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.     

Leadership coaching for principals: a national study

Surveys were sent to a large representative sample of public school principals in the United States asking if they had received leadership coaching. Comparison of responses to actual numbers of principals indicates that the sample represents the first national study of principal leadership coaching. Results indicate that approximately 50% of all principals have received or currently receive coaching. In general, this same percentage applies to most demographic categories. Respondents also rated components found to be of consequence to coaching success and these were compared with characteristics of the coaching relationship. Respondents overwhelmingly found coaching to be supportive and beneficial to them and believed it contributed to increasing student achievement. Recommendations include the expansion of leadership coaching programs and further study into specifics of the coaching relationship.     

Who is More Free? A Comparison of the Decision-Making of Private and Public School Principals

While substantial school choice research focuses on student achievement outcomes, little has explored the mechanisms involved in producing such outcomes. We present a comparative analysis of private and public school principals using data from the School and Staffing Survey (SASS) 2011–2012. We add to the literature by examining the differences in private and public school principals’ abilities to influence important decisions at their schools from a nationally representative sample of 9,230 school principals. Results indicate that private school leadership exhibits more autonomy in influencing school level policies, perhaps explaining private school advantages.     

Collaborative Leadership and Sustained Learner Academic Performance in Secondary Schools: A Blaming Game?

Abstract

This article reports on a study that investigated how collaborative leadership can influence sustained learner academic performance in secondary schools. The key problem resounds about secondary schools that are unable either to sustain or improve learner academic performance when intervention strategies rolled out from the district offices are concluded. The literature pursued in the study covered collaborative leadership from both schools and district education offices and their impact on learner academic performance. Participants were circuit managers, subject advisors, principals and teachers. They completed open- ended questionnaires that sought to explain the relationship between collaborative leadership and sustained learner academic performance. Major findings indicated that participants (at the various levels of leadership) attribute low learner academic performance to all other involved parties except themselves. Thus, collaborative leadership within the school and between schools and district education offices is not enabling sustained learner academic performance.     

中小学校长课程领导力构成要素及作用机制研究——基于PLS-SEM的实证研究

校长课程领导力是学校课程发展、教师专业发展与学生素养提升的重要保障。基于校长课程领导力的概念解读与维度分解,研究探讨了校长课程领导力的构成要素以及作用机制。以中小学校长为调研对象,采用描述性统计、PLS-SEM分别进行现状分析与模型检验,探究校长课程意识等对课程领导效能的关系。研究发现:中小学校长的课程规划与管理能力较强,课程意识与课程评估能力则较为薄弱;校长课程管理能力与课程评估能力直接影响课程领导效能,而校长的课程意识会经由六条中介作用路径正向影响课程领导效能。基于以上研究结果,提出了注重校长课程领导力培训的科学精准、加强对校长课程领导情智要素的实证研究、构建基于叙事的校长课程领导力提升机制的建议。     

Instructional and Distributed Self-leadership for School Improvement: Experiences of Schools in the Kavango Region

This article uses the lens of self-leadership to understand the leadership practice of school principals in the Kavango region of Namibia. Self-leadership emphasises the focus on leading the self to enhance one's leadership in the organisation. Self-leadership will always function with other leadership styles; hence, the article uses instructional and distributed leadership styles to understand the possibility of principals having an influence on the improvement of academic quality in schools. This article explores how six secondary school principals in the Kavango region have employed self-leadership styles to improve and sustain the performance of learners. The study adopted a qualitative method that examined the selfleadership of the six school principals in the Kavango region. The data were collected from the six principals and two teachers of each school by using semi-structured interviews. The findings showed that school principals unknowingly employ self-leadership in their schools and in the process use distributed leadership together with instructional leadership to collaborate and share their leadership with teachers.     

