Broken bridges: a social network perspective on urban high school leadership

2018 ◽  
Vol 56 (5) ◽  
pp. 562-584 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yi-Hwa Liou ◽  
Alan J. Daly
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
Social Network ◽  
School Leadership ◽  
High School Principals ◽  
School Principals ◽  
Urban High School ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Innovative Climate ◽  
The Social ◽  
Secondary School Leadership

Purpose Secondary school leadership provides multiple challenges in terms of the diversity of tasks, multiple demands on time, balancing communities and attending to instructional programming. An emerging scholarship suggests the importance of a distributed instructional leadership approach to high school leadership. However, what has been less thoroughly explored is how secondary school leadership is distributed leaders across a school district. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the social structure and positions urban high school principals occupy in the district system. Design/methodology/approach This study was conducted in one urban fringe public school district in southern California serving diverse students populations. The data were collected at three time points starting in Fall 2012 and ending in Fall 2014 from a district-wide leadership team including all central office and site leaders. All leaders were asked to assess their social relations and perception of innovative climate. The data were analyzed through a series of social network indices to examine the structure and positions of high school principals. Findings Results indicate that over time high school principals have decreasing access to social capital and are typically occupying peripheral positions in the social network. The high school principals’ perception of innovative climate across the district decreases over time. Originality/value This longitudinal study, one of the first to examine high school principals from a network perspective, sheds new light on the social infrastructure of urban high school principals and what this might mean for efforts at improvement.

scholarly journals Principals’ sense-making of resource allocation within a national reform implementation

2020 ◽  
pp. 174114322092119
Author(s):  
Sherry Ganon-Shilon ◽  
Emanuel Tamir ◽  
Chen Schechter
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
School Districts ◽  
School Leadership ◽  
High School Principals ◽  
School Principals ◽  
Sense Making ◽  
Allocation Of Resources ◽  
Reform Implementation ◽  
State Schools ◽  
Complex Matter

Through a sense-making lens, this qualitative study explores high school principals’ considerations while they perceive and enact additional resources within a national reform implementation. Principals’ allocation of resources, especially as part of a national reform, is a complex matter for schools’ effectiveness in an era of accountability. This study investigates data from interviews with 22 Israeli high school principals implementing the national reform in secular and religious state schools from all school districts. Data analysis has yielded three themes: (a) promoting students’ learning achievements towards matriculation exams; (b) deepening student-teacher relations; and (c) developing a new pedagogy. Exploring the allocation of resources to suit principals’ particular needs through a sense-making prism may contribute to the scholarship and to the practice of school leadership while promoting change within a national reform implementation.

scholarly journals Factors Affecting Smart School Leadership Competencies of High School Principals in Vietnam

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Duong Thi Hoang Yen ◽  
Le Ngoc Hung ◽  
Thi Thuy Hang Vu ◽  
Tan Nguyen
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
School Leadership ◽  
High School Principals ◽  
Quantitative Research ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
School Principals ◽  
Leadership Competencies ◽  
School Level ◽  
Quantitative Research Methods ◽  
Factors Affecting

Leaders of high schools in the context of the fourth industrial revolution face many challenges and new opportunities. Schools need to become smarter, more flexible, and more secure, and, therefore, the principal’s leadership competencies are likely to have new elements and be affected by new influencing factors. The aim of this study was to identify the factors that influence the competencies of school leadership in today’s increasingly smarter school landscape. Research was conducted using qualitative and quantitative research methods. The research sample consisted of 295 high school principals from five provinces and cities in Vietnam. The results showed that smart school leadership competencies depend on individual factors, school-level factors, and educational community-level factors. Smart school development policy and innovation of smart school infrastructure and facilities were identified as the most important factors.

