Collaborative learning from personal cases in a principal preparation programme

Existing preparation programmes for school principals have been widely criticized for failing to prepare their students adequately for their future roles. This study investigated a workshop at a principal preparation programme which focused on collaborative learning from personal real-life cases, exploring its potential contribution to the professional development of aspiring principals. Using qualitative methodology, we investigated 99 journal entries written by 12 aspiring principals who had participated in such a workshop. Data analysis revealed three benefits of this way of learning: (1) developing a multidimensional view; (2) acquiring applicable knowledge; and (3); nurturing the ability to doubt. Analysis suggests that collaborative learning from personal cases may be an appropriate pedagogical approach for principal preparation programmes; however, there are some concerns worthy of attention.     

Preparing for principalship from the crucible of experience: reflecting on theory,practice and research

This paper examines the theories of organisation that have informed our understanding of schools as complex social worlds and the practice of school leadership that seems to be required in such environments. This understanding has, in turn, determined the research approach we have adopted for investigating principals’ work and for ascertaining the utility of existing approaches to their initial preparation. The paper argues that the extent to which preparation processes align with principals’ professional needs will depend on the extent to which they are able to connect with the realities of workplaces found in schools as well as the environments in which they are located. For this purpose, it is desirable to pursue the kind of enquiry that is capable of revealing what schools leaders know and brings them to a new stage in their thinking about practice.     

Reformation of the Macedonian teacher education programme, 1999 – 2001

Background: In the last decade, much research attention has been paid to notions of leadership and the professional identity of school. It is widely agreed that school principals play a very important role in school improvement; international reports point to ‘school leadership’ as a key factor in education quality, and recent studies suggest that the leadership identity of principals is critical for achieving effective leadership in schools worldwide.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to conduct a thematic exploration of the literature relating to school principals and leadership identity.

Design and methods: A scoping review was carried out. Two major databases were searched for papers published on this topic in the last decade. Once we had established an overview of research on this subject, we conducted a thematic analysis to identify the topical focus of research.

Results: We found that the literature reflected an increasing and intensified interest in the topic of school leadership as the decade progressed. Furthermore, a range of emerging subtopics was identified. These included the relationship between school culture and professional identity in school principals; the influence of ethical and personal factors on the professional development of principals; the dilemmas of balancing education policies and personal experiences; and the relationships between gender identity, racial identity, professional experience/career, training and leadership identity.

Conclusions: Several key issues emerged from the studies included in this review, such as the importance of external and internal influences in the construction of the professional identity of school principals. Some of the research suggested that school leaders felt the need to develop a new professional identity. Overall, the study indicates that school leadership and its relationship with school improvement should remain an important focus for educational research investigation.     

Inclusive school leadership: Examining the experiences of Canadian school principals in supporting students with special education needs

As school systems strive to support students with special education needs in inclusive schools, there has been a persistent lack of scholarly literature that addresses the ways in which school principals are engaged in this process. This article is a response to this gap and aims to examine the question: What types of experiences do school principals identify as formational in their support of students with special education needs and fostering inclusive schools? Based on the analysis of data collected from 285 school principals from six provinces in Canada, four key themes are identified including: relationships, modelling behaviours, communication and principal isolation and lack of preparation. These themes are examined with consideration for how to support principals’ professional leadership in fostering inclusive schools. As a result, this article’s significance is in its examination of the experiences of principals and how these influence their leadership practice for supporting students with special education needs and fostering inclusive schools.     

