The role of educational leaders, in particular school leaders, has changed radically as countries attempt to transform their education systems to prepare young people to function in today's world of rapid technological and social change, economic globalisation and increased migration and mobility. Dancing on a Shifting Carpet: Reinventing traditional schooling for the 21st century argues that, in order to achieve this transformation, there is an urgent need for new paradigms of schooling and offers practical advice on how to bring about such breakthrough change from within schools. Key points: Documents how schools can reinvent themselves to meet the needs of contemporary and future students; describes and explains specific models that can be used by schools to reinvent themselves in this way; recommends a leadership model that schools could adopt to facilitate their reinvention; provides specific advice to educational policy makers, leaders, teachers and other practitioners on how to develop and sustain reinventing cultures in their schools; suggests a new methodology for insider researchers in positions of power within their own organisation.