One of current mantras concerning principals’ work is that it has become more complex, and that the role of a school leader, a principal, is multifaceted. There are many research-based approaches covering educational leadership that aim to structure and frame the work, and to find out what works, how, and why (e.g. Mehra et al. 2006; Plessis 2013; ). This study moves beyond the exact tasks and duties of a principal, and looks at principalship; how principals describe and define themselves as leaders. The aim is to explore and to understand principalship today. Thus, to gain knowledge about principals’ value-base and their aims as leaders.

This comparative case study focuses on principals in two jurisdictions, in Ontario, Canada, and in the Metropolitan Area, Finland. Both have their own education policies guiding education in general and principals’ work in particular. For example, in Ontario principal’s work and principalship are guided by The Ontario Leadership Framework (OLF) that is based on wide range of research. The OLF gives detailed descriptions of various aspects related to educational leadership in different levels of the system. On the contrary, there are no similar guidelines for leadership in education in the Finnish context. However, in Finland, where the local education organizers (e.g. municipalities) have a lot of decisional power over their local education policy and educational arrangements, there may appear locally defined principles for the organization of school leadership, yet, these principles, if they exist, are not nearly as comprehensive as the OLF. Consequently, in the Finnish context, the tasks and type of responsibilities that principals have often vary between the local education organizers, and even between the schools within the same municipality (Ahtiainen et al. forthcoming). Therefore, one interesting focus area in this study is; how, and in terms of what, do the principals’ viewpoints differ – and how, and in terms of what, they do not, and, in addition, why? Due to the universal nature of research questions and the comparative approach, this study will provide points of connections for many European countries, and also for provinces or states in North America.

This study has four themes. Firstly, the principals’ viewpoints on leading teaching and learning. What kind of culture for teaching and learning they are developing in their schools, and where do the principals feel themselves the most capable and least adequate. Secondly, the principals’ ways to develop themselves and their staff professionally. What are important qualities for a principal, and what knowledge assist them most in their work? What role a principal plays in the development of others? Thirdly, leading improvement, innovation, and change. Finally, the principals were asked to tell what motivated them to become principals.

The frameworks of instructional leadership (Dinham 2016) and broad-based pedagogical leadership (Lahtero et al. 2015) are linked to all themes presented above as they present school leaders’ role, work and position in a wide and comprehensive way. Through these approaches principals’ work, role, and responsibilities can be seen as aiming towards implementation of objectives set for teaching and learning. Thus, the principal needs to understand how the school works, what is it that teachers do, and what kind of guidance and support the teaching staff needs, and most importantly; how all this affects student learning. In this study, the main framework will be built through country-based education policies that guide principals in their work, and through that affect, the way principals frame their answers. Anyway, both jurisdictions have employed the ideas of leading teaching and learning, yet, this is more implicit in the Finnish Metropolitan area than in Ontario, Canada.

This case study is formed around interviews of principals (n=12) in two jurisdictions, in the province of Ontario, Canada, and in the Metropolitan area, Finland. The interview questions have been drawn (with Stephen Dinham’s permission) from Dinham, Elliot, Rennie and Stokes (2018) ‘I’m the Principal’ -project. In this project, the interview questions have been constructed by using the Australian Professional Standards for Principals as a framework. (Dinham et al.) These standards aim to be universal by their nature in order to be applicable to different kind of schools, and school communities, and therefore, they provided an interesting tool for this Canada-Finland study. As Dinham and colleagues’ interview schema is rather vast we chose three themes for our study: Leading teaching and learning; developing oneself and staff; leading improvement, innovation, and change. In addition, we included the question concerning the reason what motivated one to become a principal. The Canadian principals (n=6) were interviewed in October-November 2018, and the Finnish (n=6) will be interviewed in February-March 2019. The interviewees were selected through convenient sampling. All the interviewees were (and will be) experienced principals. The data will analyzed in collaboration between the Finnish and Canadian researcher.

The preliminary observations based on the first set of interviews done in Ontario imply that there might be differences in the way Canadian and Finnish principals position the teachers they work with, for example, the question of professional autonomy seems to be one issue emerging from the data. Further, how principals describe the factors that motivated them to become principals may also be an interesting area to look at.

Ahtiainen, R., Lahtero, T. & Lång, N. (in press). Johtaminen perusopetuksessa — katsaus koulujen johtamisjärjestelmiin ja rehtoreiden näkemyksiin johtajuuden jakamisesta [Leading in the comprehensive school – leadership structures and principals’ views on distributed leadership]. In J. Hautamäki, M-P. Vainikainen & I. Rämä. Perusopetus, tasa-arvo ja oppimaan oppiminen: Valtakunnallinen arviointitutkimus. Helsinki Studies in Education. Dinham, S. (2016). Leading Learning and Teaching. Victoria: ACER Press. Lahtero, T. J. & Kuusilehto-Awale, L. (2015). Possibility to Engage in Pedagogical Leadership as Experienced by Finnish Newly Appointed Principals. In American Journal of Educational Research. Vol. 3, No. 3, pp. 318-329. Mehra, A., Smith, B.R., Dixon, A.L. & Robertson, B. (2006). Distributed leadership in teams: The network of leadership perceptions and team performance. The Leadership Quarterly. 17 (3), 232–245. OLF. The Ontario Leadership Framework. https://www.education-leadership-ontario.ca/en/resources/ontario-leadership-framework-olf Plessis, P. (2013). The principal as instructional leader: Guiding schools to improve instruction, Education as Change, 17: 1, 79-92.