Principal Leadership for Technology-enhanced Learning in Science

Reforms such as technology-enhanced instruction require principal leadership. Yet, many principals report that they need help to guide implementation of science and technology reforms. We identify strategies for helping principals provide this leadership. A two-phase design is employed. In the first phase we elicit principals’ varied ideas about the Technology-enhanced Learning in Science (TELS) curriculum materials being implemented by teachers in their schools, and in the second phase we engage principals in a leadership workshop designed based on the ideas they generated. Analysis uses an emergent coding scheme to categorize principals’ ideas, and a knowledge integration framework to capture the development of these ideas. The analysis suggests that principals frame their thinking about the implementation of TELS in terms of: principal leadership, curriculum, educational policy, teacher learning, student outcomes and financial resources. They seek to improve their own knowledge to support this reform. The principals organize their ideas around individual school goals and current political issues. Principals prefer professional development activities that engage them in reviewing curricula and student work with other principals. Based on the analysis, this study offers guidelines for creating learning opportunities that enhance principals’ leadership abilities in technology and science reform.     

新建本科院校青年教师敬业情况调查——以衡水学院等3所学院为例

以衡水学院等3所高校为个案,课题组对河北省新建本科院校青年教师的敬业情况进行了调查。调查结果显示,青年教师敬业情况总体良好,70后和80后青年教师的敬业认知度有一定差异。影响青年教师敬业的主要因素源自于他们的职业良心等内部因素和工作报酬等外部因素。同时,也存在奉献精神认同度低、职业心态不稳定以及职业压力较大等问题。并从加强思想道德教育、加快专业化发展以及调整教育政策导向等方面提出对策建议。     

美国高中校长在角色冲突、角色承担和工作满意度上的性别差异

在教育行政管理理论中，女性管理者的经验已经越来越受到人们的关注，有不少研究者对成功的女性主管进行了调查研究。一项对美国中西部三个州的高中校长的调查发现，在个人因素、职业特征及角色冲突上高中校长存在着性别差异，而在角色承担和工作满意度上不同性别具有相似性。文章致力于弄清性别在高中校长的角色冲突、角色承担和工作满意度三个方面的影响。     

Leaving a sinking ship? School principals in flight,Lessons and Possible Solutions

This qualitative study was motivated by a sizeable number of school principals retiring early in South African schools. They either leave teaching for other careers or retire before the retirement age of sixty. It was then necessary to explore what factors, if any, made them leave school management and the teaching career. Sixteen school principals were purposefully selected and interviewed through semi-structured interviews. Eleven of these had already left teaching in the previous four years, while the others were waiting for their last days in teaching at the time of the study. The results illustrate that there are various reasons that lead to the early retirement of school principals from historically black schools. Among these are burnout, lack of teacher commitment, increased unionisation of teachers as well as the non-involvement of district officials in the schools’ improvement and management plans. Consequently, many participants maintained that it was almost impossible to run schools effectively when this scenario prevailed. The conclusions point out that school managers and leaders need to be supported in various ways as they steer various programmes in their schools. This includes constant mentoring, management preparation as well as continual formal professional development programmes.     

Workplace conditions for successful teacher professional development: School principals’ beliefs and practices

Research has increasingly shown that school principals exercised a significant role in teacher professional development (TPD). Nevertheless, the insights into the particular influence they exert in this process and how it is exercised still need to be developed. This article focuses on what school principals consider important working conditions for TDP and which leadership practices they use to realise these conditions in their schools. Using a multiple case study design, including 20 semi‐strcutured interviews with primary school principals, the findings show that they consider both structural (sufficient time and evaluation of TDP interventions) and cultural (an open work climate and collaboration) conditions to be important for TDP. Additionally, school principals emphasise the significance of teachers’ learning attitudes, differentiation in professionnalisation efforts and knowledge sharing in their schools. Furthermore, the results highlight that they have trouble in realising these working conditions, especially those for internal learning activities (such as an open work climate). Based on the results, recommendations are made for further research and policy makers concerning the preparation and support that principals need to realise (internal) TDP in their schools.     

