School leadership writ small: Meetings and school principal practice

Abstract

This paper systematically reviews literature on meetings of the principal or principal meetings from 1970 to 2021. Even though meetings comprise the largest percentage of principal time, they have been overlooked as a topic of research. The purpose of this review is to study notations of meetings in academic literature and develop analytical insights on school leadership practice. The systematic literature search used keyword search, snowballing, and personal network references to yield 62 academic publications. The results of the review indicate that educational literature provides limited and often summative notations of principal meetings. Importantly, the limited notations are still able to illuminate and nuance three dimensions of school principalship – bridging, bending, and balancing. Further, three possible conceptualizations of principal meetings as waste of time, familiar events, and intervention tools provide analytical insights into meetings as a microcosm of school principal practice. Implications for theory, practice, and further research are provided.