Article

Educational Management
Administration & Leadership
Successful and effective schools: 1–18
ª The Author(s) 2020

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DOI: 10.1177/1741143220932585
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Petros Pashiardis and Olof Johansson

Abstract
The main purpose of this paper is to examine perspectives of successful and effective leadership as
well as successful and effective schools in an effort to uncover the governance interventions which
produce one or the other characterization. This examination is undertaken through the utilization
of two guiding frameworks: the Pashiardis-Brauckmann Holistic Leadership Framework and the
Bredeson and Johansson framework for principals’ functions. Additionally, views on success and
effectiveness from around the world are utilized. Following this, in this theoretically focused paper
we make the argument that successful schools institutionalize the right processes in order to
achieve and sustain the desired results and thus become effective. Then, in an effort to bring
context into the equation, we discuss what the context is for each education system and student
and if schools can make up for the deficiencies of a student’s individual context. We end our
discussion by stressing the fact that researchers, through their work, can inspire teachers and
principals with their (often) simple descriptions of complex school improvement processes. These
descriptions have a profound effect on the applied pedagogical work in schools, which is some-
times more influential than national policy decisions and educational reforms.

Keywords
Effective school, improvement, successful school, context, school leadership

We realize that what successful and effective school leadership means is enormously varied in its
conceptual foundations depending on where researchers and practitioners live and work, as well as
where they receive their epistemological influences from. Thus, there is a necessity for us to
comprehend the richness of the current literature on successful and effective school leadership
and to use it as a guiding framework for both the local development of leaders into successful
careers and to mutually support the development of school systems throughout the globe, into
successful and effective educational systems. Therefore, the main purpose of this paper is to
examine perspectives of successful and effective leadership as well as successful and effective
schools in an effort to uncover the governance interventions and influences which produce
one or the other characterization. This examination will be undertaken through the utilization

Corresponding author:
Petros Pashiardis, Faculty of Economics and Management, Open University of Cyprus, 33 Giannou Kranidioti Ave, 2220
Latsia, Nicosia, Cyprus.
Email: p.pashiardis@ouc.ac.cy
2 Educational Management Administration & Leadership XX(X)

Table 1. The relation between successful and effective leadership.

Effective leadership

Successful leadership Yes No

Yes SE Se
No sE se

of two guiding frameworks: the Pashiardis-Brauckmann Holistic Leadership Framework

(Brauckmann and Pashiardis, 2011) and the Bredeson and Johansson (2000) framework for
principals’ functions. Additionally, views on success and effectiveness from around the world
will be utilized.
The need for indigenous views on what constitutes success and effectiveness is central as
well, since the issue of what constitutes successful and effective school leadership is increasingly
becoming a global debate. To begin with, we should state at the outset that we consider the term
‘successful’ as more inclusive, a kind of an umbrella term, which embraces effectiveness as well.
However, this does not mean that the term ‘successful’ is a substitute for ‘effective’ (Pashiardis
and Johansson, 2016a). In fact, we are debating if ‘successful’ is about putting the right systems
and structures in place and improving on them, so that we can get the necessary results as
required (that is, being effective). In sum, is being successful more about the processes for
achieving the desired results and is being effective more about obtaining the results themselves?
Moreover, most of the time we also see a connection in the literature between effective and
efficient use of resources in order to get the best possible results, which is another aspect of the
distinction between ‘successful’ and ‘effective’. The international community of school leader-
ship researchers has been using the terms ‘successful’ and ‘effective’ interchangeably and with
not much agreement as to what these two terms really mean in a particular context (Day and
Leithwood, 2007; Day et al., 2008; Hallinger and Heck, 1998; Mowat and McMahon, 2019).
At the same time, school leaders’ roles and responsibilities are being reconceptualized.
School leaders are not limited to bureaucratic functions, as used to be the case in most places
around the world, but, on the contrary, they have an increasing repertoire of roles and respon-
sibilities, such as being the pedagogical or the entrepreneurial leader of the school or taking
charge of creating the necessary strategic vision and structures for the school to improve in a safe
environment (Brauckmann and Pashiardis, 2011; Moos et al., 2011; Pashiardis and Brauckmann,
2019). For this expanded repertoire of functions and leadership roles, the tendency is to keep
increasing, adding more duties and responsibilities on the shoulders of school leaders (Sebastian
et al., 2018).
Our discussion will make the argument for the situation where both successful and effective
leadership is in focus cell ‘SE’, as can be seen in Table 1. We strongly believe that this is the only
combination which can, in the long run, create a kind of leadership that is sustainable towards
improving children’s learning. In this kind of leadership, we have a clear co-variation of both
aspects of leadership.
All other cells are dysfunctional in relation to sustainable leadership. The leaders in cell
‘Se’ might be successful in the short run and show improvement in children’s learning but without
any relation to what might be effective in the long run and therefore fail, most often because of too
high costs for society. The counterpart to this cell is ‘sE’, which focuses too much on efficiency in
Pashiardis and Johansson: Successful and effective schools 3

relation to cost for personnel and material (i.e. budget cuts), and has too little focus on how children
learn successfully. Finally the leaders that are included in cell ‘se’ will probably be representing
failing schools and will not be serving as school leaders for long. To end this introduction of the
two terms, we are keen to stress that what ‘successful’ and ‘effective’ mean seems also to depend
on the degree and level of (a) centralization/decentralization of the educational system of a specific
country; as well as on (b) the accountability and evaluation mechanisms in place; and (c) the ability
of parents to choose schools for their children (Brauckmann and Pashiardis, 2011; Brezicha et al.,
2015; Hallinger, 2018; Hoy, 2012; Johansson and Ärlestig, 2020; Rönnström and Johansson,
2018).

