Purpose and objectives:

The basic purpose of the research is to correlate the quality of educational institutions (particularly of European countries) with the practical exercise of pedagogical leadership within such educational institutions.

According to such basic purpose, the research tries to obtain information referred to the following objectives:

Ø  Obtaining information on the importance that the most relevant involved members of educational institutions give to components that could show the quality of such institutions

Ø  Collecting data referred to the degree of the achievement, existence, reality or effectiveness of components of quality in educational institutions

Ø  Obtaining information of the importance that the most relevant involved members of educational institutions give to features that make up the dimensions of pedagogical leadership

Ø  Collecting data referred to the degree of the achievement, existence, reality or effectiveness of features that make up the dimensions of pedagogical leadership

Ø  Correlate the importance and evidence of the quality of educational institutions with the evidence of the importance and evidence of pedagogical leadership in such institutions.

Quality of educational institutions:

The quality of an educational institution is the product of the excellence obtained in some components of such institution. To this effect, it has been considered that in every institution there are “identifiers” and “predictors” of quality. The former ones would facilitate the identification of the evidence of quality; the latter ones would allow predicting the possibility of such quality. This distinction is a methodological one and is set up to facilitate understanding of one institution global system and of its functioning (Gento, 2002).

Pedagogical leadership:

Educational leadership plays a fundamental role as predictor of quality. But the implementation of such leadership should be contemplated into different fields of intervention. We understand that leader is a person (or group of persons) with the ability to provoke liberation, from inside, of the internal energy existing in other human beings, so that these voluntarily make the effort to attain, in the most effective and comfortable possible way, the aims they have themselves decided to reach in order to obtain their own dignity and the one of those they live within in a specific environment and context they care for. The leader’s potential of producing liberating creativity makes him the server of his/their followers, as it “assumes the fundamental mission of helping the followers to overcome obstacles in order to being able of putting into action their total capacity to reach their own objectives and the objectives shared with their own group” (De Pree, 1989: XX).

Relationship with European education:

Quality of education not only is a worldwide concern, but also a particular intense one in European countries. On the other hand, the research project has been initially elaborated for researches and academics of a European country, Spain. The first steps and initial data should be taken with samples of this European country. But progressively, the project will be extended to other European countries: initial contacts have been carried out to such purpose.

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