Becoming A School Principal In A Pluralistic Institutional Environment: Embracing And Managing ‘Multiple Professional Selves’

Author(s):

James Spillane(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2012

Network:

26. Educational Leadership

Format:

Paper

Session Information

26 SES 01 A, Educational Leadership

Parallel Paper Session

Time:

2012-09-18

13:15-14:45

Room:

FFL - Aula 8

Chair:

Helen Wildy

Contribution

This paper examines new school principals' on the job socialization into the principal occupation during their first year. My central question is this: How do novice school principals makes sense of their new occupation during their first year on the job? Socialization aims to account for how “… newcomers ‘learn the ropes’, how they come to see certain norms, values and behaviors as natural, appropriate or desirable in a given social context (Van Maanen & Schein, 1979, p. 1; Van Maanen & Barley, 1984). Taking a sense-making perspective to examine school principals’ on-the-job socialization, we view these as some of the resources that these new professionals may draw on as they attempt to make sense of new environments and the changes, contrasts and surprises therein (Louis, 1980). By anchoring our analysis in this way, we emphasize sense-making as “the primary site where meanings materialize that inform and constrain identity and action,” particularly in situations marked by ambiguity and uncertainty (Weick, Sutcliffe, & Obstfeld, 2005, p. 409; Mills, 2003, p. 35). Sense-making is about authoring as well as interpretation, creation as well as discovery” (Weick, 1995; p. 8).

Method

Two cohorts of novice principals were recruited during the summer prior to their first school year as principal, 2009-2010 and 2010-2011, respectively. Survey data were solicited each summer from the entire cohort of first-time principals, and then a sub-sample of elementary school principals was selected to participate in a series of semi-structured interviews. The first cohort includes individuals who began their first principalship in the 2009-2010 academic year. Of these 86 novice principals, 59 completed the online survey in the summer of 2009, yielding a 69% response rate. A subsample of 19 first-time elementary school principals was then purposefully selected to maximize variation on participant race, gender and age, as well as school location, performance and student composition (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). The second cohort began their first principalship in the 2010-2011 school year and of the 66 new principals that year, 56 completed the survey for an 85% response rate. For this cohort, 17 principals were randomly selected from all of the new elementary school principals and all agreed to participate.

Expected Outcomes

The paper articulates and develops two main assertions with respect to new entrants socialization into the near universal profession of the school principalship. First, novice school principals’ sense-making about their new profession was firmly anchored in their efforts to make sense of their new school organization as positioned in the institutional environment with particular concerns about organizational legitimacy and organizational integrity. Recognizing the plurality, diversity, and simultaneity of internal and external stakeholders’ expectations for the school organization, novices pulled down institutional logics to make sense of their new organization and by extension their new profession. But, how these logics get pulled down and deployed in prognosis is in part a function of these new entrants particularized and localized diagnosis of their school organization. Second, and even more striking, even within individual new entrants multiple senses of professional identity as principal emerge as they grapple with diverse stakeholders and in particular as they grapple with these stakeholders in relation to one another. New principals developed multiple senses of their new profession as they construct and mobilize ‘a parliament of professional selves’ in an effort to lead and manage diverse internal and external stakeholders.

References

Glaser, B. G., & Strauss, A. L. (1967). The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research. Piscataway, NJ: AldineTransaction. Mills, J. H. (2003). Making sense of organizational change. London: Routledge. Van Maanen, J. E., & Barley, S. R. (1984). Occupational communities: Culture and control in organizations. In L. L. Cummings & B. M. Staw (Eds.), Research in organizational behavior, (Vol. 6, pp. 287-365). Greenwich, CT: JAI Publishers. Van Maanen, J. E., & Schein, E. H. (1979). Toward a theory of organizational socialization. In B. M. Staw (Ed.), Annual review of research in organizational behavior (pp. 209-266). New York, NY: JIP Press. Weick, K. E. (1995). Sensemaking in organizations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Weick, K. E., Sutcliffe, K. M., & Obstfeld, D. (2005). Organizing and the process of sensemaking. Organization Science, 16(4), 409-421.

Author Information

James Spillane (presenting / submitting)

Northwestern University

Human Development and Social Policy

Chicago

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