The shared principalship: invitation at the top

A school principal’s workload is recognised as being heavy, with an imbalance between demands and resources. This paper contributes to the development of collective leadership. The principalship constellations of six schools in Sweden were studied with the aim of strengthening the current knowledge about structures and experiences of shared principalship. The empirical basis is qualitative data from interviews with principals and vice-principals. The analytical focus was on how the sharing structures were organised and how the shared principalship was experienced. The results point to a considerable variation in the organisational structures of shared principalship. Despite the type of model, form and constellation, the principals and vice-principals voiced a striking sense of relief in not feeling alone in their duties, as problems and troubles became manageable. An intensified interaction level in the principalship constellation created opportunities to develop competence. Theoretically, this study broadens the invited leadership concept to include horizontal invitations across unit boundaries between principals in different units within the same school. The knowledge contribution of this study is useful in discussing the legal possibilities for shared principalship, which may be especially relevant in times when the Swedish school system is being criticised for not delivering good student outcomes.     

Beyond the power of one: redesigning the work of school principals

There is mounting international research evidence that the work of school principals is increasingly difficult, time consuming and more unattractive to prospective applicants. We suggest that the solution to this situation lies in redesigning the work that principals do. Using the New London Group’s (1996) definition of design as both process and product and as a hybrid of existing resources, we offer five cases of redesign: distributed pedagogical leadership, co-principalship, shared principalship, multi-campus principalship, and community-based principalship. We argue that these examples show that redesigns that focus on the school, rather than on the work of the principal, have more far-reaching effects, but are also much more vulnerable to context. We propose three emerging principles for redesign viz. developing a strong warrant for redesign, attending to infrastructure and building organic relations between school and community.     

Development of the Ethiopian school leadership: foundation,self-dependence,and historical erratic evolution

ABSTRACT

Educational leadership has been an integral part of the Ethiopian traditional education. Nonetheless, the nation’s school leadership evolution started with the deployment of the first principal in Ethiopian western type school a century and a decade ago. Since then, Ethiopian school leadership evolved through seven distinctive phases: principalship evolved into separate position, Ethiopian replaced expatriate staff, principal preparation initiated, albeit enlargement of the task, principals’ preparation reduced, principalship deprofessionalised, principals’ preparation reemphasised, and PGDSL preparation started. During the evolution, the dominant model of decision making for initiating school leaders’ development programmes was political command. Unfortunately, those decisions didn’t involve educational stakeholders and, most often, it didn’t incorporate the will and concerns of the principals’. Furthermore, evolution of the school leadership was erratic in that it fluctuated back and forth rather than consistently advancing forward. Hence, school leadership of the nation couldn’t contribute what it must contribute to the Ethiopian education.     

School leadership for the future: heroic or distributed? Translating international discourses in Norwegian policy documents

School leadership as a key for school reforms has become a dominant theme in education, as demonstrated by a growing body of research during the last 15 years. Still, little attention has been paid to how changing international discourses on school leadership are translated into national public policy documents during the last decade. As such, this study provides additional insight into this field by analysing how Norwegian policy documents translate international discourses and re-contextualise national constructs of school leadership. Inspired by a critical approach, the authors address this issue by identifying discursive shifts in ideas about school leadership roles and practices. Based on an examination of four recent white papers on Norwegian education and school leadership, the authors argue that the policy documents constructed a tension between an international ‘explicit’ principal and a national ‘docile’ principal in 2003–2004, while recent documents construct a consensus-oriented, distributed leadership role for principals through the term ‘facilitating school leaders’. This may lead to contested interpretations as to how to perform school leadership in practice.     

Power and the ‘autonomous’ principal: autonomy,teacher development,and school leaders’ work

ABSTRACT

One aspect of instructional leadership is the work principals undertake in supporting and developing teachers’ skills and capabilities. This paper examines this aspect of school leadership within a climate characterised by increased principal workloads, heavy external accountabilities, pressure to improve student results, and heightened autonomy which included discourses regarding principals’ increased freedom in staffing decisions. The case studies within this paper focus specifically on principals’ work in relation to the recruitment and development of staff. Policy and discourse suggests that principals have the autonomy to recruit and build staffing teams to meet school needs and improve outcomes, though questions have been raised about how autonomous public schools can be a part of a wider system. This paper explores the role autonomy plays in leadership practices relating to staff recruitment and development. The findings contribute to a body of knowledge regarding the ways principals make sense of and enact their work under highly pressurised school improvement policy conditions.     

