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In a paper presented to the U.C.E.A. Conference on Thought and Research in Educational Administration held in honour of Professor Dan Griffiths, Professor Donald Willower drew the participants' attention to the existence of evidence of a special brand of humour in educational administration subcultures. Willower categorised this humour as the “war story” variety, and suggested such humour may turn what could be considered a personal attack on the administration into a less threatening, amusing incident and, when expressed in meetings with the members of the subculture, seemed to evoke shared ordeals, common meanings and social support. Wood, in studying coping mechanism in a British high school, concluded that humour and laughter played a major role in coping strategies of teachers and students alike. The positions raised by these authors prompted certain questions regarding humour and its importance to school communities and became the stimulus for the study reported here into the relationship of humour to the role of the school principal, and the implications of such a relationship for research in education. This article outlines the rationale for studying the humour of principals, the methodology of the study, its findings and conclusions.

Halpin and Croft's OCDQ and Aiken and Hayes' bureaucratisation scale were administered to the staffs of 14 State High Schools in an Australian city. The data were subjected to a principal component analysis followed by a varimax rotation. This procedure procured six measures. A diagrammatic representation of the differences revealed between groups within a school is presented. The most significant conclusion is that a high school will include in its staff groups who hold distinct perceptual models of the school's administrative structure and of the principal's leadership quality.

In this study it was found that teachers' own views on pupil control predicted their pupil control behavior, while organizational pressures represented by teacher perceptions of the pupil control views of colleagues and the principal failed to do so. It was also found that teachers perceived their colleagues and the principal to hold more custodial pupil control views than were actually held. The explanation was advanced that teachers behave in relatively custodial ways in places of high visibility to colleagues, but behave more in line with their own views in the classroom.

Growing appreciation for the potential impact of principals on their schools has stimulated a significant body of research concerning the principalship. While many aspects of the principalship have been the object of study, it is often difficult to determine the relationship among these studies and how these studies, as a whole, contribute to a better understanding of the principalship. It is also difficult to judge which aspects of the principalship would provide the most productive focus for subsequent research. The review reported in this article addressed both sets of difficulties by analysing a total of 135 empirical studies conducted between 1974 and 1988; 60 of these studies were reported between 1985 and 1988 and received more attention than the earlier 75. Results of the analysis identify aspects of the principalship about which much is known, approaches to research which appear to have exhausted their usefulness and areas in which further study seems likely to be of most value. One major conclusion from the analysis is that we know most about effective principal practices and least about how such practices develop.

Hypotheses on principals’ optimism, teacher perceptions of that optimism, and of school effectiveness were tested. The school was the unit of analysis. Teachers and principals in 50 secondary schools responded to two standard measures. To avoid same respondent bias, about half of the teachers in each school completed one instrument, half the other. Teacher perceptions of their principal’s optimism and of their school’s effectiveness were correlated, but the principal’s self‐reported optimism was not a predictor of perceived effectiveness. The congruence of teacher perceptions of the principal’s optimism and the measured optimism was associated with perceived school effectiveness. Teachers saw the principals to be less optimistic than the principals scored; however, teacher perceptions of optimism and self‐reported optimism were correlated across schools. We suggested explanations for this unusual combination of significant difference with significant correlation, and for other findings

Drawing on Blumberg and Greenfield′s studies of effective principals, offers an operational definition of school vision, based on teachers′ perceptions of that vision. The instrument developed consists of three subscales: (1) vision exchange – the principal′s effectiveness in exchanging his/her vision with the school community; (2) vision internalization – the principal′s effectiveness in getting others to internalize this vision, and; (3) vision sacrifice – the principal′s effectiveness in encouraging others to sacrifice for this vision. In an effort to validate the School Vision Inventory (SVI), three hypotheses were tested. The perceived robustness of the principal′s role was significantly correlated with two subscales of the SVI: exchange and sacrifice. Significant correlations were also found between teachers′ perceptions of the principal′s supervisory expertise and vision exchange and sacrifice. Finally, there were higher mean principal vision scores in schools where teachers perceived progress being made towards vision realization. Presents the SVI as a potentially useful way of assessing school vision, providing further insight into the dynamics of professional life in schools.

