Chapter 7 Public Employee or Private Agent: A Delicate Balance in Principal Preparation

Abstract

As the people responsible for guiding the efforts toward school improvement, principals must juggle the tricky balance of their combined position as managers and educational leaders. Achieving this balance is not easy when the demands of day-to-day administration coupled with loyalty to employers draws principals’ learning toward system initiatives, priorities, and policies. In this sense, this chapter articulates the importance of integrating both management and educational leadership in principal preparation. We illustrate the importance by referring to the Spanish context, notable for its recent historical development in terms of the problems, dilemmas, and challenges in the principalship. Despite the lack of consolidated pre- and in-service programs for the principalship in Spain, this context offers an example of attempts to articulate a delicate balance between the two roles in principal preparation. The emergence of an increasingly competitive international economic reality, combined with rapidly changing social conditions and external pressures for accountability, increases the urgency for more focused attention on the tension between problem solving and administration required in organizational leadership and the knowledge and skills associated with pedagogical and educational leadership.

Citation

Coronel, J.M. and Fernandez, M. (2013), "Chapter 7 Public Employee or Private Agent: A Delicate Balance in Principal Preparation", Slater, C.L. and Nelson, S.W. (Ed.) Understanding the Principalship: An International Guide to Principal Preparation (Advances in Educational Administration, Vol. 19), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 149-169. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-3660(2013)0000019011