The Relationship Between Organization and Management in Schools

Vice-principals’ role and their relationship with principals are of paramount importance in shaping the effectiveness of school management, particularly after the implementation of school-based management (SBM) worldwide. This paper reports primarily on prior studies on the vice-principalship and suggests a framework to help explain the different working relationships between principals and vice-principals. The framework is a matrix based on three dimensions, namely status, roles and management tasks. The framework was then examined through an illustrative case study. What emerged was that the framework provides a powerful means to explain the different combinations of relationship between principals and vice-principals.     

Practising leadership in newly multi-ethnic schools: tensions in the field?

This paper explores the leadership practices of three principals following a period of intensive immigration in Ireland. Drawing on the work of Bourdieu, it conceptualises schools as structured social spaces and of their leadership work as a form of practising. This practising is an outcome of the intersection between deeply embedded subjectivities operating in diverse fields of action that shape, constrain and transform each principal’s practices. Presenting an analytical model that highlights the circular and capillary-like dimension to such practising, the paper explores how principals’ recognition of immigrant children (their recognitive practices) as well as investment in supporting their learning (distributive practices) are shaped by the logics of practice across different fields, as well as by their own evolving habitus and struggle to be authentic in a period of rapid social change. Practising effective leadership in newly multi-ethnic schools must be conceived as layered and multiple but must be underpinned by an ethic of justice, if the minoritised status of ‘ethnic’ others is to be challenged and overcome.     

“We’re Not Just Interested in the Work”: Social and Emotional Aspects of Early Educator Mentoring Relationships

The purpose of this study was to explore how often 159 practicing teachers enrolled in a university Master's degree principal preparation program observed their mentor principals model the four mandated Texas standards‐based instructional leadership competencies for the principalship. The competencies focus on leadership through curriculum and planning, nurturing and sustaining the instructional program, implementing a staff evaluation plan and applying decision‐making skills. Findings on the four competencies ranged from a high of 59.1% to a low of only 44.7% of the participants who indicated that they observed their mentor principals modeling these four competencies at least ‘usually.’     

Socialising principals: early career primary school principals in Trinidad and Tobago

This paper utilises an interpretivist framework and recent developments in practice theory to examine the conditions which influence practices of socialising into the role of school principal in Trinidad and Tobago. The results indicate that for the 11 early career primary school principals, role socialisation occurs within complex practice landscapes, where the practices of preparing classroom teachers for the principalship materialise within a context of contest. There is conflict between historical antecedents and the expectations and practices of socialising institutions such as the church, the school, the community and the Ministry of Education. This small-scale study has implications for leadership preparation practices and highlights principal socialisation as a challenge of context and history.     

‘Head’-ing into the future: the changing role of New Zealand principals

Several trends in the principal’s role emerged during the first year of administrative reforms. These included high levels of workload and stress as they implemented the new system; negotiation of new relationships with parents and community members; concerns about opportunities for women in leadership; a higher political profile for principals in the New Right context; and tensions between the leadership and managerial aspects of their role. The move to self management has given New Zealand principals a higher degree of autonomy and power than ever before and, as the reforms begin to impact on the education system, there is a need for continuing public debate about the parameters of the principal’s role in relation to the social and educational roles of schools. In addition new models for professional development are needed together with a regulation of the pace of change to reduce workload and stress.     

The ‘punk rock principal’: a metaphor for rethinking educational leadership

ABSTRACT

This paper advances an alternative leadership metaphor of ‘punk rock leadership’. I work through the usefulness of a metaphor of punk rock leadership as a way of exploring one principal's vision of leadership and his efforts to work outside of system expectations in his quest to achieve the school's goals. In doing so, I contribute to our wider understanding of the methodological process, affordances, and challenges of using metaphors to theorise empirical data. Empirically, this paper contributes to critical research into principals’ practices in times of change, and to notions of power and leadership discourses in schools.     

