Session Information
26 SES 10 B, Successful Principals and Inservice Training
Paper Session
Contribution
What are the characteristics and behaviours of the successful school principals?
What characteristics and behaviours have successful schools principals? This is the question that focus the first International Successful School Principals Project (ISSPP) developed by 24 countries worldwide. One result of this study was the finding of the significance of context in shaping the successful management strategies (Moos, Johansson and Day, 2011). Within this background, in 2013 Spain carried out it´s study, finding it´s own characteristics due to a more centralized educational system and less school autonomy than in many other countries.
In this project successful leadership is understood not just a proposal that adds and adjective, but the realization of a school leadership that gets sustain academic and social success (Leithwood et al., 2006). Thus, successful leadership is considered as a proposal for which the principal and his/her team focus on building strong learning communities to encourage the learning of every single student in a safe and healthy climate and bringing up the commitment of a wider community.
Research on Successful School Leadership feeds on three main sources, School Effectiveness research, specifically the tradition of the research that studies the influence on the student achievement of the School Leadership; research on change and sustainable improvement in schools (Hargreaves & Fink, 2003, 2008, Hargreaves & Goodson, 2006), and the contribution of successful leadership practices of Kenneth Leithwood (Leitwood, & Riehl, 2003, 2005, Leithwood et al, 2006.; Day et al., 2010).
The common findings under research in other countries were some characteristics of the school principals (Gurr , Drysdale, & Mulford , 2006; Moos, Kofod , & Krejsler , 2008). First, feature is the principal´s commitment with the education. They are concern about nurturing and the develop of students and the community where they work ( Drysdale et al, 2011; Gurr et al . , 2005; Moos, Day , & Johansson, 2011). In addition, an ethical imperative that sustained this commitment was observed. Some of the elements were their values, they were culturally responsive leaders and shown capacity building. The principal is considered the key school leadership and as the person who has the greatest opportunity to exercise leadership (Gurr et al. , 2005). Another feature is that the principal has an inclusive and respectful approach to building relationships with the school community (students, teachers and parents), while focusing on the discipline to make the school a safe place (Giles et al. , 2005 ). Five principles were identified in their performance: care, training, accountability, learning and success; these elements together improve school and student achievement, both academic and social achievement.
However, beside these elements found some own country characteristics arisen, because of their context pressures, the social expectations and the autonomy that schools systems have in each country. This peculiarities can be read in the works of Wong (2005) in China, of Day (2005) in England, Møller et al. (2005) in Norway, de Hoog, Johansson and Olofsson (2005) in Sweden, and Moos et al. (2005) in Denmark, or Gurr, Drysdale, & Mulford (2005) in Australia, to give some examples.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Day, C., Sammons, P., Hopkins, D., Harris, A., Leithwood, K., Gu, Q., & Brown, E. (2010). 10 strong claims about successful school leadership. Nottingham: National College for Leadership. Giles, C., Johnson, L., Brooks, S., & Jacobson, S. L. (2005). Building Bridges, Building Community: Transformational Leadership in a Challenging Urban Context. Journal of School Leadership, 15(5), 519-545. Gurr, D., Drysdale, L., & Mulford, B. (2005). Successful principal leadership: Australian case studies. Journal of Educational Administration, 43(6), 539–551. Gurr, D., Drysdale, L., & Mulford, B. (2006). Models of successful principal leadership. School Leadership and Management, 26(4), 371–395. Hargreaves, A., & Goodson, I. (2006). Educational change over time? The sustainability and nonsustainability of three decades of secondary school change and continuity. Educational Administration Quarterly, 42(1), 3–41. Hargreaves, A., & Fink, D. (2003). Sustaining leadership. B. Davies & J. West-Burnham (Eds.), Handbook of educational leadership and management, 435-450. Hoog, J., Johansson, O., & Olofsson, A. (2005). Successful principalship: The Swedish case. Journal of Educational Administration, 43(6), 595–606. Leithwood, K., & Riehl, C. (2005). What we know about successful school leadership. In W. Firestone & C. Riehl (Eds.), A new agenda: Directions for research on educational leadership (pp. 22–47). New York: Teachers College Press. Leithwood, K., Day, C., Sammons, P., Harris, A., & Hopkins, D. (2006). Seven strong claims about successful school leadership, National College of School Leadership. Nottingham: National College of School Leadership. Møller, J., Eggen, A., Fuglestad, O. L., Langfeldt, G., Presthus, A. M., Skrøvset, S., Stjernstrøm, E., & Vedøy, G. (2005). Successful school leadership: The Norwegian case. Journal of Educational Administration, 43(6), 584–594. Moos, L., Johansson, O., & Day, C. (Eds.) (2011). How School Principals Sustain Success over Time. International Perspectives. London: Springer. Moos, L., Kofod, K., & Krejsler, J. (2008). Successful principals: Telling or selling? – On the importance of context for school leadership. International Journal of Leadership in Education, 11(4), 341–352. Moos, L., et al. (2005). Successful school principalship in Danish schools. Journal of Educational Administration, 43(6), 563–572. Wong, K. C. (2005). Conditions and practices of successful principalship in Shanghai. Journal of Educational Administration, 43(6), 552–562.
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