Search results

In response to the proliferation of neoliberal reforms and a “new professionalism” (Evetts, 2009, 2011), researchers argue that school leaders, like teachers, have experienced a form of “de-professionalization” (Keddie, 2017) and that the principalship may even be an “emergent profession” (Stone-Johnson and Weiner, 2020). Such framing assumes school leaders are indeed part of a profession. And yet, while research abounds regarding teaching as a profession (Ingersoll and Collins, 2018; Sachs, 2016; Torres and Weiner, 2018), no parallel literature exists about school leaders. Such information is critical to ensure educators receive the appropriate professional development and support (Sachs, 2016) and move the field forward and thus motivated the authors to ask how principals view their work and whether it can be seen as part of a discrete profession.

The authors utilized an interpretative phenomenological approach (IPA) drawing on qualitative interviews with sixteen elementary school principals in two US states.

The authors find administration, and specifically the principalship, exists adjacent to, but distinct from, teaching. Additionally, the authors find school leadership is an “emergent” profession, with aspects of the work that indicate leadership is a profession but others that do not.

This study extends early work (Stone-Johnson and Weiner, 2020) on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on principals' professionalism to shed light on the larger and more long-standing features of principals' work that support and hinder its development as a profession and the implications of such designation on attracting and retaining school leaders, as well as underscoring that because school leadership and teaching can be considered discrete professions, teachers need not leave their classroom to be true professionals.

The purpose of this paper is to describe how teachers’ generational interpretative frameworks influence their career experiences and to demonstrate how these generational differences impact the power of professional capital to improve teaching and learning.

The paper utilizes data from a multi-year, mixed methods study of mid-career teachers in Massachusetts. Data in this paper come from semi-structured interviews with 12 Generation X teachers (born 1961-1980).

Generation X teachers have a unique self-image, self-esteem, task perception, job motivation, and future perspective that form their generational interpretative framework. This framework is different from that of the prior generation.

These generational differences have implications for how Generation X teachers view professionalism and autonomy and how they see their careers over time. Drawing upon Hargreaves and Fullan’s (2012) suggestions for school leaders, three implications are highlighted. First, a model of professional capital that incorporates teachers’ generational differences must be aware of how teachers view their work before engaging in changing it. This implication ties directly into the second, which is that leaders must know their teachers and understand the culture in which they work. Together, these two implications suggest that implementing a model of professional capital is not enough; it must begin with deliberate thought as to who the teachers are who are being asked to change. Finally, to secure leadership stability and sustainability, leaders must respect generational differences that influence teachers’ desires to move, or not move, into formal leadership roles.

In this paper, we describe the impact of COVID-19 on principals and their work. Drawing on prior research undertaken prior to the onset of the pandemic, we describe how principals were already grappling with difficult tensions associated with their expertise, autonomy, normative orientation and rewards that may have real implications for their work moving forward and how, in the current context of uncertainty and change we believe the issue of principal professionalism requires our collective attention and action.

Over the last year, we undertook a multistate qualitative study of 17 school leaders to explore how principals working in traditional public schools conceptualize the principal profession and their role within it. Briefly, we found that the principalship is an “emergent profession” characterized by shared but individually determined knowledge and skills; a normative orientation of service; confused notions of external expectations and rewards and ongoing tensions among all of these elements.

Professionalism may be a surprising lever for improving the capacity of school leadership. Through our research, we identified that little is known about professionalism as it relates to the unique work of school leaders, but that understanding more about it could lead to greater knowledge of how to encourage and retain them. In the current context of uncertainty, chaos and change, the pressure on leaders to stay in the role and to succeed has never been greater. Thus, it is critical that principals have the capacity to exert professionalism over their work and to have greater say in elements of it, recognizing that some decisions must be made at district, state and federal levels.

While many studies investigate how teachers of various backgrounds and in different contexts think about teaching as a profession (e.g. Anderson and Cohen, 2015; Stone-Johnson, 2014b; Torres and Weiner, 2018; Hall and McGinty, 2015), we had difficulty identifying studies focused on principals and using frameworks of professionalism to understand how these activities reflect larger shifts in the profession itself. This is despite the changing nature of principals' work, which, like the work of teachers, has been and continues to be largely influenced by the increasing role of neoliberal principles and policies in education. The public nature of the work of school leadership and the potential to support students, families and the communities in which they live brings in sharp focus the necessity of greater understanding of it during the COVID-19 crisis.

As a “business capital” model premised upon a financial perspective of educational change spreads itself into school systems around the world, a countervailing view of “professional capital,” as proposed by Hargreaves and Fullan, provides a new framework for transforming teaching and uplifting learning. The purpose of this paper is to advance theory by distinguishing among three forms of professional capital found in three different settings.

Systemic professional capital is exemplified by the city-state of Singapore, in which schools, higher education, and the Ministry of Education all support one another to optimize student learning. Social movement professional capital is manifested in the Learning Communities Project of rural middle schools in Mexico, where change is driven forward with a model of tutorial relationships that has proven to be sustainable even when funding is cut and political support is withdrawn. Activist professional capital can be identified in a Teacher Solutions Team model in Arizona in the USA, where educators carve out new zones of interaction and support for one another to deepen their knowledge base. This paper examines and discusses the above.

Systemic, social movement, and activist forms of professional capital are found to share affinities with the three forms of teacher professionalism identified by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development based on findings from the Teaching and Learning International Survey.

These distinctions among various forms of professional capital invite further research and theory building to provide alternatives to the rise of business capital in schools and school systems.

This study centers the reflections of principals across the USA as they navigated the overwhelming stress of closing and reopening schools during a global pandemic. Specifically, the authors explored how school principals addressed self-care and their own well-being during the pandemic.

This research study is part of a broader qualitative study conducted by 20 scholars from across the USA in Spring 2020 and organized by the Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE). This national research team conducted 120 qualitative interviews with public school principals in 19 different states and 100 districts. As part of this team, the authors coded and analyzed all 120 transcripts in NVivo using a self-care framework.

The responses from the participants capture some of the complexity of self-care during the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors found evidence of both negative and positive sentiments towards self-care that will be described in five major themes. For the tensions with self-care, the authors developed two primary themes: leaders eat last and keep from falling off the cliff. For the demonstrations of self-care, the authors also developed three primary themes: release the endorphins, people need people and unplug from work.

Although researchers have identified the stressors and reactions of principals during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, little is known on how principals engaged in self-care practices. This study aims to identify these self-care practices and offer recommendations for principals.