Early professional concerns of beginning principals

This article reports results from an ongoing study of beginning school principals and is focused on the identification of professional concerns held by the principals during their first six months in office. The study involved two main methods of data collection: (a) site and telephone interviews with small samples of eight and four principals who first took up their principalships in Victorian schools in 1989 and 1990 respectively; and (b) questionnaire surveys of all beginning principals in the two cohorts from which the small samples were drawn. Analysis of the interview data using methods relevant to grounded theory, and comparison of the outcomes with selected data from the questionnaires lead to the identification of seven areas of major professional concern and five other areas of lesser concern. The relationship of the findings to other research on principals, and implications for the preparation and support of beginning principals, are discussed.     

Principal transformative learning through mentoring aspiring administrators

Few researchers have explicitly examined the benefits to practicing principals engaged in mentoring aspiring principals. Through the lens of transformative learning, the purpose of our study was to examine the professional learning of practicing principals engaged as mentors with aspiring principals in a leadership preparation program. Two questions guided our study. First, how does engaging in the mentoring process lead to professional learning? Second, how does that learning manifest itself in principal practice? Findings suggested principal mentor/protégé and mentor/mentor interactions prompted mentors to question their own experiences and practices, problematizing some of these practices. Principals then generated solutions, which lead to changes in core beliefs and assumptions and finally changes in practices, reflective of transformative learning.     

Assessing professional decision-making abilities

This paper describes a computer-based method of diagnosing supervisors’ abilities to make professional decisions, with supervisors being defined as principals, staff developers, and /or curriculum coordinators in elementary or secondary schools. The diagnostic approach-Teacher Development Decision Exercises or TeDDEx-was designed to simulate the assessment of supervisors’ abilities to use their professional knowledge to solve problems encountered with teachers in the field. Preactive or planning decisions were the focus of the exercises.     

县域中学校长群体特征及职业发展研究——以福建省Z县为例

运用履历研究法对福建省Z县2011年至2021年的45位中学校长进行研究,在此基础上对县域中学校长的人口统计特征、学历专业特征、工作经历特征作实证分析.分析得出,男性在中学校长群体中占据绝对优势地位,其年龄结构相比过去有所增大;大部分校长的第一学历为专科,且缺乏在职提高学历的动机;多数中学校长长期在教育系统工作,但缺乏...     

A Pedagogical Model for Ethical Inquiry into Socioscientific Issues In Science

Internationally there is concern that many science teachers do not address socioscientific issues (SSI) in their classrooms, particularly those that are controversial. However with increasingly complex, science-based dilemmas being presented to society, such as cloning, genetic screening, alternative fuels, reproductive technologies and vaccination, there is a growing call for students to be more scientifically literate and to be able to make informed decisions on issues related to these dilemmas. There have been shifts in science curricula internationally towards a focus on scientific literacy, but research indicates that many secondary science teachers lack the support and confidence to address SSI in their classrooms. This paper reports on a project that developed a pedagogical model that scaffolded teachers through a series of stages in exploring a controversial socioscientific issue with students and supported them in the use of pedagogical strategies and facilitated ways of ethical thinking. The study builds on existing frameworks of ethical thinking. It presents an argument that in today’s increasingly pluralistic society, these traditional frameworks need to be extended to acknowledge other worldviews and identities. Pluralism is proposed as an additional framework of ethical thinking in the pedagogical model, from which multiple identities, including cultural, ethnic, religious and gender perspectives, can be explored.     

The effects of professional development activities on principals’ perceived instructional leadership practices: multi-country data analysis using TALIS 2013

The purpose of this study was to investigate the extent to which professional development predicts principals’ instructional leadership in order to identify whether a relationship exists between the duration of principals’ participation in distinct professional development activities and their perceived practice of instructional leadership while controlling for several principal and school characteristics. The data employed in this study came from the 2013 teaching and learning international survey, which was conducted by the organisation for economic co-operation and development. Four multivariate regression models with the country-controlled dummy variable were implemented in the analysis of the data. The results indicated that the more principals take part in contemporary professional development activities such as professional networking, mentoring and research activities, the more often they engage in instructional leadership practices. However, no relationship between more traditional types of professional development activities, such as courses, conferences, and observational visits, and principals’ instructional leadership, was found. The results have substantial implications for policy-makers and practitioners worldwide, suggesting that any professional development designed to get principles involved in more instructional leadership practices should be based on the contemporary type of professional development activities.     