The voice of school principals represents the principals' thoughts and experiences because of their as teachers' evaluator. It provides principals' perception on making sense the teacher evaluation. In qualitative research, voice can provide the truth and meaning of principals' experience in teachers evaluation. Their voices in the qualitative interviews are recorded and transcribed into words (Jackson and Mazzei, 2009 and Charteris and Smardon, 2018). By listening to the voices of principals in five provinces in Indonesia, this study, a qualitative research, intends to explore the principals' sensemaking in teacher evaluation.

This study adopted a qualitative approach, as it was principally concerned with capturing participants' direct experiences in their natural setting as both the teachers' evaluator and school leader (Patton, 2002). The qualitative interview and content analysis were used in this study. The qualitative interview is a type of conversation used to explore informants' experiences and interpretations; in this study, the headmaster (Mishler, 1986; Spradley, 1979 in Hatch, 2002). Researchers used the interviews to uncover the structure of meaning used by principals in making sense the policies that determine teacher evaluations and that are used to carry out evaluations within principal's local authority. The implicit structure can be discovered from direct observation, and the qualitative interviews can bring this meaning to the surface (Hatch, 2002). Therefore, by applying the qualitative interviews, it is expected that information or “unique” interpretations from the principal can be obtained (Stake, 2010). Content analysis is a research technique for making valid conclusions from oral texts into a research context. This analysis can provide new insights, improve researchers' understanding of certain phenomena, or inform other practical actions through the use of verbal data collected in the form of answers to open interview questions (Krippendorff, 2004).

There are three important findings relating to principals' sensemaking of teachers' evaluation; they are teachers' length of service, principals' perceptions of teacher evaluations and consistency in teacher performance improvement. The principals' perception greatly influences their beliefs and sensemaking of teacher evaluation. In essence, teacher evaluation has not been used to identify high-quality teachers. Principals focus more on the improvement of teachers' welfare than teacher actual performance.

Future research should explore principals' attitude toward the stakeholders when student achievement is not in line with the consistent increase in teachers' performance ratings. And, it is also necessary to investigate the policy makers response to see the consistent improvement in teacher's evaluation is not in line with student achievement. Finally, how to eliminate the culture of joint responsibility without causing frictions in the school environment.

The authors hereby declare that this submission is their own work, and to the best of their knowledge, it contains no materials previously published or written by another person, or substantial proportions of material that have been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma any other publishers.

This research, based on a case study carried out in a Portuguese public school, was undertaken with the main purpose of investigating the perceptions of secondary school teachers regarding their principal and his leadership style.

Teachers received a questionnaire which included 57 items, grouped under the following nine areas: school climate, school leadership and management, curriculum development, personnel management, administration and fiscal management, student management, professional development and in‐service, relations with parents and the community, problem solving and decision making. After the questionnaires were collected, the semi‐structured interview process began with the principal. The areas that were discussed were identical to those of the questionnaire in order to be able to make certain comparisons and draw some conclusions about possible discrepancies between what the teachers perceived and what the principal thought of himself. In the case presented in this study, the researchers spent a total of about two hours with this particular principal interviewing him and shadowing him on various aspects covered by the questionnaire. The results are based on the interview with this one principal and the school's teachers’ responses to the questionnaire.

The underlying (and guiding) assumption for this project was that the effectiveness of a leader is (to a great extent) dependent on how others view him/her as a leader. From the overall results in this particular study, it seems that there is an overall agreement between the teachers and the principal regarding the principal's view of himself and the teachers’ perceptions of him. Generally, the results indicate that the existence of a high level of collegiality in the management of Portuguese schools seems to be an important feature when explaining the large degree of agreement found between the views of the teachers and of the principal on his leadership style. Even though the results cannot be generalized from this small sample, there is the belief that in Portuguese public schools there is a certain sense of “consensual management” style, which is closer to the main interests of the teachers, rather than closer to the interests of other participants in school life.

The study paper sheds light on the perceptions of secondary school teachers regarding their principal and his leadership style. This kind of research has been, until now, clearly marked by its paucity in Portugal.