From school leader to educational leader

ABSTRACT

This study builds on research which contends that just as effective principals must lead across a broad purview of responsibilities in order to build successful schools, so too must middle leaders. Decentralisation of school management has resulted in an expansion of school principals’ responsibilities, contributing to a further distribution of leadership responsibility to middle leaders. This conception of middle leadership requires a shift in understanding of the nature of middle leaders’ work. There is vast potential for middle leaders to contribute to their schools beyond subject administration, yet the research base yields limited insight on such work and on how middle leaders can be supported to accomplish it. This research finds that middle leaders who expand their leadership responsibilities do so in contexts that utilise school mission, policy enactment and organisational design as platforms for enhanced middle leadership.     

Principals and teachers as partners in critical,participatory action research

Abstract

This article reports on a two-year study of one principal’s professional learning practices in ‘Transform,’ a professional learning program in Edmonton Catholic Schools, Alberta, Canada. Transform was designed to be a bottom-up, morally-oriented professional learning approach in which principals and teachers worked as partners on critical, participatory action research projects. This article examines the research question ‘How are principals shifting from technically- to morally-oriented professional learning practices in their schools?’ and explores one theme – co-creating social spaces for risk-taking – to illustrate how principals shifted from being managers of teachers’ learning to being partners with teachers in researching and refining classroom practices.     

Perceptual inhibitors of instructional leadership in Israeli principals

ABSTRACT

The instructional leadership approach expects school leaders to give top priority to ongoing improvement of teaching quality and academic outcomes. Researchers have found that despite the top-down pressures to assume an instructional leadership role, school principals demonstrate limited direct involvement in such leadership. The current qualitative study, based on semi-structured interviews, aimed to expand inquiry into inhibitors of instructional leadership in Israeli principals. Data analysis uncovered that Israeli principals’ perceptions served as key inhibitors of instructional leadership, identifying three main perceptual inhibitors: (1) perceptions regarding principal-teacher relationships; (2) perceptions regarding the role of the principal; and (3) perceptions regarding the goal of schooling. These findings expands the available knowledge by illustrating how for Israeli principals, the inhibitors of instructional leadership did not only involve the constraints and capabilities of school principals but also deep disagreements with the conceptual framework that underpins instructional leadership. Implications and further research are discussed.     

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.     

Accountability,autonomy and stress: principal responses to superintendent change in a large US urban school district

This study investigates how principals in a large US urban school district responded to two different superintendents who employed contrasting leadership styles and utilised divergent organisational schemes. We originally conducted interviews with principals in 2007, when the district's superintendent asserted fierce performance demands and limited principals’ site-based discretion in favour of protecting and exerting central office power. We conducted interviews again in 2013 after a new superintendent had relaxed school test score expectations and distributed the central office's previously tight, centralised control into largely self-directing sub-regions. Our findings demonstrate that superintendent change noticeably affected how principals understood and encountered accountability, autonomy and stress. To help make sense of our findings, we employ a three-part conceptual framework drawn from the study of educational leadership. We conclude by considering implications, including the notion that unrelenting stress has become a permanent part of the modern urban US principalship.     

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。     

Benchlearning – an action research program for transforming leadership and school practices

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we investigate how a Benchlearning program for principals in Norway and Sweden supports changes in Norwegian principals’ leadership practices. The program design builds on principles for practical action research. The aim of the program was to inspire changes in the principals’ leadership practices that encourage innovative school practices. The program includes learning modes such as theoretical inputs, sharing experiences, school visits, training, and trialling of new leadership practices. Drawing on data from participants’ reflections on their learning and changes in their leadership practices, we identify transformations that have been realized and the ways in which the Benchlearning program has supported the transformations. The findings indicate that the program can be seen as a systematic and disciplined process, a ‘meta-practice’, that supports changes in the principals’ leadership practices, their understandings, and the conditions of their practice. More specifically, the findings show that the theoretical inputs and practical learning modes stimulated transformations of the principals’ thinking about leadership practices, what they do in practice and how they relate to others. In particular, the study suggests that the principals’ active participation in trialling new leadership practices in their own schools stimulated transformations.