ABSTRACT

This chapter starts by presenting a typology of innovative principals based on those studied in the cases. It recognizes the importance to their professional lives of those past and current experiences and responsibilities upon which they draw in order to promote, manage and lead innovation. Particularly significant in the life stories of the six principals studied is the support they have gained from family and home throughout the period of their present innovative activities in their schools. Adopting a whole-school approach to change rather than an incremental, piecemeal one is important since the nature of restructuring is such as to require change in many aspects of the school, including its structures, processes, culture and climate. The ability of the principals to take a gestalt view while balancing it with a critical eye for detail has already been noted as a characteristic of their general approach to innovation.