Christopher Day

Christopher Day is Professor of Educational Leadership at the University of Sydney. He holds the position of Professor of Education in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Nottingham, where he is a member of the UNESCO Centre and the Centre for Research on Educational Leadership and Management. He also serves as Professor of Education at Beijing Normal University and Adjunct Professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, North East Normal University, and East China Normal University. His research specializations include teacher professionalism, school leadership, teachers' work and lives, teacher identities, commitment and resilience, school-university partnerships, leadership of school clusters, policy enactment at system and school levels, teacher retention, successful principals, and governance and leadership of school trusts. Over the last twenty years, Day has led national, European, and international research and development projects on teachers' work and lives, school and system leadership, change, and teacher resilience and retention, collaborating with partners in Europe, North and South America, China, and Australasia. He founded the International Successful School Principalship Project (ISSPP), an international research network now spanning 27 countries. Current projects focus on teacher retention, successful principals, teacher professionalism during Covid-19, leadership in multi-academy trusts in England, university-school partnerships for change in China, leadership of system change in Australia, and teacher retention. He has delivered invited keynote addresses at national and international conferences and supervises research students in school leadership, teachers' work and lives, resilience, continuing professional development, and qualitative research.

Day's major awards and honors include an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Linköping, Sweden (1993), the Michael Huberman Award for Excellence in Research on Teachers from the American Educational Research Association (2010), a higher doctorate (D.Litt) from the University of Nottingham (2009), election as a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (2012), and an Honorary Doctorate from the Education University of Hong Kong (2017). His key publications encompass books such as Global Perspectives on Successful School Principalship (2025), Why Successful Schools are More than Effective (2024), Teacher Resilience during the Pandemic: Courage, Care and Resilience (2024), School-University Partnerships in Action: The Promise of Change (2021), Teachers' Worlds and Work: Understanding Complexity, Building Quality (2017), Successful School Leadership: Lessons from the Field (2014), Resilient Teachers, Resilient Schools (2014), and The New Lives of Teachers (2009). Recent articles include those on teacher professionalism during the pandemic (2024), research on successful school leadership (2023), and leadership of school trusts during the pandemic (2023).

Professional Email: christopher.day@sydney.edu.au