ID: 1123
26. Educational Leadership
Paper
Alternative EERA Network: 33. Gender and Education
As the leadership and principalship is very much culturally bounded, the research on gender and educational leadership have been enriched recently by analyses of national case studies from non-western contexts. The increase of national case studies in the current literature on gender and school leadership has helped widen the analyses of the complex interplay factors in diverse socio-political and cultural contexts (Oplatka, 2006; Sperandio,2010). By contextualising women’s career pathways in Kosovo, this study explores the complex interplay of multiple dimensions and factors in diverse cultural contexts. This study will contribute to the current discussions with a close examination of the career pathways of women elementary school principals in Kosovo – a quite patriarchal society.

Although there is a lot of international research regarding women in education leadership, there are few studies regarding professional and working women in Kosovo and no studies have been conducted on challenges faced by women principals in the management of schools in Kosovo, and none to our knowledge for the underrepresentation of women principals in primary and secondary school.

Gender differences in the distribution of management positions in Kosovo schools are marked at all levels of the education system, despite the provision for equal opportunities in the legislation. Although, the female teachers represent 51% of all teachers in primary and lower secondary school, there are only 17% of women school principals (KSA, 2018/2019). This data shows some obvious gaps for women in the school management positions in both primary and secondary schools.

Given that the barriers that women principals face are present from the time they aspire for leadership up to the time when they perform the duty, the theoretical framework that is be used in this study is the ‘management route model’ developed by Eck & Volman (1996). This model is used to embrace the complexities which are identified in three phases (anticipation, acquisition and performance phase) and bring together the individual, organisational and social challenges and incentives in different phases.

Therefore, the main purpose of this doctoral thesis is to explore the leadership experiences of female principals, and empirically study this phenomenon in Kosovo schools and to develop the theoretical model of women’s management route in patriarchal society By contextualising women’s experience in their management route with reference to Kosovo’s socio-political and cultural contexts, this study identifies a range of institutional, social and personal factors that help shed light on this topic.

This study explores empirically the management route of women principals in Kosovo elementary schools in their workplace experiences and in accessing school leadership. The study addresses under-representation of women in leadership positions through their narratives on the route to management positions in schools. It identifies and critically analyses the barriers and challenges that women principals face but also the incentives in order to be promoted as principals and in their ordinary work in elementary schools in Kosovo. It also establishes the extent and nature of support needed for women to access leadership positions and present implications for further research.

This paper responds to the following research questions of the study: ) what are Kosovo women principals' descriptions of their experiences of seeking, achieving and performing as a principal?, 2) how do the participants in this study interpret the social and cultural environment in which the education leadership and management is embedded?, 3) what is the support the women principals need in their management route? and 4) how do the participants in this study interpret the imbalance between male and female principals in educational management?

To gain in-depth insight into processes and activities – how Kosovo women educators decide and act on the way to enactment as principals and how they construct themselves as principals, this study is explored through exploratory case study (Stake, 1995). Therefore, the research design is comprised of multiple sources of data in order to achieve methodological triangulation, but the core of proposed study is based on in-depth interviews conducted with the sample (Stake, 1995). Methods of description, comparison, and compilation are used to provide a literature review, and to analyse policy documents. To set the context, statistical data is obtained from publicly accessible documents. Twelve (12) semi-structured in-depth individual interviews with a purposive sample of school principals are conducted. These 12 school principals are identified through two steps of sampling procedure. Firstly, there is a demographic questionnaire distributed to the whole population of 115 women principals. This instrument enables the researcher to demographically describe women principals in Kosovo which was not available beforehand. In one question they are asked for participation in interviews. From the pool of volunteers, the researcher purposefully selects 12 participants. In purposive sampling, researchers handpick the cases to be included in the sample on the basis of their exceptionality and as being the most knowledgeable informants (Cohen et al., 2000). Purposive sampling is appropriate because enables the researcher to focus on the most knowledgeable informants with substantial experience of school leadership over an extended timescale. Elements of grounded theory analysis and content analysis methods are used in analysing interview data. The data from interviews are analysed manually, following four steps: reviewing the data, organising the data, coding and categorizing the data and interpreting the data. Patterns are identified that help to develop the theoretical model of women’s management route in patriarchal society. The last part is the interpretation. The analysis are undertaken with open coding using themes identified in the conceptual framework as well as those emerging from the interviews. The ‘grounded theory’ is used whereby the researcher moves backwards and forwards between description and explanation (Strauss & Corbin, 1990). Through a process of data analysis and interpretation, the study identifies relationships, and discovers, understands and describs women school principals’ perceptions of their management route.

The study remains incomplete at the time of writing, making it difficult to predict the final outcomes. However, it is possible to point to the general lines of discovery. As an outcome of the analysis, we expect that this study will identify a range of institutional, social and personal challenges and that help shed light on women’s' principalship in patriarchal society and fill the knowledge gap in understanding school leadership nested in patriarchal social, political and cultural contexts These include significant and original data on the underlying factors that directly or indirectly act upon the aspirations of female professionals in the Kosovo education system, more specifically in management positions in education. It will confirm or negate the early indications of the more dominant factors that act against women’s choices, such as perceptions of women in society, patriarchal and familial pressures and other dominant trends.

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