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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Educ.
Sec. Leadership in Education
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/feduc.2025.1538604
Leading Schools as Complex Systems: Exploring a New Strengths-Based Approach
Provisionally accepted- Department of Quality Management and Mechanical Engineering, Mid Sweden University, Östersund, Sweden
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Education has become a complex, unpredictable landscape and there exists a need for a paradigm shift in school leadership away from deficit based ‘firefighting’ towards designing new positive based approaches to cope with these emerging challenges. The purpose of this study is to explore the application of a strengths-based methodology to understand how attractive quality (AQ), appreciative inquiry (AI), and the creation of positive customer affect using appreciative thinking can enable school leaders to develop more responsive approaches to leading schools as living systems. This qualitative exploratory study proposes a strengths-based inquiry system (S-BIS) to identify attractive quality indicators accessed through appreciative inquiry questioning to foster a culture of responsiveness in schools. The study concludes that using this integrated strength-based approach can provide school leaders with an effective method to transition from static, deficit-oriented mindsets to more dynamic, appreciative, and regenerative thinking, vital for navigating the complexities of leading schools as living systems.
Keywords: Attractive quality, Responsive leadership, Appreciative Inquiry, complex adaptive systems, strengths-based approach
Received: 03 Dec 2024; Accepted: 27 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Johnson. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Michael Ian Johnson, Department of Quality Management and Mechanical Engineering, Mid Sweden University, Östersund, 831 25, Sweden
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.