the end of his or her tenure as a principal (MacMillan,
1996). This is a topic of increasing urgency for school jurisdictions throughout the
western world. A combination of demographic changes and disenchantment with
leadership roles as a result of the standards/standardization agenda have produced
and will continue to produce a rapid turnover of principals and other leadership roles in
schools (Earley et al., 2002). Ironically, most school effectiveness, leadership, and
educational change literature continues to point to leadership and particularly the
leadership of the principal as a crucial ingredient in school improvement (Louis and
Miles, 1990; Sergiovanni, 2000; Fullan, 2001; Glickman, 2002; Stoll et al., 2002).
Over the past seven years, we and our colleagues involved in the “Change Over
Time”[1] study have followed the vicissitudes of eight secondary schools, five in
Ontario and three in New York as they struggled with major changes to secondary
education mandated by the province and state respectively. For purposes of this paper
Journal of Educational
Administration
The authors are indebted to Andy Hargreaves for his leadership of the “Change Over Time” Vol. 42 No. 4, 2004
project, and his scholarly advice on this paper. They also appreciate the contribution of Colin pp. 431-449
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Biott of the University of Northumbria who conducted a number of principal interviews that 0957-8234
contributed to this paper. DOI 10.1108/09578230410544053
JEA we will focus on the Ontario schools. The changes in Ontario have included high-stakes
42,4 testing, a totally rewritten curriculum, a compaction of the traditional secondary school
program from five years to four, removal of principals and assistant principals from
the teachers’ union, reductions in the number of department heads, special education
and guidance personnel and teacher testing. The burden for implementation for these
measures has fallen squarely on the principals of the schools. As one principal in our
432 study group declared “I feel like I’m responsible for the whole world”. Many of these
changes are so profoundly unpopular with teachers that they resulted in a one-week
strike by all Ontario public teachers in 1998, and a “work-to- rule” campaign in
1999-2000 in which teachers refused to involve themselves in non-classroom activities.
A legacy of bitterness persists (Hargreaves and Fink, 2002).
During our study period four of the five Ontario schools experienced at least one
change of principal and a number of changes among assistant principals. The
changing leadership climate in both jurisdictions meant that none of the principals in
these four schools remained in his or her school for more than four years. This pattern
of leadership transitions provided us with the opportunity ask some important
questions about the effects of leadership succession on the sustainability of educational
changes in the four schools such as:
.
Does it make any difference to the capacity of a school to deal with change if the
transition is planned or serendipitous?
.
What preparation or “inbound knowledge” does a leader require to facilitate
major changes?
.
What preparation or “outbound knowledge” does a leader require to ensure
that the transition to his or her successor sustains important changes?
Few things in education succeed less than leadership succession (Sarason, 1972; Fink,
2000). In many schools, teachers see their principals come and go like revolving doors
and quickly learn how to resist and ignore their leader’s efforts (Macmillan, 2000). The
result is that school improvement becomes like a set of bobbing corks with many
schools rising under one set of leaders, only to sink under the next. The cumulative
result is that a school’s efforts to sustain “deep learning” experiences for all its students
are severely limited (Hargreaves and Fink, 2002).
There are several studies that examine aspects of the issue, but very few studies
that view succession from the viewpoint of both the principal and the school. The
studies that do exist tend to focus on the regular, planned rotation of principals. Most
school districts in Ontario regularly rotate principals and assistant principals as a
matter of policy. The accepted wisdom is that school leaders become less effective after
six or seven years in a school. Aquila (1989) supports this systematic and planned
rotation of principals as a way to encourage principals to tackle new challenges. He
addresses the issue of principals’ succession from a theoretical as opposed to an
empirical basis, and from the perspective of a district or school board rather than that
of the principals or the schools involved. In a similar vein, Boesse (1991), in his study in
Manitoba, contends that rotation rejuvenates principals. There are a few other studies
that tend to support the efficacy of principal rotation as a matter of policy to promote
school improvement (Hart, 1993; Stine, 1998). For the most part, however, discussions
of leadership succession rest on a basis of experience and anecdotal evidence rather
than carefully developed studies.
 Only Macmillan’s (1996) study of principals in Ontario provides insight into the Principals’
process of leaders’ adaptation to their new settings and the effects on school staffs. He succession
found that as principals gained experience and settled into a school they took fewer
risks. While this finding may add credibility to the practice of regular principal
rotation from the district or board’s perspective, he cautions that “the policy of
regularly rotating principals within a system is a flawed one, perhaps fatally so. When
leadership succession is regular and routinized, teachers are likely to build resilient 433
cultures which inoculate them against the effects of succession” (MacMillan, 1996, p.
68). MacMillan (1996) contends that routine rotations of principals may help principals
but may impede improvement efforts. Fink (2000) found leadership succession to be a
critical determinant in the “attrition” of change in a model secondary school. These
findings tend to support an earlier study by Miskel and Cosgrove (1984) that found no
evidence that regular principal succession increased organizational effectiveness.
Other studies (Fauske and Ogawa, 1983: Davidson and Taylor, 1998), however,
contest these views, and contend that school reform and principals’ succession were
not necessarily incompatible, for example, when the new principal’s orientation to
change was similar to that of the previous principal and when there were strong
teacher leaders committed to the change. Clearly the available research provides
limited and conflicting views on issues of leadership succession, and suggests the need
for a thorough research-based reexamination of the practice. Moreover, there are no
recent studies that we are aware of that address serendipitous transition such as
sudden retirements, resignations and state interventions.
Interestingly, the business literature provides an extensive discussion of issues
related to leadership succession. With the impending retirements of 40 to 50 per cent of
the existing leaders in the private sector, business leaders have identified leadership
succession as a crucial problem that needs to be urgently addressed (Curtis and
Russell, 1993). Early retirements, downsizing and reorganizations have created critical
shortages of middle and top leaders in the business community for the immediate
future (Byham, 2001). To attend to this pending problem, business observers contend
that organizations must embark on systemic succession planning programmes to
replace the departing leaders (Liebman et al., 1996; Schall, 1997; National Academy of
Public Administration, 1997). While various authors emphasize different aspects of
succession planning, there appears to be considerable agreement on the need to connect
goal setting, recruitment, development, accountability practices and leadership
succession. Rather than “polishing yesterdays’ paradigm” (Peters, 1999) they define
leadership roles flexibly in terms of what will be required in the future rather than limit
role descriptions to existing competencies. Perhaps the most significant finding from
the business literature is that leadership succession must be tailored to an
organization’s unique needs, culture and history: there are no quick fixes (Souque,
1998).

