Rural principals: moving on, moving up

The Bush Tracks collective is a team of researchers from the University of New England in NSW who are researching rural schooling in New South Wales. One focus of our research has been on rural leadership, specifically leadership in small K-6 primary schools. Such leaders have to juggle the concurrent demands of teaching and leadership, often on the basis of very limited experience in either role. We have identified a number of themes relevant to the role of teaching principal in a small rural school. In this brief article, three themes will be discussed in relation to the leadership role of a teaching principal: transience, adaptation, and opportunity. In the interests of readability, references to the scholarly literature have been kept to a bare minimum.