Successful and effective school leadership: the debate

around the world
One of the main school success and effectiveness variables researched in the literature is, of course,
school leadership. Several researchers investigated the relationship between school leadership and
student achievement through various models, such as the direct model, the reciprocal model and
the indirect model (Edmonds, 1979; Hallinger and Heck, 1996, 1998). The topic is still very much
the favourite object of investigation in many parts of the world. A framework through which to
explore school leadership and its effects on student achievement is the Pashiardis-Brauckmann
Holistic Leadership Framework, which makes reference to the Leadership Cocktail Mix (Pashiar-
dis, 2014). The centrepiece of the framework became the Leadership Radius, which is the action
area of the school leader, as one of the central figures within the school. This action area is
manifested when school leaders perform their duties through five main styles of leadership as
follows: (a) instructional style; (b) structuring style; (c) participative style; (d) entrepreneurial
style; and (e) personnel development style. Each leadership style consists of specific behaviours
and practices which are likely to be exhibited by school principals. The five leadership styles are
not discrete, but rather there is a degree of overlap among them, and thus ‘hybrid’ styles begin to
emerge as well (Brauckmann and Pashiardis, 2011).
Another framework through which we can examine successful and effective school leaders is to
also look for the principals’ functions as defined by Bredeson and Johansson (2000). In their study
they focused on the roles a principal can have in relation to how they interact with their teachers
and their schools. They identified the following four roles for school leaders: (a) stewards; (b)
communicators; (c) experts; and (d) models of learning. In this section, we are drawing from the
two frameworks and enriching them in order to distinguish between successful and effective
practices of school leaders, as explored in various parts of the world. We also recognize Yukl’s
(1994) definition which claims that leadership reflects the leader’s intention to influence someone
else to understand what is best for the organization. These ideas are also related to transformational
leadership and its intention to see values as the glue of leadership. At this point, it is important to
clarify that we are aware of the existence of many different and complementary leadership models
and frameworks (Bolman and Deal, 2013; Bossert et al., 1982; Hallinger, and Murphy, 1986). We
chose to work with the aforementioned two, as we are more familiar with their underlying concepts
and assumptions and, at the same time, they can provide a holistic and complementary approach to
successful and effective school leadership if taken and examined together. Moreover, the
Pashiardis-Brauckmann Holistic Leadership Framework has, so far, been validated in more than
10 countries already.
4 Educational Management Administration & Leadership XX(X)

Exercising pedagogical leadership

If we define as instructional or pedagogical leadership style all the actions that refer to the
interventions that leaders employ in their schools in order to improve the process of teaching and
learning, then the key word here is intervention, which means it must be an action with a core
purpose to improve teaching and learning. However, for successful intervention there also needs to
be a focus as well as support and accountability in combination with trust (Day and Leithwood,
2007; Johansson, 2020, forthcoming). Being the pedagogical leader resonates both with what
Pashiardis and Brauckmann call the instructional/pedagogical style and with what Bredeson and
Johansson mean when referring to school leaders as the experts. Expert, pedagogical school leaders
create and operate around instructional objectives by setting high expectations; through monitoring
and evaluating students and teachers; by enabling achievement of the instructional objectives;
through stimulating instructional innovation; and by carrying out pedagogical dialogues with
teachers about the quality of their teaching and the kind of expectations that school leaders have
from their teachers. Their leadership practices revolve around empowerment, transformation and
community building, thus capitalizing on teacher leadership, which seems to play an important role
in understanding school success (Donohoo, 2018; Fairman and Mackenzie 2015; Harris, 2005;
Harris et al., 2017). Expert pedagogical principals are committed to making a difference for their
school communities, as revealed through their resilience, commitment, persistence and sense of
optimism, even in the face of very difficult challenges (Day et al., 2011).
Another important aspect of instructional/pedagogical leadership is when school leaders
exercise pedagogical leadership and lead by example, emphasizing the fact that we are all eternal
students who constantly fight for professional growth. We conclude that the way pedagogical
leadership is operationalized in various regions of the world can be linked to acquiring higher
students’ achievement as well as to improved professional growth and professional learning
among staff members of the school (Hallinger and Heck, 1998; Hoy, 2012; Mangin and Duns-
more, 2015; Neumerski, 2013). Thus, the main driver is being successful through pedagogical
leadership and expertise in order to reach effectiveness in children’s learning. ‘Successful’ and
‘effective’ cannot be evaluated without a clear understanding of what the activities mean for
children’s learning both as individuals and as a group. However, this pedagogical leadership
style cannot be effectuated unless there is the presence of organizational and cultural leadership,
to which we now turn.