Modeling critical leadership competences for junior high school principals

Kybernetes ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 49 (11) ◽  
pp. 2589-2613 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hui-Wen Vivian Tang
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
High School Principals ◽  
Junior High School ◽  
Principal Preparation ◽  
Junior High ◽  
School Principals ◽  
School Principal ◽  
Preparation Program ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Principal Preparation Program

Purpose Based on generic reviews of research on school leadership, this study aims to conceptualize an emerging leadership competence model for further prioritizing school leadership training needs by decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL)-based analytic network process (ANP). Targeting at a specific group of junior high school principals in Taiwan, the synthesized prioritization of core competences and competence indicators computed by DEMATEL-based ANP can be used as a blueprint for systematically developing school principal preparation programs elsewhere based on contextually specific needs and concerns. Design/methodology/approach For the purpose of detecting the priority of competences extracted from a plethora of literature in relation to school leaders’ skills, abilities and knowledge, a hybrid MCDM model, known as DEMATEL-based ANP, is used to snapshot critical leadership competences for tailoring the intended junior high school principal preparation program. Findings Results of global weight computations by DEMATEL-based ANP show that the overall prioritization of the five dimensions in ranking order are “Redesigning the organization,” “Related leadership practices,” “Setting Directions,” “Personal Characteristics” and “Developing People.” Factor-level analysis indicated that “Legality,” “Consensus Building,” “Shared Vision,” “Strategic Management,” “Authoritarianism,” “Modeling Behavior” and “High Performance Emphasis” were prioritized factors to be included in developing the intended school principal preparation program. Research limitations/implications Contextually based findings yielded from DEMATEL-based ANP would only be applicable to the target context under investigation. Generalizing the findings to junior high school principals elsewhere might not be appropriate. Methods introduced in this study are extensible to further studies aiming at shaping leadership trainings in other school settings to achieve maximum impact based on contextually specific needs. Limitations associated with sophisticated mathematical computations involved in performing high-leverage MCDM models would shed light on the importance of interdisciplinary collaborations between scholars, practitioners and methodologists. Practical implications To efficiently deliver training for junior high school principals, the prioritization of core competences and competence indicators solicited by DEMATEL-based ANP can be used as a scenario-based reference for planning the intended school principal preparation program planning, as well as a mechanism for selecting and evaluating potential and incumbent school principals with desired leadership competences. Originality/value This study has used DELATEL-based ANP as a decision-making tool to disclose a plethora of competences extracted from different threads in the literature into a prioritized competence framework that differs from past one-size-fit-all approach to design and plan school principal preparation programs.

School leadership, teacher’s psychological empowerment and work-related outcomes

2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (7) ◽  
pp. 1501-1514
Author(s):  
Kersti Kõiv ◽  
Kadi Liik ◽  
Mati Heidmets
Keyword(s):  
Job Satisfaction ◽  
School Leadership ◽  
Leadership Style ◽  
Indirect Effect ◽  
School Principals ◽  
Psychological Empowerment ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Work Related ◽  
Perceived Leadership ◽  
The Relationship

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the mediating effect of teacher’s psychological empowerment between school leadership style and teachers’ work-related outcomes. Design/methodology/approach A total of 711 teachers from 31 Estonian schools were surveyed with a questionnaire measuring four dimensions of psychological empowerment (competence, meaning, self-determination and impact), school leadership characteristics (leadership style, leader’s empowering behavior and trust in leader) and teacher’s work-related outcomes (job satisfaction and workplace attachment). AMOS path analysis was used to investigate the direct and indirect relations between the teachers’ perceptions of school leadership, their psychological empowerment and their workplace attachment and job satisfaction. Findings This study found that psychological empowerment (subscales meaning and impact) mediates the relationship between perceived leadership empowerment behavior and teachers’ work-related outcomes. Also, the psychological empowerment (meaning and impact) mediates the relationship between perceived leadership style and teachers’ work-related outcomes. Trust in the principal has direct and indirect effect (through psychological empowerment) on job satisfaction, whereas there only seems to be indirect effect on workplace attachment through two components of psychological empowerment. Practical implications The mediating role of psychological empowerment includes an important message for school principals – in order to empower employees it is not sufficient to merely delegate formal power and decision-making rights. To facilitate the development of psychological empowerment, it is important to provide employees with an opportunity to experience agency, to experience that their voice and opinions are taken into account (perceived impact) and the purpose and targets of the whole organization are discussed with the employees and formulated in collaboration with them (perceived meaning). Originality/value Psychological empowerment as a mediating variable has not been widely researched, especially in school environment. The results will provide important signals for school principals, where and how to find leverage to improve teachers’ job satisfaction and workplace attachment.

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