Abstract
Sustainable leadership and improvement are more than matters of mere endurance, of making things last. We define sustainable leadership, in line with the environmental field, in the following way: Sustainable leadership matters, spreads and lasts. It is a shared responsibility, that does not unduly deplete human or financial resources, and that cares for and avoids exerting negative damage on the surrounding educational and community environment. Sustainable leadership has an activist engagement with the forces that affect it, and builds an educational environment of organizational diversity that promotes cross-fertilization of good ideas and successful practices in communities of shared learning and development.
 This definition suggests seven principles of sustainable leadership:
 1. Sustainable leadership creates and preserves sustaining learning.2. Sustainable leadership secures success over time.3. Sustainable leadership sustains the leadership of others.4. Sustainable leadership addresses issues of social justice.5. Sustainable leadership develops rather than depletes human and material resources.6. Sustainable leadership develops environmental diversity and capacity.7. Sustainable leadership undertakes activist engagement with the environment
Highlights
Sustainable leadership and improvement are more than matters of mere endurance, of making things last
Fullan (2005) defines educational sustainability as «the capacity of a system to engage in the complexities of continuous improvement consistent with deep values of human purpose.»
Drawing on the environmental and corporate literature as well as our Spencer Foundation study of Change Over Time in eight US and Canadian secondary schools over 30 years through the eyes of the teachers and leaders who worked there in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s (Hargreaves & Goodson, 2006), we have created an explanatory framework of seven principles of sustainable leadership
Summary
We live in an educational world of relentless reform and ceaseless change (Hargreaves, 2003). Sustainable educational leadership and improvement preserves and develops deep learning for all that spreads and lasts, in ways that do no harm to and create positive benefit for others around us, and in the future. Drawing on the environmental and corporate literature as well as our Spencer Foundation study of Change Over Time in eight US and Canadian secondary schools over 30 years through the eyes of the teachers and leaders who worked there in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s (Hargreaves & Goodson, 2006), we have created an explanatory framework of seven principles of sustainable leadership. Protect and promote in education what is itself sustaining as an enrichment of life: the fundamental moral purpose of deep and broad learning (rather than superficially tested and narrowly defined achievement) for all in commitments to and relationships of abiding care for others
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