Exercising organizational and cultural leadership

The structuring leadership style of the Pashiardis-Brauckmann Holistic Leadership Framework
stresses the fact that monitoring and adjusting the structural organization of the school, including
how tasks are assigned and performed, and the proper use of time and space, are important
elements in school leaders’ reorganization efforts. In many regions around the world, successful
school leaders interact within a particular school context to deliver the necessary vision and
strategic interventions aimed at improving student outcomes (Clarke and O’Donoghue, 2017;
Donmoyer et al., 2012). In these cases, school leadership is formed by local contextual character-
istics which, in turn, shape principals’ leadership practices. It is also emphasized that school
leadership impacts and successful practices can take place at the input, process and output levels
of the school which they are responsible for and not just at the final output level (Kasser, 2013;
Shaked and Schechter, 2014).
Pashiardis and Johansson: Successful and effective schools 5

The main difference here is the focus on structure whereas the pedagogical leadership style
places more emphasis on creating and leading a school culture that can improve the pedagogical
learning activities and other instructional activities at the school level. But neither of the two is
good enough without the other. It is important for all principals to work towards integrating
structure and culture alongside teaching and learning. There is little to be gained by only changing
the structure if one is not working with culture change, guided by strategic thinking, at the same
time. When the structure and culture are in harmony, then the school can perform at its best in the
long term (Höög et al., 2011). Therefore, leaders need to be able to build a common trust basis
which they can use as a platform for everything else they do around their schools. Building a
shared strategic vision of what we want our schools to look like is another manifestation of this
values-driven and trust-building aspect of expert school leadership that can make the difference at
the school level and one which can guide students in order to realize and reach their full potential in
education (Louis and Wahlstrom, 2011). For instance, this trust-building and values-oriented
leadership is particularly emphasized within the Australian/New Zealand context, where school
leaders’ values are perceived on several levels, such as the professional level and the core values
about human interaction (Notman, 2014). At the same time, principals’ actions are centred around
universal values, such as social justice, dignity and freedom, empathy for the less well off,
compassion and tolerance. Moreover, principals in that part of the world exhibited another kind
of values, that of companionship and doing things together; that is, they exercised the distributed
notion of leadership. Thus, the leaders were people-centred, good at developing relationships,
modelling appropriate behaviour and establishing relational trust within the organizational and
cultural apparatus of the school (Gurr and Drysdale, 2016).
A more humanistic motivation for leadership among school superintendents is also reported by
Merchant et al. (2020) in relation to the high number of refugees entering both Sweden and Texas
in recent years. This is interesting because the researchers were looking for political advocacy and
activism, but the superintendents convinced them that the activities that could be perceived as
political activism from the outside were based on their humanistic values and a human rights
perspective in education. Following this, the notion of participatory approaches to leadership is
explored in order to find the connections between participation and structural and cultural
elements.

Exercising participatory leadership and stewardship

This leadership style highlights the importance of positive and productive relationships among the
various school participants and it is primarily based on trust and mutual support. Under this style,
principals are responsible for creating a positive culture within their school. Simple facts such as a
leader always remembering to say ‘thank you’, or to acknowledge good work, or praise effort and
commitment, are some good examples of helping to create this kind of participative and distribu-
tive culture within the school boundaries (Brauckmann and Pashiardis, 2011; Harris et al., 2017).
What we are suggesting here is that working on being the instructional, expert leader of the school
as well as exercising this participative leadership style through a healthy working environment is
indeed a crucial combination in order to have successful schools (Donohoo, 2018; Fairman and
Mackenzie, 2015). Moreover, relying on a close working relationship within the school, which
encourages a two-way relationship and communication between students and teachers, in a climate
which is conducive to learning, can become the vital link towards effectiveness. Many times this
process of creating a distributed leadership culture within the school begins with a core team of
6 Educational Management Administration & Leadership XX(X)