Methods
The study described in this article is part of a much more ambitious effort to
understand change over time. Over the course of the past seven years researchers
interviewed cadres of 12 teachers from each of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s in nine
schools, in three educational jurisdictions and in two countries using an agreed upon
interview schedule. The researchers attempted to identify schools that represented a
JEA range of socio-economic communities, student enrolments, student diversity, school
42,4 missions, and school histories.
They also interviewed all the available principals for each school from the past 25
years and employed questionnaires, focus groups and participant observation to
develop an in-depth understanding of each school. Researchers averaged one day a
week in each school for most of one school year. Collaboratively the researchers agreed
434 upon six frames around which they shaped detailed case studies of each of the project
schools (Louis et al., 1999). These frames dealt with the schools’ context, identity,
leadership, structure, culture and lives and work of the teachers and principals. It is
against this backdrop of detailed knowledge of each school that we interviewed
principals involved in recent transitions. From these interviews and the other sources
of data described, this article develops four cases of leadership succession that
collectively provide insight into successful and unsuccessful succession practices.

Discussion
To understand principals’ succession requires analysis at three levels – the system
(educational jurisdiction), the organization (the school) and the individual level (the
principal). This paper limits its focus on the topic to the organization and the
individual.

The organization
At an organizational level, principals’ succession raises two fundamental questions:
the first is, how does the transition from one principal to the next sustain, alter or
eliminate important changes? Second, to what extent was the transition planned or
serendipitous. While many school jurisdictions rotate principals and vice principals on
a regular and planned basis, others let events dictate transitions (Tye, 2000). With the
advent of site-based management, and more recently, state intervention in “failing”
schools, issues of principals’ succession often appear to be crisis or events-driven (Stoll
and Myers, 1998). Answers to these two questions produce a matrix based on two
dimensions, planned-unplanned and continuity-discontinuity. The planned-unplanned
dimension assesses the degree to which the agents[2] who initiated and/or are
responsible for the transition acted on a well-developed succession plan (Souque, 1998;
Rothwell, 2001). Such plans include:
.
sufficient time to enable the participants in the transition to execute exit and
entry processes;
.
open and timely communications among the initiating agents, the participants in
the transition and the school(s) personnel involved in the transition; and
.
consideration by the initiating agents of the compatibility of the educational
philosophy and abilities of the new appointee and the developmental needs of the
school.
The continuity-discontinuity continuum assesses the degree to which a new appointee
to a position sustains (for a detailed discussion, see Hargreaves and Fink, 2002) or
substantively alters the philosophy, policies and practices of his or her immediate
predecessor. The interrelationship of these dimensions produces four possible
scenarios. Planned continuity occurs when the assignment of a new principal to a
school reflects a well thought out succession plan and sustains the general directions
and goals of his/her predecessor. Planned discontinuity happens when a principal is Principals’
assigned or hired to a school based on a well-conceived plan and is either directed by succession
the initiating agents or chooses or is forced by contextual factors to move a school in
directions that are substantively different from those of his or her predecessor. A
principal assigned to “turn-around” a failing school or to initiate significant “top-down”
reform would fit this category. Unplanned transitions occur when serendipitous events
dictate a principal’s appointment to a particular setting and provide limited 435
opportunities for an entry process. Since there is no clear mandate from the assigning
or hiring agent, the leader has some freedom to determine or at least negotiate a
school’s directions. Unplanned continuity therefore transpires when a principal adopts
pre-existing patterns of operation and school goals. Unplanned discontinuity takes
place when a principal confronts unexpected circumstances that motivate him/her to
purposely lead a school in new directions. Unplanned discontinuity can also result
from a principal’s ineffectiveness that results in the abdication of leadership in ways
that disrupt previous goals and directions. The following four cases illustrate a number
of the issues involved in leadership succession.
Blue Mountain High School. Blue Mountain High School was the South Board’s
innovative school of the 1990s. It featured an interdisciplinary organization, intensive
use of technology and functioned as a learning community. The school’s first principal,
Ben McMaster, planned his own succession from the outset. McMaster, a former
professional athlete and special education teacher was aware that other “lighthouse”
schools in the South school district had experienced an “attrition of change” once its
first principal moved on (Fink, 2000). He therefore anticipated his own departure by
working hard to create a school structure that would perpetuate “what we are doing”
when he eventually left the school. He was especially alert to the threats posed by
leadership succession (Fink, 2000; Hargreaves and Fink, 2000; Macmillan, 2000) where
an ensuing principal might import a different philosophy. He explained that “ I
negotiated very strongly (with the district) to have my deputy principal appointed
principal”. After four years the system did in fact move him to a large “high profile”
school in the system and promoted his assistant principal, Linda White, in his place. As
she stated:
We talked about [this move], and we talked about how we could preserve the direction that
the school is moving in. We were afraid that if a new administrator came in as principal that if
he or she had a different philosophy, a different set of beliefs, then it would be quite easy to
simply move things in that particular direction and we didn’t want that to happen.
Blue Mountain provides an example of planned continuity. The principal and the South