Messy Ethics: Conducting Moral Participatory Action Research in the Crucible of University–School Relations

In this article we argue that when university researchers engage in democratic participatory action research with schools the process requires a special type of attention to the ethical difficulties which can arise. We note how current professional standards of ethics are inadequate to fully address many of the dilemmas faced in collaborative research. We then share examples of ethical dilemmas that have arisen in our work with schools and demonstrate how each has contributed to the (developing) framework we have created to avoid or manage the kinds of messy ethical issues we describe. We argue that this framework reflects a continuous commitment to an ethics of practice. We believe that those engaged in this type of work must assume an ethical stance and view all decisions in the research process as ethical ones that potentially affect the lives of all of those involved.     

More Heads are Better than One: School-Based Decision-Making in Varied School Environments

In this multi-case qualitative study the degree to which school-based decision-making (SBDM) is understood and conceptualised by the members of school governing bodies (SGBs) - educators, chairpersons of SGBs, principals, and learner representative councils-as well the extent to which decisions were shared among the various groups represented on the SGBs were examined. Multiple sources, such as meeting observations and interviews were used to collect data. Data revealed that decision-making processes in townships and rural schools seemed to be dominated by educators (educator-dominated SGB) and principals (principal-dominated SGB) respectively, while the urban school appeared to have achieved true shared decision-making (balanced decision-making). I therefore suggest that it is not sufficient to accept that promulgation at face value; and expect that implementation of policies in schools would suddenly convert these schools into true institutions practising and cherishing shared decision-making in their daily operations. Collective active efforts and ongoing training are still needed for the more effective functioning of SGBs. Although the research has tended to validate the findings of other studies, it has also made some contribution to the knowledge about the integration of the adapted governance models to analyse the extent to which decisions were shared among the members of SGBs in the selected three case studies. Its use in this study is, therefore, a methodological contribution to the study of SBDM.     

杰出无捷径:美国年度校长基本特质探析——以“贝尔年度学校领导力”获奖者为例

杰出校长的办学理念、治理方略及成长模式对于促进校长群体的专业化发展有着重要的意义。以"美国年度杰出中小学校长的基本特质是什么"为研究问题,遵循一般质性研究收集和分析数据的方法与程序,研究选取美国2018年11位"年度学校领导力奖"获得者为研究对象,以获奖者生平事迹介绍文本为研究资料进行解读、分析,从而提炼出杰出校长的普遍品质和共同特征。研究发现,杰出校长具有"勤勉的品性修养、卓越的治理理念和专业的治理风格"三大基本特质。在校长自我修养、治校理念和治理风格三个层面为中小学校长的教育和培训提供参考和借鉴,促进校长的专业发展。     

The relevance of innovative school architecture for school principals

In many cases, innovative forms of learning require innovative concepts of using space in school. However, so far there has been a lack of research concerning the perspectives of school principals as important stakeholders in the adoption of alternative school architecture. The present study examines the importance of alternative school architecture in a sample of 1164 principals (56% females, mean-age 52.7 years) in Austria. An online questionnaire was conducted, containing questions about the school building, innovative forms of learning, and principals’ level of information, perceptions, and thoughts on the relevance of school architecture, as well as their motivation and self-efficacy. Results showed that principals are aware of the advantages of certain architectural elements, although these elements have been implemented in only a few schools. A high proportion of respondents report a lack of information about configurations of space that go beyond the traditional corridor-scheme. We conclude that although principals are in general open for the alternative configuration of space further efforts have to be made to overcome the obstacles that prevent principals from launching new concepts of using space, which are a lack of competitive resources and knowledge as well as an inadequate professional network.