volunteer teachers who are willing to follow through and, at the same time, show the necessary
resilience to do so (Day et al., 2011). Thinking about it from another perspective, leaders with a
participative style and stewardship are capable of building a shared vision as a positive driving
force, within an environment which supports all-round student development, thus motivating
teachers and students to perform at higher levels.
This resonates with what Bredeson and Johansson (2000) refer to as being a steward. As they
mention, a steward enhances the performance of their school by providing opportunities for staff to
participate in decision-making about issues that affect them and for which their knowledge is
crucial, and support from teachers is central in order to have good implementation of the decisions.
Common features of successful school principals who operate as stewards are centred on: values
and beliefs; personal qualities and skills; interventions and practices that lead to success; and
capacity building. Being a steward also means being able to help, sometimes, before a staff
member has asked for help, thus being proactive and humble.
What has been described above resonates well with what has been suggested by African and
Asian school leaders who mentioned that their personal qualities made a very significant contri-
bution to their success as leaders. Some of these personal attributes include being trustworthy and
honest, dealing with everybody with a sense of integrity and a sense of humour, being friendly yet
firm, exemplary, exhibiting commitment, being hardworking, transparent, being a good commu-
nicator, showing a sense of self-discipline, and possessing strong moral and ethical values and a
sense of responsibility (Bush and Glover, 2003). But, above all, successful school leaders in the
African and Asian contexts stressed the fact that a leader should always remember to say ‘thank
you’ and to acknowledge good work, effort and commitment (Mestry, 2016). As was especially
stressed from an Asian perspective, the new concept of invitational education was initiated by a
number of school principals as a kind of successful practice; invitational education is an approach
to creating, sustaining and enhancing an authentic and truly welcoming learning environment
based on trust, respect, optimism and care that facilitates better learning outcomes and enables
students to realize their full potential (Szeto et al., 2016). The participatory and stewardship
approaches as described in this section resonate with the efforts of school leaders to become more
inclusive not just inside their schools, but also with outside sources of influence

Exercising entrepreneurial and communicatory leadership

The important criterion in an entrepreneurial leadership style is indeed being capable to seize new
opportunities and having the strength and tenacity to develop these into actions at the school site.
This style is often combined with thinking creatively and innovatively about the future and trying
to develop and improve old thinking through thinking outside the box, thus becoming an edupre-
neurial leader (Pashiardis and Brauckmann, 2019). By working closely with other community
structures and individuals, the principals aim at providing support and advice to parents and they
can often influence the community at large. When working in this fashion, leaders see themselves
as more than school leaders, but also as community leaders, as social workers, as motivators, as
cultural initiators and many more roles that they undertake in order to have the greatest possible
impact within their communities (Jacobson and Schoenfeld, 2014). These leaders also understand
that, sometimes, change is greater than in the local community. Important changes in society at
large can have an impact on the local school. Changing societies can, for instance, mean changes in
the general values and structural systems, which are often caused by growing social differences
between more-educated people and less-educated ones or between a growing difference in income
Pashiardis and Johansson: Successful and effective schools 7

or increased number of refugees; these changes can create tensions in the social system apparatus
and challenge values concepts such as solidarity and our understanding about what is redistribution
of wealth within a political system. We see signs of this new situation in many parts of Europe
where, currently, more focus is being placed on what society could do for you and less emphasis is
on what you could do for society. In situations like this, individualism is growing and solidarity is
in decline, even in countries which have traditionally placed more emphasis on the public good
versus individualism, such as those in the Scandinavia region, for example. We also see that the
influence of political parties on the right of the political continuum is growing; and one effect for
the public school is budget cuts on one hand, and a challenge to uphold a good public system on the
other. In the end it is all about doing more with less and doing it better (Pashiardis and Brauck-
mann, 2019), in an era of economic austerity and other challenges such as a free school market. The
question is how long can this tendency last without having a permanent and negative effect on
public schools (Pashiardis et al., 2016)?
At the same time, an entrepreneurial leader needs to be a good communicator. Leaders in this
function create a vision which is values-driven and can be shared with all stakeholders and uses
the provision of regular positive feedback which helps in motivating and inspiring the staff. The
leadership practices revolve around empowerment, transformation and community building,
thus capitalizing on teacher leadership (Bredeson and Johansson, 2000; Datnow and Park,
2018; Fairman and Mackenzie, 2015). Leaders as communicators go the extra mile in developing
strategic alliances with the municipality, parents’ associations, the police, civil society around
their areas and other perceived stakeholders in order to bring the ‘outsiders’ into their schools. In
this way, they are reinforcing, informing and creating collaborators who will increase their
effectiveness inside the school but from an outsider’s perspective. These principals use their
ability to build trust between themselves and their staff and among the staff themselves as well.
Another feature of the practices of successful schools and effective school leaders in the com-
municator function is to ensure continuous communication with parents, students, staff and the
school governing body. All these communications have reciprocity as their main characteristic
(Pashiardis and Brauckmann, 2019).
As Bredeson and Johansson (2000) further inform us, it has been documented that principals
serving at the same school for several years are able to build on the trust of their faculty and their
parent community in order to support the tough decisions and changes they have to make. They
were trusted and supported to go through difficult terrains. This feature resonates well with what is
found primarily within the North American context, where longevity of service was perceived as a
clear factor as to why principals can be influential and successful (Jacobson and Schoenfeld, 2014).
Over several years of serving at the same school, these principals were able to build the trust of
their faculty and their parent community in order to support the tough decisions and changes they
had to make. It may also be concluded that the relative stability of leadership at a school is indeed
an important factor contributing towards success and effectiveness, with frequent turnovers lead-
ing to instability and potentially a lack of trust; at the same time, extremely long tenures can
possibly lead to complacency and inertia (Jacobson, 2016).

