ABSTRACT
Following our previous book on Poorly Performing Staff in Schools and How to Manage Them (Fidler and Atton 1999) where we briefly examined unsuccessful headteachers, we explored the idea of producing a companion book on poorly performing headteachers. We abandoned this for a number of reasons – it was difficult to collect evidence, there was no clear audience and more importantly we became acutely aware that quality of performance was not the same as perceived success. We did, however, realise that there was no book which explored headteachers’ careers from the perspective of preparation and learning. Too many accounts do not conceptualise the process and assume that learning is based on factual transmission or experience rather than a complex process of experiential learning informed by theoretical constructs.