There is increasing support for the importance of the principal′s instructional leadership in school effectiveness. However, there is uncertainty over the extent to which principals actually engage in instructional leadership tasks. Investigates the perceptions held by principals and teachers of principals′ instructional leadership in a sample of Western Australian government primary and secondary schools using the Instructional Leadership Questionnaire. Instructional leadership was found to be a shared responsibility. Principals were perceived to be least involved in “managing the curriculum” and “evaluating and providing feedback”. Primary school principals were perceived to be more responsible for instructional leadership than their secondary counterparts. Principals of very small primary schools (less than 100 students) were most involved in tasks and those of middlesized primary schools (300 to 500 students) were least involved. “Providing rewards and recognition for high quality teaching” was the only instructional leadership task perceived not to be performed by either principals or teachers in both primary and secondary schools. Principals perceived themselves to be more involved in instructional leadership tasks than their staff perceived them to be.

This paper aims to explore the influence of a principal’s leadership in kicking off knowledge management (KM) implementation and the following KM processes in the school. The author tries to propose a model of knowledge leadership for principals to adopt at the beginning of KM journey and during the process of KM implementation. The paper shares the lessons learned during the process of implementation: what he has done and what should be improved. Thus, this paper can provide a model for school principals to implement KM in their schools. This paper also sheds light for KM researchers about the issue of leadership during KM implementation.

The study uses an action research (AR) to explore how the principal’s leadership can enhance KM implementation in a school environment and evaluates the effectiveness of the knowledge leadership framework for KM implementation in a school setting. An insider AR methodology was adopted to study and reflect on the processes of KM implementation and lessons learned. Multiple data sources, including observations, questionnaires and interviews, have been collected for evaluation.

In this study, the principal kicked off KM in the school. It was found that KM “cannot” be implemented without the principal’s effective knowledge leadership. If there was only little KM leadership, such as the leadership in Stage 1, the launching of KM was found to be difficult. After awareness of the need of strengthening leadership in Stage 2, the principal exercised stronger leadership in pushing the KM process further, and the school had more obvious KM outcomes. Therefore, this study proves that leadership is essential for KM implementation, especially at the beginning of the KM processes. The principal acted as the knowledge leader with the roles of the knowledge vision builder, knowledge enabler builder and knowledge role model. The roles of knowledge leadership are found to be potent and critical for the process of KM implementation to facilitate sharing information/knowledge and nurturing a sharing culture and trust. In this study, the principal kicked off KM in the school. It was found that KM “cannot” be implemented without the principal’s effective knowledge leadership. If there was only little KM leadership, such as the leadership in Stage 1, launching KM was found to be difficult. After awareness of the need of strengthening leadership in Stage 2, the principal exercised stronger leadership in pushing the KM process further, and the school had more obvious KM outcomes. Therefore, this study proves that leadership is essential for KM implementation, especially at the beginning of the KM processes. The principal acted as the knowledge leader with the roles of knowledge vision builder, knowledge enabler builder and knowledge role model. The roles of knowledge leadership are found to be potent and critical for the process of KM implementation to facilitate sharing information/knowledge and nurturing a sharing culture and trust.

Although the results of the study conducted in one school may not be generalized to other school contexts, the lessons learned in the study might be a reference to other schools for their future development. Because of his unique position as the principal in the researched school, the researcher adopted an insider approach generating value for investigation of KM implementation in this study, as there were multiple mediating processes through which leaders could influence school functioning, and, hence, knowledge sharing or other issues in KM implementation.

This study could contribute toward KM implementation in the public sector, especially in schools. Moreover, the approaches, the strategies, the processes and the challenges the principal and the school faced can shed light on practice and research for further KM implementation. In addition, although leadership has been commonly regarded as an important factor in KM implementation, few studies have explored the impact of leadership during the KM process. With the principal’s leadership as the main component, this study is important for an analysis of the role of leadership during the process. The framework of knowledge leadership adopted in this study has been tried and evaluated to be applicable and necessary for KM implementation in a school environment.

Most people might think that KM can be applied only in the commercial sector. This study shows that KM can also be adopted in schools and in other sectors. Moreover, it shows that the principal’s leadership was the key driver for KM implementation. The principal’s leadership with clear direction and thoughtful procedures of implementing may be a showcase for the leaders in other sectors.

Fullan (2002) mentions the essence of KM in schools, the importance of principals’ leadership in the promotion of KM in schools, the moral purpose and knowledge sharing and leadership and sustainability, but he does not provide any practical suggestion for how principals can become knowledge leaders. Therefore, this paper hopes to further propose a model to show how to help a principal transform into a knowledge leader to overcome barriers and difficulties in kicking off KM at the beginning of their KM journey and during the process of KM implementation.