system had anticipated his departure and made the appropriate political arrangements
to ensure the continuation of his work.
Talisman Park. Talisman Park, located in the West Board of Education, would fit
the description of a “cruising” school. Such schools appear to be effective because of the
high quality of their student intake but do not have the capacity for change, and in time
tend to become less effective, especially for lower socio-economic students and
minorities. The staff successfully and almost exclusively saw its mission as preparing
students for university. Over 70 per cent of its students are accepted into universities
and colleges. Charmaine Watson had taught at Talisman Park before she became its
principal in 1996 and understood its history and ethos. Over the past ten years its
JEA largely middle class, white, Anglo-Saxon student population had become more racially
42,4 and ethnically diverse.
Many of its mainly white and middle class staff members had been at the school a
long time. A coffee circle of experienced long serving teachers met every morning
before school to socialize and share opinions on government initiatives, school board
policies and administrators’ decisions. This group composed for the most part of
436 teachers who taught the core subjects in the curriculum like Mathematics, Science and
English helped to set the tone for the school. This staff group and the other
micro-politically-powerful department heads’ group had traditionally determined what
changes would occur in the school and what would languish. These groups supported
innovations in their own academic subjects but were sceptical and often cynical about
larger scale reform agendas that altered the essential “grammar” of the school.
Once she became principal Charmaine immediately set out to shake the school and
particularly the powerful groups out of their complacency. She democratized the
school’s decision making, distributed leadership beyond the formal leadership
structures to the staff as a whole, and developed a strategic school plan that focused on
improving assessment strategies for student work, and engaging students in
instructional technology. She participated actively with staff in professional
development activities and took every opportunity to challenge teachers to diversify
their teaching to meet the changing nature and needs of the school’s students. After
four years in the school, researchers found that most staff members were quite
supportive of her directions and the micro-political power of the coffee group and
department heads had shifted to the staff as a whole.
In May and June 1999, the West Board experienced a number of unexpected
retirements among its school leaders. As a result the West Board abruptly transferred
Watson to a school that was experiencing serious leadership problems in July, after
school had adjourned for the summer break. She had little opportunity to draw her
tenure to a conclusion or even to say good bye, although she was able to negotiate the
placement of Ivor Megson, a former assistant principal at Talisman Park, as its new
principal.
Megson was hard working and dedicated but took a managerial approach to his
new position. His arrival coincided with significant government initiated changes
hitting the school with their full force. Like many of his secondary colleagues in other
schools, Ivor attempted to protect or buffer his staff from the deluge of reforms that
had descended on the school. In short order, responding to the latest fiat from the
government the school abandoned the school’s four years of work on school
development planning under Charmaine’s leadership. Megson turned to the formal
leadership structures to ensure compliance with top-down initiatives. The coffee group
regained its influence as stressed teachers met to complain about the latest government
requirements.
The Board official’s had appointed a former Talisman Park vice principal with
the intent of maintaining continuity with the directions initiated by Charmaine.
The haste and timing of the transition however had the unintended consequence of
creating discontinuity in the face of external pressures. One might therefore
categorize Talisman Park’s succession as “unplanned discontinuity”.
Stewart Heights. Stewart Heights Secondary School is an urban school of
approximately 1,500 students and a staff of 98. It has become increasingly culturally
diverse due to an increase in multi-family dwellings and increased immigration from Principals’
countries such as Hong Kong, India, and parts of the Caribbean. When the school succession
district assigned Bill Matthews to Stewart Heights in 1997 it did so with the purpose of
re-energizing a “cruising” school which had, under the rather benign leadership of his
predecessor, increasingly lost touch with the changing nature of its community. Not
only had the school’s enrolment increased and spread out of the main building into a
number of portables, its student population had become increasingly multicultural. 437
The staff was largely white and middle aged and in some ways oblivious to the
changing nature of the school. Stewart Heights was Bill’s third principalship. The
Board allowed considerable time to effect the transition and Bill’s experience allowed
him to move confidently, quickly and energetically to shake the school out of its
lethargy. By articulating firm expectations for staff and students and demonstrating
by example that change was possible, he succeeded in moving the school to a point
where it was developing a professional learning community. While inclusive in his
seeking of staff input and responsive to staff opinions, there was no doubt who made
the final decisions and who was in charge. Two capable vice-principals ably supported
him. Stewart Heights under Bill’s leadership would fit our definition of “planned
discontinuity”.
After four years as principal, the many retirements of leaders at all levels in the
district resulted in the promotion of Bill and one of his assistants and the transfer of his
other assistant principal. Stewart Heights’ new principal, Jerry West, and his assistant
principals were not only new to the school but new to their roles. The rapid turnover of
leaders at the district level resulted in a number of hurried promotions and transfers
and therefore the transfer of these three quite inexperienced people to Stewart Heights.
It would appear that the district’s transfer process was more events-driven than
carefully planned and thought out. Jerry West was earnest, dedicated and hard
working. Unfortunately, he had little time to learn on the job because the full fury of
Secondary School Reform descended on the schools of Ontario. Without experienced
