Search results

Australia has to find solutions to a critical shortage of school principals, and to this end, governments are spending millions of dollars on the development of leadership standards and professional learning programs. This article focuses on the ‘disengagement’ problem and examines the disincentives for aspirants to undertake the role and for incumbents to continue in the role. Various responsive measures are critiqued, and alternative proposals that arise out of discussions with principals are discussed.

This chapter analyzes 2011 survey data from a sample of Texas principals who were asked about their perceptions of their working conditions such as: support and facilities; salary; resources; autonomy to make decisions; testing and accountability pressures; and relationships with supervisors. Respondents were also asked about their intentions to stay or leave their particular school. Researchers and policymakers agree effective and stable school leadership is critical to school improvement efforts, but we know little about how various working conditions impact principal effectiveness and turnover. This work is important because in-depth knowledge of the causes of principal turnover in general and how principal working conditions impact turnover in particular is a pre-requisite to creating policies and support mechanisms to support principals in small and mid-sized districts.

The aim of this qualitative study was to determine what makes school principals successful. The study obtained data through interviews, both face-to-face and via e-mail correspondence. Content analysis provides the framework for analyzing the data. The data revealed that successful school principals have three different, but interrelated competencies, which are personal, administrative, and leadership competencies. The study also indicates that those successful principals gave priority to human relations, they see the school as their home where principals created a warm atmosphere, communicated effectively with all stakeholders, committed themselves to their schools, managed schools in a democratic way, solved problems on time and effectively.

This chapter explores the ‘gap’ between policy intent and policy effect through the eyes of a group of practising school principals in China. The reform policies targeted are the new curriculum, the school review system and personnel system. The universalising tendency of educational reform towards decentralisation and marketisation has swept across China as it has in Western democracies. Another trend Chinese education shares with other systems is that central policy initiatives go through a complex process of interpretation and re-interpretation before they reach schools, a pattern that continues as schools struggle to implement them. Using interview data collected from 11 secondary school principals in Shanghai, China, the chapter suggests that the way in which policy is interpreted and translated in schools is influenced by the particularities of the context, and that the status of the school plays a particularly important role in this process. Despite the moderating role of the local context, some commonalities across principals' policy interpretations emerge. These commonalities suggest that universal education reform policies inevitably reflect cultural and societal characteristics when they are introduced and adapted to the specific national context.

Our chapter examines the ways national developments in Australia and New Zealand over the past two decades reflect distinctively antipodean understandings of educational leadership and management. Our interest is twofold. We are concerned about the extent to which these understandings are reflected in strategies designed to enhance the quality of school leadership. We are also concerned about the extent to which these strategies represent progress towards achieving ‘sustainable’ school leadership. We define sustainable leadership in terms of both building leadership capacity within the organisation and embedding lasting organisational change (Fink & Brayman, 2006; Hargreaves & Fink, 2006; Spillane, 2006). The concept used here implies both models of distributed or shared leadership and leadership succession.

Emotions are recognised as central to all aspects of human experience. Yet, in some cultures and across various professional domains, there is a tendency to suppress emotions and limit their perceived significance. The development of research in neuroscience has allowed for a better understanding of how different parts of the brain interact and function, connecting emotions and cognition. However, despite the advancement in neuroscience, many leaders continue to embrace data-driven decision making, distancing the role of emotions in these critical processes.

This study seeks to better understand how school leaders define leadership and to reflect on the role of emotions and emotion management in two collectivist transitional societies: Liberia and Palestinian Arabs in Israel. A total of 14 school principals (seven from each country) were interviewed for this study. A Restorative Practices framework, combining a focus on cognitive (rational) and emotional (affective) components was used to analyse the data.

The results indicate that a high level of emotional involvement when discussing decisions related to individual students and an effort to suppress emotions when discussing professional decisions related to teachers or the institution. Differences were found in the way emotions were handled in relation to school level (elementary vs. high school), gender, stakeholder (students, teachers) and the principal’s development stage (experience). The Liberian participants perceived a conflict between western culture and the local culture with regard to newly implemented educational policies.

This chapter examines leadership practices in a Mexican elementary school that implemented an environmental education (EE) project. The data were collected between 2010 and 2012 through document analysis and interviews with the principal, school supervisor, teachers, counselors, students, and parents. Additional data were collected through observations of classrooms, extracurricular activities, and professional development workshops. Findings from this study suggest the principal played a key role in facilitating a collective effort among the staff to transform the school through EE. The principal’s previous administrative experiences gave her credibility with teachers and the tools to lead the school improvement effort. The main challenge the principal faced was helping parents understand the transformative benefits of EE. Internal and external factors that support and threaten the sustainability of this change are also discussed.

This chapter highlights the collaborative efforts of committed partners engaged in four distinct yet inter-related programs designed to build leadership capacity across schools serving rural Alaska. The Rural Alaska Principal Preparation and Support (RAPPS) program has built a comprehensive system of leadership development programs that develop aspiring leaders, induct and coach new principals, promote the professional learning of practicing principals, and support the school improvement efforts of the state education department. Each program is described in detail with special attention devoted to the unique elements of the program designs, including summer institutes; cohort models; distance learning offerings; targeted coaching; blended learning models using webinars; critical friends’ conversations; and a festival of ideas. Lessons learned are highlighted, and impact and evaluation results are also detailed.

This chapter presents an integrated model of principal preparation featuring full-time internships and enquiry-based coursework. The development of the full-time internship component is the result of an award of a US DoE School Leadership Program grant in 2008 to expand and enhance the Ritchie Program for School Leaders, a collaborative principal preparation program between University of Denver and Denver Public Schools. The integration of Shulman’s (2005) model of practical, cognitive, and moral apprenticeships for professional education provided the foundation of the design and implementation of full-time internships through this collaborative partnership for principal preparation. Collaboration among interns, host principals, district leadership, and university faculty provides the focus, means, and structures of learning. This chapter describes the evolution of the Ritchie Program for School Leaders through features and initial impact of full-time internships and offers lessons learned about mentoring aspiring leaders.

The underlying assumption of this chapter is that the pedagogical leadership of school principals is a cornerstone for preservice and practicing teachers’ professional education in schools. The theory–practice divide in teachers’ performance (Koutselini & Persianis, 2000) can be overcome by changing the school ethos and culture from loose associations of students and teachers to communities of learning, a shift which cannot be achieved unless school principals value this effort and support teachers’ leadership in the learning communities of schools. The in-service training program RELEASE, which was funded by the European Committee (Project ID: EACEA-521386: Toward achieving Self-REgulated LEArning as a core in teachers’ In-SErvice training in Cyprus) is presented as an effective project for developing teachers’ leadership, as well as a rewarding experience for student teachers during their School Experience Program or Practicum. The program lasted one school year and aimed to enhance both the school principals’ pedagogic role in supporting participating teachers’ (preservice and in-service teachers’) professional development and leadership for changing teaching routines and enhancing students’ performance. This project productively shaped the life and work of schools, forming a foundation for powerful preservice pedagogies that will follow.