Research question: How does postgraduate study shape participants’ attitudes and practice as leaders?

Principal preparation is worthy of research here, as internationally. Principals typically begin their career in small schools in regional, rural and remote locations, experiencing professional and geographic isolation coupled with high local public visibility; their on-the-job theoretical and practical learning (Belmonte, 2007) is characterised by variety, novelty and serendipity (Wildy, Clarke & Slater, 2007). In Australia approximately one quarter of all schools are classified as small, some with fewer than 10 students. Novice principals are teaching principals, dividing their time between the classroom and the office. Small schools do not qualify for the administrative support that larger schools do. However, principal are required to demonstrate compliance to centrally mandated policies and deal with the increasing complexity of the job. Compounding these challenges are high staff turnover, and high expectations for students’ performance. Principals are also expected to develop staff capacity as leaders. With such a legacy, it is not surprising to note a shortage of principal applicants as the ageing workforce approaches retirement.

Extending the International Study of Principal Preparation (ISPP), we explore aspiring and in-post principals’ developing understanding of their leadership roles throughout their Masters degree program.

Our ISPP project focuses on international principal preparation and we have lamented on the absence of such programs in Western Australia. We conducted qualitative case studies of novice principals to find out the challenges they face and the extent to which they felt prepared for the challenges (Wildy & Clarke, 2008, 2009a), drawing international comparisons of principals’ experiences (Wildy, Clarke & Cardno, 2009). We conceptualized the challenges to pertain to Place; People; System; and Self (Clarke & Wildy, 2011) and articulated the foundational epistemological assumptions for both research about, and programs for, principal preparation programs (Clarke & Wildy, 2010, 2012). Finally, with ISPP colleagues, we constructed a survey instrument to investigate the extent to which the challenges faced by novice principals and their perspectives on their preparation to face these challenges varied internationally (Clarke, Wildy & Styles, 2011; Wildy & Clarke, 2009b; Wildy, Clarke, Styles & Beycioglu, 2010).

In 2011 our Faculty of Education won a 10-year contract to prepare principals for the Western Australian government Education authority and began the degree program in 2012. This paper describes the development of the program, its conceptual underpinnings, the contextual challenges of its delivery requirements, and the approach adopted to monitoring over time the impact of the program on both aspiring and in post principals’ thinking about leadership and their practice as principals. Our program has an explicit theory-practice nexus, noting Levine’s (2005) criticism of US principal preparation programs. Furthermore, in light the evidence of Azzam (2005), Lashway (2003) and Levine (2005) of little quantitative research into the effectiveness of such programs, we designed a longitudinal study to monitor attitudes, understanding and leadership practices of participants throughout their four years in the program, in the eight cohorts of at least 50 aspiring/practising principals, during the 10 years of the project.

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