Challenges facing school principals: Problems and solutions

IF 2.7 2区 教育学 Q1 EDUCATION & EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH Educational Management Administration & Leadership Pub Date : 2022-05-27 DOI:10.1177/17411432221096238
T. Bush
{"title":"Challenges facing school principals: Problems and solutions","authors":"T. Bush","doi":"10.1177/17411432221096238","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"There is widespread evidence of the demands facing school principals in many parts of the world, illustrated recently by the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the normative preference for shared and distributed leadership in many contexts, principals retain the main accountability for school improvement and for student learning and welfare. The universal requirement for schools to be led by heads or principals reflects the importance of this role, and the pressures facing these senior leaders in most countries. These demands are particularly challenging in those many countries that do not provide specialised preparation or training for current or prospective principals. In the first paper in this issue, Mireia Tintore and colleagues present the findings of a scoping review of the problems and challenges faced by school leaders. They reviewed articles, books and book chapters, using keywords ‘problems’ and ‘challenges’, linked to principal or head teacher, finding 1138 sources potentially relevant to the review. The authors identify the main conflicts facing principals, including balancing system demands with leadership for learning, navigating pressures for autonomy and accountability and increasing pressures from families and the wider society. They conclude that the role of principals continues to be challenging. Marcus Pietsch, Pierre Tulowitzki and Colin Cramer report the findings of a study of principal ambidexterity in Germany, noting the need to simultaneously pursue exploitation and exploration. They also examine the relationship between these dimensions and the degree of competition between schools. They surveyed 405 principals from across the country. They report that these principals were more exploitative than explorative, and attribute this to inter-school competition and the need for schools to survive and, preferably, to flourish. While principals are central to school improvement, it is widely recognised that their impact is mostly indirect, via teachers. In the second paper focusing on Germany, Andre Meyer, Dirk Richter and Viola Hartung-Beck examine the relationship between principal leadership and teacher collaboration. The authors sampled 630 primary and secondary school teachers in one of Germany’s federal states. They found that teachers rated their principals’ instructional and staff development activities to be below average, despite the view that higher collective efficacy is reported where principals are involved in these activities. They conclude that principals rarely find sufficient time to devote to teachers’ professional development. Despite the ongoing emphasis on principal leadership, there is also increasing interest in shared models, such as distributed and participative leadership. A similar construct is democratic leadership, discussed by Monika Pazur in respect of Zagreb, a rare contribution to school leadership research in Croatia. The author claims that democratic leadership is oriented towards consensus with the leading process being shared between participants. Following ‘expert validation’, and a Editorial","PeriodicalId":47885,"journal":{"name":"Educational Management Administration & Leadership","volume":"134 1","pages":"533 - 535"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7000,"publicationDate":"2022-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"5","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Educational Management Administration & Leadership","FirstCategoryId":"95","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17411432221096238","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"EDUCATION & EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 5

