Studies on principal ship the world over have largely failed to keep pace with the changing contexts in which principals now operate. This paper advocates an edited topical life history approach to bridge this gap. This claim is illustrated using research conducted within Western Australia which sought to understand why certain school principals are more successful than others in guiding restructuring initiatives designed to improve teaching and learning. It is suggested that as a body of such studies builds up it will be possible to develop nomothetic explanations of the role which principals can play in enabling such restructuring.
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