Exercising personnel development and being models of learning

To be aware of the importance to develop one’s own self as well as develop the workforce is
another very important leadership quality for effectiveness and success (Kearney and Herrington,
2013; Louis and Wahlstrom, 2011). Leaders who are models of learning can foster more
8 Educational Management Administration & Leadership XX(X)

collaboration and trust among staff through the establishment of teams and group structures within
their schools. Moreover, model leaders are people-centred, good at developing relationships,
modelling appropriate behaviour and establishing relational trust. More than ever before we need
school leaders who are models of learners (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Devel-
opment (OECD), 2019b). And because school leaders are, at heart, educators they should exem-
plify the power of learning upon their leadership development. Model leaders must be able to raise
awareness of the cultural, social and pedagogical changes needed for the increasing diversity of the
population in their schools, and thus establish successful personnel development processes in the
path towards effectiveness (OECD, 2019b).

Successful and effective schools: what are they?

A successful school is one that can facilitate mobility in a society. In effect, through the school
everybody gets a fair chance to develop irrespective of the socio-economic background they come
from; the ‘social class ceiling’ can be broken within a successful school (Pashiardis and Johansson,
2016a). This is done through the creation of the processes and putting the systems in place that
might lead to success for the individual and all fellow students irrespective of contextual varia-
tions. This is one of the reasons why, in the Swedish education system, for instance, lunch is
provided for free to all students in all schools so that there is an equal treatment of all and, in some
schools in challenging areas, a free breakfast is also provided. In that way society can guarantee
that all students have their physical needs taken care of, as a necessary prerequisite for being able
to participate in the educational process on an equal footing. To make that possible in full, even
books and writing materials are provided for free. Further, the argument is that if everybody gets a
free lunch, breakfast and school books and writing materials, nobody can know whether only the
poor and needy get them, and, in this way, we do not jeopardize the dignity of any student.
Moreover, the uneven redistribution of monies and other resources is another way of moving
towards becoming a successful school. What this means is that, in order to be successful and
effective for all its students, a school needs to redistribute its monies and other resources unevenly
among the various subsets of the student body, and this kind of distribution may cause some unrest
among parents and teachers (Hanushek, 2019; Woessmann, 2003). In more concrete terms, what if
the school decides to provide more resources to the needier children, and then the parents of
middle- and upper-class students are unhappy and do not agree with this redistribution? What if
they believe that their children are being treated unfairly and they do not get what they deserve as
tax-payers? The answer to this question is that there is an imaginary line, a threshold that should
not be crossed; if it is, then there will be unrest, and other measures taken in order to ameliorate the
effects of such interventions will be viewed with suspicion in the future. Changes like these must
be taken in small steps and careful processes so that they will be accepted by the middle class
(Pashiardis and Johansson, 2016a). In short, Aristotle’s dictum is very useful here: the greatest
inequality is the equalization of unequals. That is, treating unequal entities as equal produces
injustices.
For instance, again in Sweden, it is interesting to note that more and more of the middle/upper
class in this country are sending their children to private/independent schools (Johansson, 2015;
Rönnström and Johansson, 2020, forthcoming). This is probably the result of them disliking the
redistribution as described above which is happening in public schools in more visible and tangible
ways, and they believe that there is a certain injustice being inflicted upon their children. But it
could also be a sign of mistrust. In short, we need to ask ourselves, what is the threshold at which
Pashiardis and Johansson: Successful and effective schools 9