assistance he appeared overwhelmed by the plethora of demands on his time and
energy. As he stated later,
I concentrated on learning to be a Principal. I kept hearing “oh no, we’ve been doing it in this
way for ten years, Mr Principal”. Not having been a principal before I believe that you learn to
manage the building first and develop the relationships (break down the barriers) and then
one begins to lead. Offer me the same opportunity now three to five years down the road –
big difference.
As a result of the twin pressures of reform and the transition in the leadership team
Stewart Heights abandoned or withdrew from longer-term improvement goals that
reflected the unique needs of the school and a focused on immediate implementation of
top-down reforms and daily survival in a new work context. Like Talisman Park, it
would appear that turbulent times had contributed to a breakdown in effective
succession planning and disrupted long-term planning at the school level as the school
conformed to external pressures – “unplanned discontinuity”. Stewart Heights
provides examples of two categories of transition. Bill Matthews appointment might be
categorized as “planned” discontinuity and Jerry West’s accession as “unplanned”
discontinuity.
Lord Byron High School. In 1998, Ken Sutton, the principal of Lord Byron High
School, decided to take advantage of an early retirement incentive initiated by the
JEA Ministry of Education and accept a teaching position with a local university. After
42,4 many years of experience as the principal of three secondary schools, the staff
supported, indeed enjoyed, working for Sutton. Lord Byron at the time was a relatively
small (700 students) comprehensive high school. The school under Sutton’s leadership
acted on a democratically developed school improvement plan and maintained the
school’s long tradition of being a student centred and caring school (Fink, 2000). His
438 assistant principal, Janice Burnley, a former special education teacher, shared Sutton’s
student oriented philosophy and willingness to engage staff in decision making. Since
Sutton had given the school district plenty of advance warning, its officials were able
to plan his succession carefully. By promoting Janice to replace Sutton, they signalled
their desire for continuity of direction. To support Janice they assigned an
inexperienced but promising new assistant principal to the school. The new assistant
brought great enthusiasm as well as a broad curriculum expertise to her new role. The
fact that most staff members when interviewed talked about the leadership “team”
confirms the success of the succession plan. As one experienced teacher stated “in
terms of our administration I would give them a five star rating because I think they
both complement each other. I think that they really are making the best possible effort
to make us part of the process.” The transition by all accounts went smoothly; Sutton
worked co-operatively with his successor to assist her to negotiate her entry to her new
role with staff.
Burnley inherited two contextual issues that Sutton had struggled with but was
unable to resolve: one was the decline in the school’s student enrolment as a result of
the ageing of the community it served and the other its historical reputation as an
experimental school. As Burnley explained:
Well it’s a school that’s in a state of transition as I’m sure you know, a school with
declining enrolment, and a school that was perceived that it didn’t matter who you were
and that really we just took in anybody who would have academic difficulty, that there
were really no standards. That was untrue but it was a perception that had been
created.
She was aware of the reputation of the school in the neighbourhood:
Well I think there was a whole community perception that when this school was initiated – it
was a very open individual school and the perception was that the students ran the place and
everybody could do what they wanted. So it was still, I think, a throw back. And it was a
school that, because it housed the developmental education programme, the regional centre
for the severely learning disabled who are average to above average ability that it would take
anybody.
She saw her job was still to try to gain the confidence of the community:
So what my job then was to do was to come in and say, “Yes, we still work towards the
individual and having the individual be successful but we do have accountability, we do have
students being responsible for their learning and their actions”. And the key piece was to
profile that in the community.
In spite of its problems, by most measures this was a “moving” school (Rosenholtz.
1989). Even though it served the students of middle to lower middle class community,
its students’ scores on the grade 10-literacy test were second out of 24 high schools in
the South region. It had also succeeded in becoming the only school in the region to be
approved to offer the International Baccalaureate. Moreover, its long tradition of staff Principals’
involvement in school activities, staff collegiality, and older teachers mentoring newer succession
teachers persisted.
This success however was short lived. As a result of budget cuts by the Ministry of
Education, the leadership organization Burnley had inherited from Sutton was
decimated. She was obliged to reduce her complement of department heads from nine
leaders to four. This called for a total reorganization of the school and the way it 439
functioned. The guidance staff was reduced from two and one half to one and its
special education support staff reduced by 50 per cent. At the same time the
government required all teachers to teach one more class and many had refused to
assume out-of-classroom responsibilities. Burnley and her assistant had to postpone or
abandon many school-initiated directions to deal with crises created by outside
agencies. While support staff and leadership roles had been dramatically reduced, the
jobs these people had performed in the past did not disappear. They merely migrated
to the office to be picked up by the two administrators. At the time of the interviews,
both leaders were merely trying to survive from day to day and manage as best they
could. Continuity with the previous principal’s directions had been the intent of the
Board officials as well as Burnley herself. Circumstances beyond her control, however,
forced her to implement policies with which she disagreed, and to adopt a managerial
directive style with which she was quite uncomfortable. Continuity had turned into
discontinuity under the pressure of events.
Figure 1 summarizes the tendencies of the schools described in these four cases.