Abstract

There is widespread evidence of the demands facing school principals in many parts of the world, illustrated recently by the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the normative preference for shared and distributed leadership in many contexts, principals retain the main accountability for school improvement and for student learning and welfare. The universal requirement for schools to be led by heads or principals reflects the importance of this role, and the pressures facing these senior leaders in most countries. These demands are particularly challenging in those many countries that do not provide specialised preparation or training for current or prospective principals. In the first paper in this issue, Mireia Tintore and colleagues present the findings of a scoping review of the problems and challenges faced by school leaders. They reviewed articles, books and book chapters, using keywords ‘problems’ and ‘challenges’, linked to principal or head teacher, finding 1138 sources potentially relevant to the review. The authors identify the main conflicts facing principals, including balancing system demands with leadership for learning, navigating pressures for autonomy and accountability and increasing pressures from families and the wider society. They conclude that the role of principals continues to be challenging. Marcus Pietsch, Pierre Tulowitzki and Colin Cramer report the findings of a study of principal ambidexterity in Germany, noting the need to simultaneously pursue exploitation and exploration. They also examine the relationship between these dimensions and the degree of competition between schools. They surveyed 405 principals from across the country. They report that these principals were more exploitative than explorative, and attribute this to inter-school competition and the need for schools to survive and, preferably, to flourish. While principals are central to school improvement, it is widely recognised that their impact is mostly indirect, via teachers. In the second paper focusing on Germany, Andre Meyer, Dirk Richter and Viola Hartung-Beck examine the relationship between principal leadership and teacher collaboration. The authors sampled 630 primary and secondary school teachers in one of Germany’s federal states. They found that teachers rated their principals’ instructional and staff development activities to be below average, despite the view that higher collective efficacy is reported where principals are involved in these activities. They conclude that principals rarely find sufficient time to devote to teachers’ professional development. Despite the ongoing emphasis on principal leadership, there is also increasing interest in shared models, such as distributed and participative leadership. A similar construct is democratic leadership, discussed by Monika Pazur in respect of Zagreb, a rare contribution to school leadership research in Croatia. The author claims that democratic leadership is oriented towards consensus with the leading process being shared between participants. Following ‘expert validation’, and a Editorial
查看原文
分享 分享
微信好友 朋友圈 QQ好友 复制链接
本刊更多论文
学校校长面临的挑战:问题和解决办法
广泛的证据表明,世界许多地方的学校校长面临着各种要求,最近COVID-19大流行带来的挑战就说明了这一点。尽管在许多情况下,普遍倾向于共享和分布式领导,但校长仍然对学校的改进、学生的学习和福利负有主要责任。学校由校长或校长领导的普遍要求反映了这一角色的重要性,以及大多数国家这些高级领导人面临的压力。在那些不为现任或未来的校长提供专门准备或培训的许多国家,这些要求尤其具有挑战性。在本期的第一篇论文中,Mireia Tintore和他的同事提出了对学校领导面临的问题和挑战进行范围审查的结果。他们回顾了文章、书籍和书籍章节,使用与校长或校长相关的关键词“问题”和“挑战”,找到了1138个可能与评论相关的来源。他们的结论是,校长的角色仍然具有挑战性。Marcus Pietsch, Pierre Tulowitzki和Colin Cramer报告了一项对德国主要双性手性的研究结果,指出同时追求开发和探索的必要性。他们还研究了这些维度与学校之间竞争程度之间的关系。他们调查了全国405名校长。他们报告说,这些校长更多的是剥削而不是探索,并将其归因于校际竞争和学校生存的需要,最好是蓬勃发展。虽然校长是学校改善的核心,但人们普遍认为,他们的影响大多是间接的,通过教师。在第二篇以德国为研究对象的论文中,安德烈·迈耶、德克·里希特和维奥拉·哈通-贝克研究了校长领导与教师合作之间的关系。作者对德国一个联邦州的630名中小学教师进行了抽样调查。他们发现,教师对校长的教学和员工发展活动的评价低于平均水平,尽管有观点认为,校长参与这些活动的集体效能更高。他们的结论是,校长很少有足够的时间投入到教师的专业发展中。尽管持续强调主要领导,但对共享模式的兴趣也在增加,例如分布式和参与式领导。莫妮卡•帕祖尔(Monika Pazur)在谈到萨格勒布(Zagreb)时讨论了类似的民主领导结构,这是对克罗地亚学校领导研究的罕见贡献。作者声称,民主领导以协商一致为导向,领导过程由参与者分享。以下是“专家验证”和一篇社论
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
求助全文
约1分钟内获得全文 去求助
来源期刊
Educational Management Administration & Leadership
Educational Management Administration & Leadership EDUCATION & EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH-
CiteScore
8.20
自引率
19.40%
发文量
63
期刊最新文献
Teachers’ professional learning: Do instructional leadership and teacher leadership make a difference in Turkiye? Approaching principalship in Sweden: Novice principals’ recollections of their career trajectories School leadership and student outcomes: What do we know? Gender differences in school leadership: Collaborative and task-oriented styles of principals in Andalusia, Spain ‘I have gained insight, direction, affirmation, and a network’. Examining the impact of the UK's first LGBTQ+ specific leadership development programme in higher education
×
引用
GB/T 7714-2015
复制
MLA
复制
APA
复制
导出至
BibTeX EndNote RefMan NoteFirst NoteExpress
×
×
提示
您的信息不完整,为了账户安全,请先补充。
现在去补充
×
提示
您因"违规操作"
具体请查看互助需知
我知道了
×
提示
现在去查看 取消
×
提示
确定
0
微信
客服QQ
Book学术公众号 扫码关注我们
反馈
×
意见反馈
请填写您的意见或建议
请填写您的手机或邮箱
已复制链接
已复制链接
快去分享给好友吧!
我知道了
×
扫码分享
扫码分享
Book学术官方微信
Book学术文献互助
Book学术文献互助群
群 号:481959085
Book学术
文献互助 智能选刊 最新文献 互助须知 联系我们:info@booksci.cn
Book学术提供免费学术资源搜索服务,方便国内外学者检索中英文文献。致力于提供最便捷和优质的服务体验。
Copyright © 2023 Book学术 All rights reserved.
ghs 京公网安备 11010802042870号 京ICP备2023020795号-1