parents and the society at large will accept some income and resources redistribution, and when
will they say ‘Enough is enough, and I don’t accept this policy anymore’? Therefore, defining
these issues of context and resources redistribution, as well as finding out the minimally acceptable
threshold, are important elements in the effort to critically examine the concepts of successful and
effective schools, or one could say that the acceptance of high redistribution is linked to success
(Hanushek, 2019). We can have a high redistribution policy for school children from lower social
classes as long as we can show success for all; at the same time, we need to be aware of the conflict
between the private and the public good. Thus, the question arises of whether, in our quest for more
equality, we are putting quality in second place. This is the question about effective schools. Thus,
the main question is whether our successful and equitable schools are effective at the same time.
Even the definition of what constitutes an effective school became the product of the degree to
which the objectives of the school were achieved and the extent to which targeted problems were
resolved. The term ‘effectiveness’, as used in our context, is determined without reference to costs,
but, at the same time, effective leaders do not waste their resources on unattainable goals (Woess-
mann, 2003). They set realistic goals and prioritize them in order to achieve them. At the same
time, when one strives for effectiveness, the processes or the means through which one achieves it
are not considered so important as long as one can achieve one’s goals. The mission is to achieve
the targets as set by the school and society at large. Moreover, the definition of an effective school
during the current era has acquired some new content in that an effective school is the school which
can prove that in its classes there is quality and equality. The definition of quality is that the school
has good results or the best possible results for its students at a minimally acceptable level; the
educational system decides what results are important for them (academic, citizenship, affective, a
combination of them, etc.) and the minimally acceptable level at which these are considered good
enough results in a particular country/society. Equality means that the various academic achieve-
ments are equitably distributed among the various subsets of the student population of the school.
That is, the school teaches and educates its students irrespective of their socio-economic status
(SES) and/or where they come from or which family they belong to, or their ethnic/immigrant and
religious background (Edmonds, 1979; Levine and Lezotte, 1990; Lezotte, 1989; Pashiardis and
Pashiardi, 2000).
From the above discussion, we return to the following questions once more. What is success? Is
it related to effectiveness? Is effectiveness better measured as related to academic results or is it
better to use other criteria? Does successful deal more with procedural issues and effectiveness is
more related to the end result? Would this ‘division of labour’ be fairer and more justified if we
stress the fact that a successful school is one that institutionalizes the right processes in order to
achieve and sustain desired objectives and, thus become effective? Going a step further, could the
notion of equality (as described earlier) be tied to a successful school (i.e. it is more of a process
towards the goal), and the notion of quality (a minimally acceptable achievement for all, according
to a society’s wishes and goals for its citizenry) be tied to an effective school? Could we say that a
school is effective because it has quality results at (at least) a minimum acceptable level (however
they are measured) for a number of its students? (How many students? All? Only a part of the
student body?) And if, along the way, the processes to achieve these results are equitable and they
lead to fair treatment of all students, does this make it also a successful school? On the other hand,
could we say that an effective school is the one that produces better results which are evenly
distributed to its sub-populations? That is, the school is effective with its student population
irrespective of their SES, gender, ethnic/immigrant background, etc. The pendulum swing will
probably reach equilibrium between these two tendencies: processes and products. Moreover, it
10 Educational Management Administration & Leadership XX(X)

should be stressed that, usually, the judgement about whether a school is successful comes from
within the school, whereas the judgement about how effective a school is comes from the outside.
Often this control from outside is related to only one aspect of effectiveness – economic results and
efficiency (Rönnström and Johansson, 2020, forthcoming).

Context as the bridge between success and effectiveness

It is increasingly acknowledged that school leaders do not operate in a vacuum. On the contrary,
their actions greatly depend on their perceptions of the particular context in which they operate
(Bredeson et al., 2011; Hallinger, 2018). Moreover, school leaders’ actions are influenced by
context and, at the same time, they try to influence context to their benefit. In essence, what we
are arguing here is that the quest for leadership success and effectiveness can be better conducted
at the local level, but with a global view. At the local level, effectiveness often means keeping
within the administrative structures and the budget, and success is more linked to having a good
climate in the school and parents that are appreciative of the school. The concrete everyday
realization of school leadership has to take the context into account, as leadership is always
context-specific. In general, leadership is dependent on and limited by the context (Gu and
Johansson, 2012). It should be stressed that by ‘context’ we really mean the ‘immediate’ sur-
roundings of the school or the area close to school (ACTS) (Schwarz and Brauckmann, 2015), as
perceived by school leaders, and not some ‘remote’ national context which often leaves them
‘unaffected’. More specifically, the main interest lies in examining the leaders’ perceptions of
their context and how this interplay produces the best ‘leadership cocktail mix’ of effective
leadership behaviours and practices for the school success of all children. For example, is it 20%
of the instructional style and 50% of the participative one, etc. that a leader has to adopt in order
to be most effective within a particular context? And then, which specific behaviours and
practices make up these percentages for each style (Pashiardis, 2014)?
Thus, school leaders need to be able to understand the complexity of the system and the
complexity of the self. They need to be familiar with the potential ‘stumbling blocks’ that may
exist (both within the self and within the context) and how these obstacles can become challenges
that they will need to overcome. School leadership must shape the school processes and school
structures and the context in a way that the teachers who work there can then ideally be more
effective in supporting their pupils in order to achieve better learning outcomes. Thus, the quest for
effective school leaders and effective schools continues into the modern era by trying to find out
both the processes and the desired outcomes in order to have effective schools; however, primarily
the current focus in school effectiveness research is still on achieving the end results for all students
(Ärlestig et al., 2016).
Moreover, during the discussions and explorations about successful and effective schools, the
issue of what is more important, process or products/outcomes, comes up constantly. That is, the
main question with which researchers are concerned is: are processes and products equally impor-
tant? How are they associated with success and effectiveness? Is context, then, the bridge between
process and product? The notion here is that even if one focuses on the product (which is the
current tendency in school effectiveness research), still process is important and, even more so,
context is important as well (Brauckmann et al., 2020; Clarke and O’Donoghue, 2017). At the same
time, we need to think and examine these two notions (process and product) from the students’
perspective. What if their individual home/context is not conducive to learning? What if they do
not have a private room/office in their house to complete their homework? Then, should homework
Pashiardis and Johansson: Successful and effective schools 11