The individual
To shift our analysis to the level of the individual principal we employ the concept of
“multiple trajectories” described by Wenger (1998, p. 149) in his Communities of
Practice. Wenger (1998) explains that:
Developing a practice requires the formation of a community whose members can engage
with one another and thus acknowledge each other as participants. As a consequence,
practice entails the negotiation of ways of being a person in that context. . . the formation of a
community of practice is also the negotiation of identities.
He contends that as we interact over time with multiple social contexts our identities
form trajectories within and across “communities of practices”. Identity is “constantly

Figure 1.
Dimensions of succession
planning
JEA becoming” and something we “constantly renegotiate through the course of our lives”
42,4 (Wenger, 1998, p. 154). He identifies five different but interacting trajectories:
(1) Peripheral trajectories never lead to full participation but are significant to one’s
identity. Many of the assistant principals we talked to would fit into this
category because both school districts in our study moved them to other
settings every two or three years in order to gain experience in multiple settings
440 as preparation for principalship. School staffs recognized this impermanence
and tended to exclude them from full participation in the school as a community
of practice.
(2) Inbound trajectories refer to individuals who join a community with the
“prospect of becoming full participants in its practice” (Wenger, 1998, p. 154).
Their engagement may be peripheral in the beginning but in time they expect to
be an “insider”.
(3) Insider trajectories grow and develop over time as one becomes a full member of
a community. New events, practices and people are occasions for renegotiating
one’s identity.
(4) Boundary trajectories develop as one spans and links various communities of
practice. Consultants or senior officials of a school district develop their
identities as they move from school to school. School districts base their
policy of regularly rotating principals and assistant principals from school to
school on the need for their leaders to span boundaries to gain a system’s
perspective.
(5) Outbound trajectories apply to those who plan or expect to move out of a
community at some point. Their participation in one community is built on
where they are going next.
Wenger (1998, p. 188) suggests that “our identities form in a . . . kind of tension between
our investment in various forms of belonging and our ability to negotiate the meanings
that matter in those contexts”. Identity formation is the result of the interplay between
one’s identification with a community of practice and one’s ability to negotiate meaning
within that community. The capacity of principals to identify with their schools (and
the schools’ staffs to identify with them) and their ability to negotiate a shared sense of
meaning of the schools’ directions affect the principals’ trajectories and therefore their
identities in relationship to their schools as “communities of practice”. To develop these
ideas further, we examine the cases of some of the principals we identified previously
to determine how their transitions affected their “trajectories”.
Outbound trajectories. Since Ben McMaster of Blue Mountain and Linda White, his
assistant principal, established the structure and philosophy of the school they
contributed significantly to the nature and meaning of their communities. They were
the ultimate “insiders”. At the same time McMaster harboured ambitions for promotion
and expected to move on. He used his school as a “stepping stone” to other roles and
followed an “outsider’s” trajectory by anticipating his own departure. McMaster
learned from the unfortunate histories of other “lighthouse schools” when their
founding principals departed (Sarason, 1972; Fink, 2000) and he ensured his “out
bound” trajectory by arranging with the system for his assistant principal to replace
him. As McMaster explained:
 Now, interestingly, I negotiated at that time very strongly to have my vice-principal be Principals’
appointed as principal there as another critical move to perpetuate what we had started. And
I think that if you look at things that have happened in other schools that have started that’s succession
where things started to break down because new principals were appointed who didn’t carry
the same philosophy. I’m sure she’s already started to advocate on behalf of her possible
replacement in a few years from now.
As a result of McMaster’s foresight, his assistant principal, Linda White, could use her 441
“insider’s” trajectory to negotiate her new identity as the principal in the school when
Ben departed.
In-bound trajectories. The principals we interviewed frequently mentioned “in
bound” knowledge and gave it high status. One principal explained the “inbound”
trajectory this way:
From what I’ve read the height of your effectiveness [as a principal] seems to be somewhere
between the five and seven years period. Then after that it doesn’t have the same dramatic
rise and it tends to level out if you look at a graph in terms of your effectiveness. Going into a
new setting is always rejuvenating and for me it was exciting because every school has its
own sense of community, its own history, its own way of doing things, and its own ethos. I
think it’s a rejuvenating kind of thing. It’s very easy to follow into a nice rhythm and routine
and just stay where you are, you know, stay in the same school where as this forces you to
meet new challenges and I learned from every single setting. It was a marvellous experience.
Amongst the principals, it seems that knowledge of what to do on entering a school is
strong, and most principals are confident that they can “hit the ground running”. They
feel able to judge quickly what to change and how to change it. They feel able to make
a rapid reading of the micropolitics of a school and to negotiate their roles in a short
time. As one principal said:
If I were to change schools tomorrow, then I would be able to go into the new school much
more comfortably with my ability to be a principal than I did one and a half years ago. I
would be able to assess more quickly what I believe a school should be about, to be able to
talk about with other people within the building what the school should be about. I could then
take a look at the secondary reforms that need to be implemented as we go along here and
move more quickly to making effective change that we felt was necessary for our school.
Bill Matthews and Charmaine Watson both succeeded in using their “in bound”
trajectories to identify quickly with their respective schools and negotiate a direction
with staff that was consistent with their educational philosophies. The Talisman Park
staff accepted Charmaine as an “insider” because of her former status as a respected
staff member and her carefully developed entry plan.
When the district abruptly reassigned her to another school they chose a former
assistant principal who had “insider’s” knowledge of the school as a former principal
and his experience as a principal in two settings. The district also left the assistant
principal under Charmaine in the school to support Megson. Unfortunately for Megson,
his hurried entry, the shallowness of his in-bound knowledge and his inexperience as a
principal worked against his becoming an “insider”, at least in the short term.
Bill Matthew at Stewart Heights provides another example of a principal with a rich
“in-bound” trajectory. His experience as the principal in three different schools as well
as his two years as a district office official gave him instant credibility as well as the
expertise to address the school’s issues. He identified strongly with the needs of a
JEA multicultural community and over the course of his four years at the school succeeded
42,4 in influencing the school’s shift towards greater responsiveness to its diverse student
population and parent community. His promotion after only four years, however, never
allowed him to become an “insider” and consolidate the directions he had initiated.
Insider’s trajectory. Both Janice Burnley, principal of Lord Byron, and Linda White
of Blue Mountain were already members of staff when they became principals of their
442 respective schools. Both had identified closely with their schools and become accepted
by staff as part of their respective “communities of practice”. When Burnley originally
joined the Byron staff as assistant principal, the plan as she stated was “that I would
become the principal because the principal at that time was planning to retire. So, there
was at least some semblance of a succession.” She described her “insider’s” trajectory:
