274
K-12 LEADERSHIP PRACTICESContext Matters: Lessons Learned from Successful Superintendents about
Preparation, Practice, and Professional Development
Paul V. Bredeson and Hans W. KlarINTRODUCTION
That context influences leadership behavior is not new or surprising to those well versed
in the literature on education leadership. Situational leadership studies and contingency
theory have provided a useful foundation for examining the geographic, political,
demographic, organizational, cultural, and psychological dimensions of context and how they
influence the ways that leaders, in this case superintendents, think about and carry out their
work. Superintendents who understand, and effectively respond to their contexts, can enjoy a
greater sense of efficacy, job satisfaction and increased longevity in the position. On the
contrary, their failure to understand context and its influence on their leadership can have
negative outcomes for both system goals and superintendency tenure. An understanding of
this intersection of context and superintendent leadership is, therefore, essential for
practitioners, school boards, university administrator preparation faculty, and policymakers.
In particular, superintendents require strategies for dealing with the dynamic contexts that
characterize their daily work. Yet, how superintendents best learn and can be taught to
identify and respond to their unique and dynamic contexts is less well understood. One
scholar recently noted a major gap in leadership research. Orr (2006) stated, “Insufficient
research exists on how superintendents can be better prepared through improved preparation
and socialization and how recommended leadership development and adult learning strategies
can contribute” (p. 1369).
Our intention in this paper is a modest one. First, we begin with a review of literature on
superintendents, leadership, and context. Next, we briefly describe findings from an
empirical investigation of successful superintendents in Sweden and the United States
(Bredeson, Klar, & Johansson, 2007) and describe our emerging theory of context-responsive
leadership. In the final section of the paper, we suggest a framework for the preparation and
professional learning of superintendents.
BACKGROUND: SUPERINTENDENTS, LEADERSHIP, AND CONTEXT
Authors of reports on accountability systems across the United States cite leadership,
especially as exercised by school superintendents, as a major influence on the attention given
to, time spent on, and school/district responsiveness to greater demands for accountability for
student/school performance outcomes (Fuhrman, 2003; Goetz & Massell, 2005). Other
researchers have documented the work priorities, preferences, and tasks of superintendents
Paul V. Bredeson, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Hans W. Klar, University of Wisconsin, Madison