Session Information
26 SES 04 B, Principals' Practices, Roles and Use of Time
Paper Session
Contribution
It doesn´t matter if principals work at high or low preforming schools, small or large schools, schools with young or older students, all principals seems to have lack of time to do what they think is necessary to fulfill their mission. External, internal and own expectations adds up to long work days. Stress and health issues has become an important topic in many countries.
Time is often treated as an indirect variable. “Not having enough time” has become an accepted excuse for not changing and improving practices for principals when their tasks are increasing. Time has both technical and rational aspects that are possible to measure and more qualitative aspects that are connected to how content and activities are understood and experienced (Ärlestig, 2002). Most leadership studies as well as principal training courses are occupied with what principals’ ought to do rather than what they do during a working day. This awakes questions how principals’ prerequisites form their work and priorities and how they as individuals can decide and maneuver their workday.
Capturing principals’ time by measuring what they do minute by minute can reveal some of a principal’s prerequisites and priorities. Descriptions on how time use varies can also be a tool to reveal if measured time and experienced time differ. What do principals do and what take their energy? This is important related to how principals prioritize
The aim in this article is to discuss if principals’ use of time is related to principal reflections on their use of time. There is two main research questions
- What assignments do individual principals spend time on during an ordinary week?
- How do principals experience thier own oppertunity to affect thier timeuse?
Earlier research
The article will have a literature section that builds on recent international research on principals and their use of time, pedagogical leadership and principal training. Some examples follows below.
All principals today have multiple expectations on what to do and in what order. Besides administration principals’ have expectations to work with instruction and create good prerequisites for student learning (Day & Leithwood, 2007, Törnsén & Ärlestig, 2014). To be able to do so good relations, a clear vision and emphasis on communication is necessary (Robinson, 2008). Many researchers are interested in how leadership contributes to or are affected of school development and reforms. There is a tendency that many of the findings are normative with ideal solutions (Ärlestig, Day& Johansson, 2016) without considering the whole mission and the school leaders current context it is easy to put even higher expectations on a single task.
Earlier studies on how principal’s use their time shows that principals spend most time to handle every day issues and issues related to personnel matters (Camburn, E., Spillane, J., & Sebastian, J. 2010). Issues related to instructional leadership is often reported as having a lower focus. In Sweden there is a lack of studies concentrating on how principal use their time to during an ordinary week Time management is possible to learn and with a relatively small cost for the individual it can make huge differences in principals’ daily work (Grissom, Loeb & Mitani, 2014)
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
TALIS Teaching and Learing International Study http://www.oecd.org/edu/school/talis.htm hämtad 2015-01-28 Brüde Sundin , J. (2007). En riktig rektor Om ledarskap, genus och skolkulturer.[A Real Principal about Leadership, Gender and School Culture, in Swedish] Studies in Pedagogic Practices No 3. Linköping; Linköping. Camburn, E., Spillane, J., & Sebastian, J. (2010). Assessing the utility of a daily log for measuring principal leadership practice. Educational Administration Quarterly. Vol.46(5), pp.707-737 Day, C. and K. Leithwood (2007). Successful principal leadership in times of change. Dordrecht: Springer. Grissom, Loeb & Mitani, (2015) Principal Time Management Skills: Explaining Patterns in Principals' Time Use, Job Stress, and Perceived Effectiveness Journal of Educational Administration, Vol.53(6), p.773-793 Höög, J. and O. Johansson, Eds. (2014 a). Struktur Kultur Ledarskap: Förutsättningar för framgångsrika skolor.[Structure, Culture, Ledership: Prerequsites for Successful Schools, in Swedish]. Lund: Studentlitteratur. Robinson, V. M. J. (2008). "The impact of leadership on student outcomes." Educational Administration Quarterly 44(5): 653-674. Törnsén, M. & Ärlestig, H. (2014) Ledarskap i Centrum.[Leadership in the Center, in Swedish] Lund: Gleerups Wolcott, H.F. (2003). The man in the principal's office: an ethnography. (Updated ed.) Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press Ärlestig, H. (2002). Tid och ledarskap en empirisk studie kring 15 rektorers sätt att använda sin tid.[Time and Leadership, an Empirical study on 15 Principals and their use of time, in Swedish] Umeå: Pedagogiska institutionen Umeå Universitet. Ärlestig, H., Day, C. & Johansson, O. (2015) A Decade of Research on School Principals – examples from 24 countries. Dordrecht: Springer
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