I am fortunate because I was here for two years as vice-principal. I am in my third year as
principal now. So, I am coming in and bringing in new curriculum, ministry requirements
about teaching, and expectations of teachers at a time where I’ve got four years of trust. I
would hate to be doing that if I had just walked in cold.
Our interviews revealed that most teachers considered her and her assistant principal,
a young woman in her first year as an administrator, full participants in their
“community of practice”. A young technical teacher declared, “our administration is
great. They’re right behind you all the time, any information you need or something
you need.”
Both leaders felt fully accepted. As the principal stated, the staff has been “ very
supportive of me as an administrator, despite the fact that we’re out of the union and all
the changes that happened politically, I find them exceptionally supportive of me.
We’re not into antagonism.” The assistant principal asserted that “the staff here is
great. They are very caring, very concerned and very helpful.” External reform
pressures, however, are causing strains. As the principal explained, “Every year you
say I cannot work any harder and every year we have to work harder. So the support
systems to make things happen are not there anymore. So with funding cutbacks we
are taking on, for example, the heads’ responsibility.”
Although, as far as possible, the schools’ administrators try to involve staff in
decision making through the four school leaders, pressures of time and complexity
have obliged them to be more directive and less collegial than they would want to be.
For example, the Board required all schools to implement the Ministry’s new reporting
system immediately. The technology was flawed, but unlike other Boards, South
insisted that its schools go forward. As relatively new leaders, neither the principal nor
the vice-principal was in a position to say “no” to their superiors. In addition, the
Ministry has required new approaches to assessment that a number of staff members
were reluctant to embrace. To achieve staff compliance in a very short time frame both
administrators were forced to function in ways that conflicted with their preferred
leadership styles. As the principal stated:
What we have had to impose upon them is that you will become knowledgeable in computer
areas, you will work on an electronic marks-manager, and you will change your assessment
and evaluation. If you’re having trouble with this we’re here to help you. Now despite us as
administrators saying this – you will do it – other people quickly stepped in and said, “we’ll
help you so everybody’s on the same page around an electronic marks-manager”. Assessment
and evaluation – we’ve come in and said – you will change, and we have taken responsibility
of that with a steering committee of staff. We ask the staff to come forward and bi-monthly at
 the staff meetings we talk about various things that they should be changing their Principals’
assessment and evaluation practices. So that is laid on.
succession
So far the staff is generally sympathetic to the plight of their administrators. How
long this harmony will exist is a question. Will Janice and her assistant be forced
into a peripheral trajectory or even worse “marginalized” by staff? This case
suggests that even “insiders” must constantly renegotiate their identities, and that
the massive changes in secondary education in Ontario have tended to undermine 443
Janice’s efforts to lead. Her successful effort to gain approval to offer “The
International Baccalaureate” which she and many staff saw as a way to enhance
Byron’s image, for example, has been eclipsed by top-down reform and severe
budget cuts. In the words of one of her teachers, she has indeed been
“kneecapped”.
Linda White worked closely with Ben McMaster from Blue Mountain’s first days to
establish its structure, and working culture. She was as much an insider as McMaster
and, unlike McMaster, was not on an out-bound trajectory. At the time of our
interviews White had become principal and had dedicated herself to maintaining
continuity with the originating philosophy of the school:
Before [McMaster] was moved to another school and we talked about how we could preserve
the direction that this school was moving in. We were afraid that if a new administrator came
in as a principal, that if he or she had a different philosophy, a different set of beliefs, then it
would be quite easy to simply move things in that particular direction and we didn’t want
that to happen.
As principal, she explained, “I’m on the same road and any detours I take will only be
for a few moments in the overall scheme of things before I come back onto the main
road again.” Even though she was an “insider”, her new role necessitated her
renegotiating her identity as a staff member but now as the principal. She felt it was
important that:
. . . staff understand that a change in the person who’s the principal does not mean either that
they can step back because we are moving forward and they are charged with guarding the
vision, or as one of them says, making sure we don’t take the first step down the slippery
slope.
Unlike the founding principal who had stressed the creation of new values, she
emphasized the preservation of existing values. As she declared:
It’s sometimes difficult to step back and take the time. So you know that in order to effect
change you have to do all of the preparing work. You know that you have to talk a lot, provide
people with opportunities to share ideas. You have to work with people on a philosophical
level. You have to take the time. You have to air everything.
Like Janice Burnley, time was not on her side. Events appear to have superceded her
intentions.
The full impact of the Government’s massive reform agenda descended on the
school at the same time as she became the school’s principal. Unlike Janice Burnley,
however, declining enrolment and dramatic reductions in key leadership roles did not
complicate White’s challenge. None-the-less, staff began to notice a change “in the way
we do things around here” under the pressure of time and complexity. As one staff
member explained:
JEA It’s because so much has to be done in so little time. We [used to] meet to decide as a group
how best to go about a process. Well there’s been no meeting. We’ve just been told these
42,4 classes are closed. . . And never in my whole career has that ever happened. . . There isn’t that
opportunity to share information . . . And now it’s just sort of “top down” because there’s only
time for top down.
Other staff members perceived the way White tried to “talk up” change as being
444 somewhat forced and not fully sincere - the effect of having to manufacture optimism
in a policy environment that repeatedly seemed to defeat it. They recognized her
dilemma but also saw its effects:
I think we’ve gone from an organization that was very, kind of, shared responsibility, at least
in appearance, to a very linear one because of time. And perhaps the [second principal is]
fairly directive and likes to be in control of lots of things but she’s also a humanist with you
on that. But I think we’ve lost some of that shared responsibility because of direction and so
on.
Once again, top-down change undermined the best laid plans of leadership succession,
a leader’s intentions and values, and a leader’s best efforts to lead the school’s in ways
that were consistent with its original meaning. In the process the usurpation of the
school’s agenda by government reform has a severely compromised the principals
“insider’s” trajectory.
Peripheral trajectories. The inexperience of Bill Matthew’s replacement, Jerry West,
and of his assistant principals at Stewart Heights, when combined with the overload of
external reforms that they faced contributed to their “peripheral trajectories”. With
insufficient time to identify with the staff and to negotiate their entry, they acceded to
the abandonment of many of their predecessors’ initiatives and relied more on
traditional structures such as the department heads to ensure the school’s compliance
with government requirements. Unfortunately for Jerry and his colleagues, the
pressure of the Government’s reform did not allow them the luxury of executing an
entry plan in which they could take their time and engage staff in meaningful dialogue
about school directions.
Over time, if the district leaves this leadership team in place long enough to
negotiate a shared sense of meaning and for the leaders to identify with the school, they
may develop an “insider’s” trajectory and be able to influence the directions of the
school. At the moment, however, they are still trying to negotiate their entry into the
existing “community of practice”.