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 challenge of perpetual motion: the willingness and desire of Irish primary school principals to juggle everything

This paper presents a synopsis of selected findings from a co-constructed professional Doctorate in leadership in education. In Ireland, as elsewhere, primary school principals meet the challenges of teaching, community leadership and on-site management in an era of continual change. Formalised leadership acculturation processes are as yet relatively unformed in Ireland and school leadership at local level is arguably an embryonic concept. In most cases therefore, Irish principals meet leadership challenges with limited or no formal preparation. Against this backdrop, a diverse group of 31 primary school principals generated data from the self-observed minutae of researcher-driven diaries and from a colourful spectrum of personal reflections in follow-up semi-structured qualitative interviews. Coding in NVivo and the querying of emergent themes through conceptual frameworks provided detailed evidence of a myriad of daily activities. This paper offers an exploration, in narrative form and with supporting evidence, of principals’ experiences of the perpetual motion of administration, dealing with the unexpected and interacting with staff. The daily practicalities of school governance and community leadership demanded a considerable investment of time and personal interest, to the point that boundaries between principals’ personal and professional lives blurred significantly. Evidence pointed once more to a generally held understanding that life’s journey as a school principal is demanding but worthwhile.     

校长服务型领导如何降低教师情绪衰竭——心理安全感和不确定性规避的作用

提出并检验了一个有调节的中介模型,探讨校长的服务型领导对教师情绪衰竭的影响,以及心理安全感的中介作用和不确定性规避的调节作用。采用服务型领导、心理安全感、不确定性规避和情绪衰竭量表对427名中小学教师进行调查。结果表明:服务型领导对情绪衰竭具有显著的负向影响;心理安全感在服务型领导力和情绪衰竭之间起部分中介作用;不确定性规避调节了服务型领导对心理安全感的影响。结果启示我们要在校长领导提升中推广服务型领导方式,降低教师的工作倦怠;校长应该创造和谐融洽的工作环境,提升教师的心理安全感;校长要重视教师的个体差异,权变性地使用服务型领导。     

Principals’ Instructional Leadership Within a Teacher Performance Appraisal System: Enhancing Students’ Academic Success

The purpose of this study was to identify principals’ instructional leadership actions within a comprehensive teacher evaluation system in successful schools rated as recognized or exemplary by the accountability measures in place. The study followed a multiple case study approach. Participants included six school administrators within the same school district. From these three were principals and three assistant principals, representing all three schools levels—elementary school, middle school, and high school. The main data sources consisted of interviews, observations and journaling. Data were analyzed inductively to discern emerging themes. Findings of the study revealed that principals’ instructional leadership actions at all three levels included setting clear expectations, monitoring instruction through walk-through observations, and providing professional development opportunities according teachers’ needs. Furthermore, the cross site analysis revealed that principals tend to rely on instructional leadership actions that are pertinent to each grade level’s needs. Findings also suggest that principals, indeed, apply the teacher performance appraisal system as a basis to enhance instruction and improve student achievement.     

Epistemological beliefs and leadership approaches among South African school principals

Studies on school restructuring and the leadership role of the principal in this process suggest that what has been the traditional leadership approach of the principal appears to be changing in relation to the substantial changes and school-wide reforms that are continually taking place in schools today. These school reform initiatives necessitate new and creative ways of thinking about our concept of educational leadership and its various approaches. It also became clear from the literature on leadership that a person’s assumption of various types of knowledge influence his or her leadership approach. The purpose of this study, based on a quantitative empirical study in selected South African schools, is to identify this impact of principals’ assumptions of knowledge on their leadership approaches. A total of 100 questionnaires with open-ended questions were sent electronically to school principals of randomly selected schools to assess the link between principals’ assumptions about the nature of knowledge and principal leadership. The t-test, Lambda test and an Analysis of Variances test were used to analyse the data. The findings confirm the relationship between core epistemological beliefs (EBs) and beliefs about leadership practices among South African school principals and provide substantial justification for using EBs in the study of school leadership.     

