What's Worth Fighting for in the Principalship?

World-renowned for his expert advice on school change, Michael Fullan has completely revised and updated this classic work written directly to principals. In the years since publication of the first edition, policymakers and school reformers have pointed increasingly to the school principal as the most important agent of needed change in our schools. Along with this recognition, principals are now expected to do even more within their already overloaded schedules. With a sense of urgency that will spur principals into action, this second edition is more targeted, more specific, and provides more concrete examples from the field to reveal a new agenda for school leaders. Michael Fullan incisively characterizes the current state of the principalship and furnishes updated Action Guidelines to help school and district leaders work for meaningful change.

This much-awaited, fully revised edition will help principals fight for:

• Deep and creative learning for all students—not just minimum competency in tested achievement.
• Professional learning communities that respect and engage teachers in the quest to improve learning.
• Sustainable leadership that creates lasting improvement—rather than quick fixes that fade all too fast after early promise.
• Relationships beyond their schools that will improve the school system as a whole.

Michael Fullan, OC, is professor emeritus at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. He consults with governments and school systems in several countries around the world and has won numerous awards for his more than 30 books, including the 2015 Grawemeyer prize with Andy Hargreaves for Professional Capital. To learn more, visit his website at www.michaelfullan.ca.

“Valuable philosophical guidelines that strengthen our resolve and create a new mindset to direct our actions."

—Educational Leadership (praise for the first edition)

“This new edition promises much and delivers more. Fullan continues to provide the leadership needed to accelerate school improvement efforts around the globe.”
—Thomas J. Sergiovanni, Trinity University

"This substantially rewritten edition of a bestseller about the principalship captures, with exceptional clarity, the essence of what school leaders and those who support them should know and do to make a difference for students."
—Ken Leithwood, OISE/University of Toronto

“I wish I had access to these insights during my own turbulent years as a school principal.”
—Roland S. Barth, Founding Director, The Principals’ Center, Harvard Graduate School of Education