Discussion and conclusions

Our investigation of the educational and business literatures, our interviews with
principals and other staffs in four schools, and our on site observations of the schools
in our projects have led us to draw the following implications.

1.Succession planning should become a major policy issue in school jurisdictions

The schools in our study in which the school system carefully planned for the
transition of principals proceeded with a minimum of unrest and disruption and
seemed capable of handling external pressures. Attention to effective communications,
plenty of lead-time for entry and exit processes, and the compatibility of the new
principals’ “in-bound” knowledge with the needs of the school appeared to be the key
ingredients for principals like Bill Matthews, Charmaine Watson, Janice Burnley and Principals’
Linda White. While careful planning does not guarantee that continuity will prevail, as succession
the Lord Byron case indicates, it does ensure that the leader has the opportunity to
identify with the school and negotiate a shared sense of meaning with staff and work
cooperatively with staff to deal with adversity.

2. Succession plans must link leadership recruitment, preparation, selection, assignment, 445
induction and on-going development in a coherent future-oriented way
The in-bound trajectories of principals such as Bill Matthews and Charmaine Watson
enabled them to move quickly and effectively to attend to significant school issues.
Increasingly, principals are facing issues for which they were not trained and with
which they have no experience. As has been argued elsewhere (Stoll et al., 2002),
preparation for principals must focus on the “learnings” they will require in the future
to “become leaders of learning” rather than on the proficiencies of existing principals.
Wenger’s discussion of identity helps us to recognize that principals need different
kinds of preparation and support depending on their trajectory and context. In all of
our cases principals tended to follow a pattern. They first develop an “in-bound”
trajectory from their training and various experiences and enter a new school on a
“peripheral” trajectory. If they remain in a school for a while and negotiate a successful
entry they develop an “insider’s” trajectory. Most principals gave little consideration to
an ‘out-bound’ trajectory but some principals such as Ben McMaster carefully
developed an exit strategy. Once they leave they seem to follow the same cycle in their
new setting.
This cycle raises questions as to the kind of “in-bound” knowledge and skills that a
principal will need to establish an “insider’s” trajectory that appears to contribute to
sustained change such as at Blue Mountain. What does an effective entry strategy look
like? How does one move from a “peripheral” trajectory such as Jerry West at Stewart
Heights to a more influential trajectory? How can a principal prepare for his/her own
departure? Ben McMaster did it, but his was a unique circumstance. What are the
components of an exit strategy? Finally, what are the minimum and optimum tenures
that a principal should stay at a school? Biott (2001) has argued that, in some
circumstances, principals on an “insider’s” trajectory can remain indefinitely as long as
they continue to learn and grow professionally. Conversely, the conventional wisdom
among senior administrators in Ontario is that principals should move every five to
seven years to maintain their motivation and enhance their learning.

