Saving the Principal: The Evolution of Initiatives That Made a Difference in the Recruitment and Retention of School Leadership (original) (raw)
Related papers
Professional Development of Principals: A Recipe for Future Schools?
British Journal of Educational Research, 2011
More research results are explicating that in order to have better schools, there needs to be empowered school managers and leaders. Many dysfunctional schools are not performing because the people at the helm have no vision and are failing to uplift the morale within the school as an organisation. It is then no wonder that countries around the world are beginning to take principalship seriously by introducing programmes that would better the position of these school leaders; to harness them with skills that would also filter through the entire organisation. However, some candidates might not continue the best practices learnt from such programmes due to a number of reasons. The nature of the school, the team a principal works with and a number of other circumstances might determine the application of such programmes in the actual schools. This article uses literature to explore an aspect of school management that is known but usually ignored; professional development. The authors explore various arguments as to why all school principals in South Africa and the world need continuous professional development. Professional development of school leaders is a universally needed process in all schools; poor performing schools need it to improve their practice while effective performers need it to sustain and improve their good practices.
The professional development of school principals
South African Journal of Education, 2007
Many schooling systems do not fulfil their mandates because of poor m anagement and leadership. Similarly, the rigidity that one finds in schools does not only stunt schools' capacity to develop, but also leads to schools that are dysfunctional and u np rodu ctive. As a re sult, in cou ntries where there is universal transformation, efficacious management and leadership are elevated to the highest rostrum. In this paper I aim at investigating the necessity for professional development of school principals.
From Training Great Principals to Preparing Principals for Practice
International Journal of Educational Leadership Preparation, 2009
We oer the collaborative inquiry-action cycle as a framework for principals' practice and principal preparation. The cycle is a pragmatic tool that does not prescribe behaviors or contexts. Moreover, the cycle does not represent another programmatic solution or model for leadership. Rather the power of the cycle is that it drives collaboration, inquiry, and action as anchors for improving teaching and learning. The cycle uses these anchors to advance the knowledge, skills, and dispositions of principal candidates so they become inquiry-minded and action-oriented. Finally, this framework can be used by pre-service principal preparation educators to fulll three important functions: (1) provide a realistic educational experience for future school principals, (2) move away from a strict adherence to standards (what is taught) toward advances in the pedagogical experiences for students (how curriculum is taught), and (3) to meet external accreditation mandates.
The Principalship in the Twenty-First Century
2018
The success of every organization or institution relies heavily on the skillfulness of the leaders and managers anchoring the administration of such entity. Leadership is quite a herculean task which requires special trainings and updated skills in order to effectively govern both human and non-human resources of the institution. The school system, especially secondary schools, in the twenty-first century is quite different from the past centuries. Trends such as technology explosion, globalization, demographic changes, rising enrolment, knowledge-based economy, pressure for accountability coupled with call for value-based learning and financial constraints necessitate diversification of management strategies from the principals to administrators in order to achieve the stated goals and objectives of the school. The school is not an end in itself and purposely established to serve the society, principals have to brace up to acquire new strategies, and update their skills so that the...
The Principalship: Views from Without and Within
1982
Using the ERIC system, a library search of textbooks, publications from school administrator associations, and the _recommendations of educators and researchers, the authors survey the literature from 1970 through 1981 on the principalship, especially on educational leadership and administrative practices. They identify two types of literature-that by academics and that by principals-and compare the themes and assumptions found in the two sets. Academics' textbooks and writings, they find, tend to be theoretical, analytic, rational, impersonal, judgmental about principals and schools, prescriptive, and laden with an emphasis on principals' responsibilities. Principals' writings, howe-er, use concrete experiences and stories; see schools as nonrational, human, ambiguous, and diverse institutions; and avoid prescribing solutions. Further, say the authors, academics assume that their textbooks will be read, will be useful, and will make their readers more effective, while principals assume that, since little works well, they will share what works and it may help others. From their review the authors derive three suggestions for improving literrIture on the principalship: encouraging principals to write more, building practitioner-academic coalitions, and circulating better text's more widely. An appendix tracep changes in the principalship literature during the period 1970-1981. (RW)
Education Leadership Review, 2014
The need to recruit, prepare, and develop the next generation of educational leaders challenges states and localities everywhere. The complex demands of current educational reform initiatives have been articulated in national and state reports detailing the changing conditions of schools and provide compelling evidence for the necessity of new abilities and sensibilities at all levels of the profession. This article reports on research which examined four locations along the career continuum of school principals in Minnesota: 1) recruitment and selection, 2) university preparation programs, 3) licensing and certification, and 4) continuing professional development. We also include 18 specific policy recommendations.