In Turnaround Leadership, Michael Fullan--an internationally recognized leader on educational reform--expands the definition of organizational turnaround and shows how leaders can convert even the worst situation into an opportunity to shake-up and rejuvenate their schools. Indeed he goes beyond turnaround schools to show how entire systems can be transformed.


Fullan examines the dynamics of what makes societies--and education systems--healthy or sick. He identifies the positive things turnaround schools do to get off the critical list, and explores what it takes to motivate large numbers of people to go beyond short-term solutions in order to achieve fundamental, sustainable reform. Ultimately, Turnaround Leadership focuses on the critical role of leadership--not the Lone Ranger leader who rides into town and saves a single school, but leaders whose very actions change the systems they work in.

This is a volume in the Jossey-Bass Leadership Library in Education--a series designed to meet thedemand for new ideas and insights about leadership in schools.

"In Turnaround Leadership Michael Fullan goes beyond a critique of contemporary practice to offer specific, comprehensive strategies to create schools that become continuously more effective by building the capacity and the confidence of the educators within them. This is a must read for anyone serious about meaningful school improvement."
--Richard Dufour, educational author and consultant

"Michael Fullan moves with authority to identify the kind of leadership needed to turn around our schools. His turnaround solutions are not the product of armchair contemplation, but have emerged out of the sweat and tears of actual systemic reform efforts."
--Peter Hill, secretary general of the Hong Kong examinations and Assessment Authority

"Michael Fullan's work on leadership is powerful not just because it is evidence-based but because it is actionable?"
--Sir Michael Barber, McKinsey and Company, London, England

"Fullan goes far beyond the rhetoric of moral purpose to lay out in stark terms what he rightly calls the 'real reform agenda.'"
--David Hopkins, HSBC chair of international leadership, Institute of Education, University of London