3. Regularly scheduled principal rotation in turbulent times appears to create more

problems than it solves
We believe that school jurisdictions should make every effort to maintain stability in
schools during times of major external pressures. The departures of Bill Matthews and
Charmaine Watson from their respective schools were, in the words of Charmaine
Watson, “absolutely devastating”. Important changes initiated over their tenures
disappeared rapidly amidst their successors’ frantic efforts to keep up with outside
reform pressures. Similarly, the peripherality of virtually every assistant principal in
our sample suggests that the practice of moving them on a two or three year cycle
allows them little time to establish relationships or to engage staff in meaningful ways.
Ironically, most respondents in our sample stated that acquiring experience in more
JEA than one school was extremely important for their “in-bound” trajectories. They
42,4 stressed the importance of powerful mentors in their lives and the need to see different
leadership styles. This dilemma suggests that school jurisdictions will need to look at
alternative avenues for leadership development beyond the traditional strategies. For
example, exchanges of upwardly mobile department heads and teachers would
contribute to the learning of potential leaders. Distributing leadership opportunities
446 more widely within systems and within schools would provide alternative
opportunities for potential leaders (Spillane et al., 2001).

4. School jurisdictions will need to think in terms of the abilities and backgrounds of
leadership teams rather than putting together senior management teams in a piecemeal
fashion
The planning for both Blue Mountain and Lord Byron reflected some thought as to the
composition of the leadership team and this helped both schools to effect smooth
transitions and to cope in positive ways with dramatic contextual changes. Both
leadership teams were composed of people with similar philosophies and
complementary leadership styles. For example, Ben McMaster at Blue Mountain
was the visionary and politically astute leader needed to begin a new and innovative
school. Linda White possessed the strong organizational and managerial skills
necessary to make the school function well. Conversely, not only was Jerry West at
Stewart Heights new to the school and new to his role, so were both his assistants. By
totally changing the administrative team, the school system ensured that they would
struggle for at least their first year – a year in which much of the burden of
government reform hit the school.

5. Top down reforms tend to undermine the ability of principals to engage with staff and
develop the shared sense of meaning that is necessary to sustain change and promote
deep learning for students
Many jurisdictions around the world define leadership in strictly managerial terms. A
good leader from this perspective is someone who can get teachers to follow the
Government’s reform agenda with a minimum of disruption and complaint. In Ontario,
where we conducted our study, the Government has defined the meaning of education
with a “one size-fits-all” philosophy that has turned teachers into technicians and
principals into managers of someone else’s agenda. Moreover, the removal of principals
from the teachers’ union and the reduction of leadership support have in some schools
created a significant divide between teachers and administrators. A significant reason
for the retirements of many experienced and capable leaders is their refusal to
implement changes that they consider harmful to children. The inexperienced
principals we interviewed felt very vulnerable and found themselves unable to resist
changes. Interestingly, many of the more experienced principals that we have
encountered had the political acumen and community support to make choices among
reforms and ignore, or at least subvert, changes that are inconsistent with the needs of
their students and teachers (Tye, 2000). For example, one inexperienced principal
allowed his staff to concentrate on tutoring only those students who were just below
the standard on the mandatory literacy test while ignoring students with more serious
language needs. The experienced principal in a neighbouring school used the literacy
test as a vehicle to engage all teachers in a cross-curriculum literacy strategy and chose Principals’
not to get too worried about the school’s results on the literacy test. succession
Unfortunately, much of this experience and independence of action is leaving the
principal’s role in Ontario and elsewhere. A demographic time bomb is ticking in many
school jurisdictions. Up to 70 per cent of present leaders in the private and public
sectors will retire within the next five to ten years as the “baby boomers” move on.
While succession planning has become a major initiative in the private sector, 447
leadership succession in education tends to hew the old path. Where are new leaders to
come from? How should their succession be orchestrated? The traditional source of
succession at the secondary level, the department headship, is no longer an attractive
route for many teachers. Many potential leaders do not perceive the role of principal or
assistant principal in a positive light. They are increasingly being associated with
managing an agenda with which many professionals profoundly disagree. While it is
premature to declare a leadership crisis in education, it is not too early to call on policy
makers to attend to the growing need for succession planning at all levels in education.
The “Change Over Time” study has provided a unique opportunity to explore
changes in leadership in general, and principals’ succession in particular, during a
period of frenetic change. Principals’ transitions have often given rise to problems,
challenges and upsets for teachers and principals alike. However, our study indicates
that accelerating turnover of principals, resulting from the aging of the “baby boom”
generation and the pressures of the standardization agenda, have created additional
difficulties that threaten the sustainability of school improvement efforts and
undermine the capacity of incoming and outgoing principals to lead their schools.

Notes
1. The “Change Over Time” Study is a joint project of the International Centre for Educational
Change at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education/University of Toronto and the
University of Rochester. Andy Hargeaves and Ivor Goodson are the principal investigators.
The project involves historical ethnographies of nine schools, three in New York State and
five in Ontario, over the past 25 years to determine long-term patterns of change and
continuity. Detailed information is available from the principal investigators.
2. In many American and Canadian school jurisdictions, officials of the school district, with the
approval of elected school board members, are responsible for the placement of principals.
Increasingly, school governors or school councils composed of locally elected or appointed
community representatives are responsible for the choosing and placing of school leaders. In
some educational jurisdictions such as new South Wales in Australia, Ministry of Education
officials are responsible for principals’ placements.

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