be completed at school where all students have the same opportunities and an environment which
is conducive to learning (Hanushek, 2019)? Thus, should we not give homework to students
because maybe their home environment and their parents cannot really help them grow academi-
cally, in the same ways as other parents and homes that can help their children better? Therefore,
context (not just from the school’s point of view, but from the student’s point of view as well) is
very important in how we define successful and effective schools.
By studying context, then, are we really striving to close the gap between processes and
products? Then, what is context for each student? Can schools make up for the deficiencies of a
student’s individual context? Is that not the whole essence of successful and effective schools?
Then, are schools able to fill in for the deficiencies of society at large and the socio-economic
backgrounds from which students come? Is this possible (realistic and fair for schools to take it on
their shoulders) or are the schools getting themselves into a trap which is really ‘Mission Impos-
sible’, and then they are blamed for all the ills of society? Therefore, depending on the context (its
current state), one can talk more of ‘successful’ or more of ‘effective’ (Pashiardis and Johansson,
2016a).

Discussion, reflections and concluding remarks

Around the world, the pressure to perform successfully and to do that efficiently keeps increasing
among the various stakeholders in education by focusing on international and comparative large-
scale assessments (see, for instance, OECD, 2019a for the most recent PISA results). In fact, it
cannot be considered as a coincidence that in recent years we have seen a proliferation of large-
scale international assessments such as the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA);
the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS); the Third International Mathematics and
Science Study (TIMSS); the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS); the Pro-
gram for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC); the Civic Education Study
(CivEd); the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS); and the Second Infor-
mation Technology Education Study (SITES). These large-scale evaluation studies are one reason
why we concentrate on comparing school success and drafting up league tables amongst countries.
There is also another reason for the importance we place on large-scale evaluations, which is linked
to school results, especially because these results have a greater impact on modern societies and
what can be described as a changing labour market with much higher educational demands on the
workforce. The tendency is to increasingly compare and find out the ‘best’ practices and inter-
ventions and to identify common features that help to build success in different regions around the
world.
But is there a best practice and best achievement suitable for all? What is valued as best
education and what is valued within education is politically and values-driven. However, politics
and values are society-driven and there are vast differences from one society to another. Education
systems are micro-political systems and, in this regard, they represent the culture and values of real
people on the ground (Verger, 2016). Thus, it is possible that what is successful and effective in
one part of the world may be ‘good enough’ in another part of the world. Depending on the level of
development of a society and its educational system, what is successful and what is effective
suddenly become very relative (Pashiardis et al., 2016). It really depends on the local ‘state of
affairs’. At the same time, it seems that, when it comes to school leadership, there are certain
commonalities that should be stressed and singled out in order to better understand the debate
about successful and effective schools and school leaders. We think of policies as inspiring tools
12 Educational Management Administration & Leadership XX(X)

but what is also happening is that some researchers, through their books, inspire teachers and
principals with their (often) simple descriptions of complex school improvement processes and
policy mandates. These descriptions have a profound effect on the applied pedagogical work in
schools, which is sometimes more influential than national policy decisions (Johansson and Ärles-
tig, 2020, forthcoming).
The first common point that can be made, based on the above discussions and analyses of views
from different regions of the world, is that context and the interplay between context and the various
actors at the school level are important factors. Successful and effective school leaders are aware of
the broader context in the internal and external environment in which they operate, as well as of the
international trends in education so that they can be adaptive and learning in order to lead. In other
words, school leaders are contextually literate, have a deep knowledge and understanding of their
school’s demographic situation and they act accordingly in order to meet their students’ needs
(Brauckmann et al., 2020). In fact, different leadership styles and qualities are expected in a school
whose ethnic composition is very diverse; different sets of behaviours and actions are probably
required of an elementary, a middle school or a high school leader. Further, depending on where
the school is situated (urban, suburban or rural), different constituents may have different demands of
school leaders as well as different sets of expectations. It should be stressed here that this area is quite
under-researched and needs further refinement and development (Pashiardis et al., 2016).
Second, we know through research that the role of the principal as a leader of leaders is a
prominent one and enhances, mostly indirectly, students’ performance (Leithwood et al., 2010;
Levine and Lezotte, 1990; Seashore et al., 2010). This leadership role which seems to be evident in
most studies in the international literature, called instructional leadership within the USA context
or pedagogical leadership in other contexts, has an impact on the quality of teaching and learning
that takes place at the school level (Harris et al., 2017; Mangin and Dunsmore, 2015). As previ-
ously mentioned, instructional or pedagogical leadership refers to all the interventions that school
leaders employ in their schools in order to improve the process of teaching and learning.
Third, distributed leadership seems to be another commonality irrespective of context. School
leaders around the globe have probably realized the need to build collaborative structures within as
well as outside their schools (Donohoo, 2018; Harris, 2005). Within the school, school leaders
empower their teachers and the school’s leadership team, and embrace shared decision-making.
This leadership style highlights the importance of positive and productive relationships among
school participants based on trust and mutual support, as again was previously described.
Fourth, school leaders seem to be values-driven and especially trust-driven. Successful princi-
pals share a set of values (professional, social and political) that they believe in and communicate
them to others (Notman, 2014). This can be seen as their personal philosophy and it is a common
characteristic of leaders in different parts of the world. These values are at the personal as well as at
the professional level and include a humane aspect of what it means to be a leader who is honest
and real. It seems that everywhere around the world, leaders need to be able to build a common
trust basis which they can use as a platform for everything else they do around their schools.
Building a shared vision of what we want our schools to look like is another manifestation of this
values-driven and trust-building aspect of school leadership that can make the difference at the
school level and motivate students to realize and reach their full potential in education
(Hammersley-Fletcher, 2015).
Finally, an important theme that we need to come to terms with is the probability that the issues
of quality and equality are sometimes conflicting as goals to be achieved. That is, the more one
strives for quality, the less equality there will be, and the more one strives for equality, the less
Pashiardis and Johansson: Successful and effective schools 13

