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Although building professional capital improves student learning and the effectiveness of schools in educating students, it needs to be explored in the area of primary schools in Ethiopia. Thus, this study was conducted to explore the practices of primary school principals to develop the professional capital of teachers and the associated challenges.

A case study was used to collect data from nine teachers and five principals of Ethiopian primary schools using a maximum variation sampling. Data obtained from interviews and two focus groups were subjected to thematic analysis.

Principals and teachers reported that to develop the human capital of teachers, principals provided teachers with opportunities to attend training, encouraged informal collaboration for professional improvement and encouraged the practice of continuous professional development programs. For the development of social capital among teachers, the principals also formed various social groups, encouraged frequent interactions between school stakeholders and created a caring school culture to strengthen the interactions between school stakeholders. For building the decision-making capital of teachers, principals promoted an environment in which teachers' professional judgment and wisdom are respected and so forth. The challenges to develop professional capital were related to teachers and principals, schools and education bureaus.

Building teachers' professional capital increases school effectiveness, although primary schools still need to investigate this further. Therefore, by improving knowledge and information on approaches to building professional capital in teachers, this study is important to administrators and other relevant school stakeholders. This also helps principals transform their leadership behavior to be more pedagogical in leading teaching and learning and enhance teachers' ability to build and exercise effective social and professional behaviors towards their students in their daily practices.

Pedagogical leadership (PL) has been regarded as the best leadership style in the education sector. Thus, the aim of this study was to develop and validate a pedagogical leadership scale (PLS).

Two distinct approaches (inductive and deductive) were utilized. First, a review of the literature was conducted, and then qualitative data were collected through interviews, and their responses were categorized into 40 items. These items were thematized using exploratory factor analysis (EFA) by involving 300 participants. To examine the fitness of the scale, the researchers conducted a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) with 470 participants.

EFA discovered a total variance of 64.766% for four factors. In CFA, RMSEA, NFI, RFI, NNFI, CFI, GFI and AGFI values were accepted. The highest correlation was found among constructs of PL. Path analysis revealed PL affected social, professional, intellectual and academic capitals. The correlations between the PLS and psychological empowerment demonstrated the theoretically predicted relationships with these variables. Thus, with the initial evidence of a valid and reliable PLS, a pool of 32 items under 4 factors (social, academic, professional and intellectual capital) were developed.

Despite the management of childhood education requiring the practice of PL, it is underexplored in childhood schools, particularly to our knowledge, no studies have been conducted to develop and confirm the PLS in Ethiopia.