Includes bibliographical references (pages [214]-222) and index.

Introduction -- The micro-context of sustainability -- The meso-context of sustainability -- Macro-contexts of sustainability -- Responses and conclusions.

This highly experienced team of cross-cultural researchers combine scholarly research with over a decade of extensive empirical research using an innovative "portrait" methodology to investigate the challenges that educational leaders on two continents currently face. The kinds of challenges explored include: the personal, such as being new to the job, coping with the role, approaching retirement; the inter-personal, including power relations, personal challenges with staff, parents and children; the local, looking at issues faced by the school in the community; the national, for example government initiatives, inspection; the global, including the impact of economic forced on political and institutional management. The authors show how the combined insights from individual portraits critique national policies and organizational functioning, and can inform leadership research by a better understanding of how links between the micro-, meso-, and macro-levels of education promote or discourage school leaders' sustainability. The authors present cross-cultural comparisons of eastern and western approaches to educational leadership, suggesting that sustainability - or lack of it - may have different roots in different cultures.