quality there will be, mainly because we do not have vast resources for everything we want to do in
education for everyone. Then, if this is true, what should the schools strive for? Are we not successful
in public education because we are striving to achieve antithetical or contradictory and conflicting
goals? How much of each of the two concepts should a society achieve in order to be balanced in the
provision of education opportunities to its citizenry? We think that the answer is that we should strive
for quality but, at the same time, understand that equality does not mean the same for all. Equality can
never mean the same for all because we, as individuals, have different needs. Effective redistribution
is the key to equality for all and also to success for all students. In sum, due to shrinking resources,
politicians and education systems and societies are asking for more with less, and the blame is shifted
towards politicians. Maybe this will mean a paradigm shift in order to find more equitable and
redistributive ways of enhancing educational success and effectiveness.
It is increasingly obvious that more research concerning the needs of educational leaders within
a specific cultural context is definitely necessary in order to prepare successful and effective school
leaders. This kind of research, as Brauckmann and Pashiardis (2011) suggest, should be intensive,
diagnostic and developmental in nature, in order to predict needs, and develop new approaches
toward successful and effective educational leadership. This means that approaches to school
leadership policy need to be based on careful considerations of the context in which schools
operate. It should be borne in mind that policy initiatives that work well in one country cannot
necessarily be transferred across national borders. But the so-called governing chain from national
politics down to the school level must be worked on in more intensive ways. Today we see very
high aspirations set in school laws but the resources given are not adjusted to the aspirations, which
makes it very difficult for principals and teachers (Johansson, 2015). At the same time, a regroup-
ing of countries and regions around the world can tell us more about existing or non-existing
contextual balance of the education system. Is the quality of the educational governance cocktail
mix constraining or liberating school leaders with regard to their development? What does the best
mix probably look like?
A final perspective could be to try and understand successful and effective leadership as a
function of structure and culture corroborated by strategic thinking and analysis. When both
structure and culture are focused and in co-variance with each other on student learning, we find
successful and effective schools. If structure and culture are not supporting each other we will not
expect to find successful and effective schools. We claim that the reason behind this conclusion is
the fact that without agreement on structure and culture, we cannot really develop the necessary
strategic plan which will guide our actions on the ground. We want to believe that the preceding
discussions constitute an enrichment in the grounding of more hypotheses and theoretical ideas as
well as more professional development for both school principals and researchers in the area of
successful and effective school leadership. However, it is further stressed that the future of the
study of school leadership and its effects on student achievement is not simply through more
complex statistical analyses and large-scale international studies. The way forward for the years
to come is indeed to further advance through a study of the unique characteristics of the context of
each educational system, its history of successful actions of leadership, culture and structure in
relation to national and local needs and strategic thinking.

Authors’ Note
This paper draws ideas and material from chapters 1 and 15 in Pashiardis and Johansson (2016b).
14 Educational Management Administration & Leadership XX(X)

Declaration of conflicting interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publi-
cation of this article.

Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit
sectors.

ORCID iD
Petros Pashiardis https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4263-8304

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Author biographies
Petros Pashiardis is professor of educational leadership at the Open University of Cyprus. During
2004–2008, he was president of the Commonwealth Council for Educational Administration and
Management. During 2013–2014 he was visiting professor at the Centre for Principal Develop-
ment, Umeå University, Sweden. In 2008 he co-edited the International Handbook on the Pre-
paration and Development of School Leaders, published by Routledge. In 2014 his book, Modeling
School Leadership Across Europe: In Search of New Frontiers, was published by Springer. His
research interests are in leadership effects on student achievement and leadership development, as
well as teacher and school principal evaluation.

Olof Johansson is senior professor of political science at Umeå University in Sweden. In 2010 he
received the Donald J. Willower Centre for the Study of Leadership and Ethics Award of
18 Educational Management Administration & Leadership XX(X)

Excellence in Research. His research interests are school leadership, school governance, school
effectiveness, school improvement and values in relation to school leadership. He is currently
working on various large research projects such as the International Successful School Principal-
ship Project (ISSPP) and National Policy meets Local Implementation Structures. In 2014–2015 he
was the principal researcher for the Government of Sweden in relation to ‘Principals’ working
conditions and pedagogical leadership’.