Principal leadership changes and their consequences for school performance in South Africa

School leadership changes are gaining momentum in South Africa as larger proportions of incumbent principals near retirement age. While this presents opportunities to replace weaker school leaders with better ones, these changes may also destabilize school environments and impede on learning. This study explores this issue using payroll data on public school principals in South Africa linked to national data on schools and matriculation examination outcomes. School fixed effects and propensity score matching with difference-in-difference estimations confirm that principal changes are indeed detrimental to school performance with larger disruptive effects observed in poorer schools.     

Jordanian School Counselors’ Leadership Behaviors

The purpose of this study was to identify the degree to which Jordanian school counselors were seen by teachers and principals to possess and display leadership behaviors related to Bolman and Deal’s (1997) transformational ‘four framework approach’ to leadership. This was based on the view that such leadership would relate to counselors’ effectiveness in their roles. A questionnaire was administered to a sample of teachers and principals designed to assess counselor leadership on four key dimensions (i) structural leadership, (ii) human resources leadership, (iii) political leadership, and (iv) symbolic leadership. The results of the study suggest high levels of transformational leadership among Jordanian school counselors as perceived by both teachers and principals. Principals assessed the levels more highly than teachers, with a significant difference evident. The results also showed a significant difference based on geographic area of the participants, even though those from all areas rated counselor leadership quite highly.     

Cultivating an Environment That Contributes to Teaching and Learning in Schools: High School Principals’ Actions

Improving principal leadership is a vital component to the success of educational reform initiatives that seek to improve whole-school performance, as principal leadership often exercises positive but indirect effects on student learning. Because of the importance of principals within the field of school improvement, this article focuses on investigating the actions taken by principals working to cultivate an environment that contributes to effective teaching and learning. Utilizing data from 183 high school principals in Taiwan, this article finds that principals contribute to the healthy environment through personal, organizational, professional, and communal approaches. This article proposes that a respectful and caring learning community is the ideal environment for teaching and learning. This article also provides suggestions for principal leadership development that will help facilitate such an environment.     

School principals’ evaluations of their instructional leadership behaviours: realities vs. ideals

The purpose of the current study was to examine primary and middle school principals’ evaluations of their own instructional leadership behaviours, and thereby pay closer attention to the ideal instructional leadership behaviours suggested in the related literature and the realities of principals’ instructional leadership behaviours. Although studies in the instructional leadership literature have vastly examined instructional leadership and its relationship with various variables, few studies have focused on school principals’ evaluations of their instructional leadership behaviours using a qualitative approach. This study was framed to contribute to gain an insight into the essential characteristics of instructional leadership in Turkey and to suggest some educational implications for school leadership in a Turkish context. The researchers conducted a qualitative case study in a large city in South-eastern Turkey in the academic year of 2012–2013. The study group consisted of 11 primary and middle school principals chosen via a maximum variation sampling technique. It was found that some of the school principals painstakingly tried to improve school-related factors which may potentially increase positive student outcomes. However, they were not able to display some instructional leadership behaviours such as change management, promoting teachers’ professional growth, collaborating with teachers and forming a positive learning environment due to multifarious reasons. The study concludes by presenting implications for the development of school principals as instructional leaders in Turkey.     

More than heroes and villains: pre-service teacher beliefs about principals

New teachers enter schools with already established beliefs about principals.This paper reports on the nature and primary influences on what a group of Hong Kong pre-service teacher participants believe about principals. The nature of beliefs reflect underlying personal constructs that relate to interpersonal communication and management. Influences include past school principals, school leaders and parents. Beliefs were attained using a modified personal construct interview and analyses of participant stories. Findings highlight a close association between the leadership/management style of the principal whom participants would like to be and mothers, and the interpersonal behaviour of fathers and the principal whom participants would not like to be . The authors argue that reforms are needed in the course design of teacher education, teacher induction and programmes of professional development for principals. These reforms must address the influence personal history has on an individual's thinking about teaching, interpersonal communication and leadership - a reform process that begins with teacher educators and principals reframing their beliefs and associated practices.