New Primary Leaders

International Perspectives

Michael Cowie

• Publisher: Continuum
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781441171436
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Bildung
• Subtopic: Leadership in der Bildung

New primary leaders face significant challenges worldwide and this book brings together the range of those experiences and challenges for the first time. It includes interviews with primary school leaders in the early years of leadership in 12 different countries. Each chapter begins with an introduction to the principal and the local context before the principal's own description of her or his experience as a new leader. The leaders discuss how they prepared for principalship, their experiences after taking up the post, the extent to which the job meets with their expectations and their hopes and fears for the future. The final chapter provides a comparative overview, exploring new principals' perceptions of key influences on schools and their communities, their reactions to the multiple, heightened and often-conflicting expectations, pressures and challenges they encounter and the implications for principal preparation internationally. The voices of principals from around the world provide a vivid and authentic picture of new school leaders in different contexts at the beginning of the 21st century.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Editor’s Note
• Contributors
• 1 New Principals: Context, Culture, Preparation, Induction and Practice
• 2 At the Edge of the Silent Centre: An Australian Principal’s Reflections on Leading an Isolated School
• 3 Tihei Mauri Ora: Becoming a Primary School Principal in New Zealand
• 4 Leadership Based in Love of People and Place: A Novice Principal in an Economically Poor Community in Texas, United States
• 5 Changing School Perspective: A Challenge for an Elementary School Director in Mexico in Her First Years
• 6 ‘Something Greater Was Happening’: A Novice Principal Reflects on Creating Change through Building Community Relationships
• 7 ‘Our School Is Our Independence’: A Novice School Director’s Perspectiveon School Leadership and Post-Conflict Reconstruction in East Timor
• 8 ‘I Want to Do the Best Job That I Can, So I Worry’: A Novice Principal in China Reflects on the Responsibility and Complexity of Leading an Urbanizing Rural School
• 9 Life in the Principalship during Challenging Times: A New South African Principal’s Perspective
• 10 One Classroom, Seven Grades and Three Teachers: Challenges Faced by a Novice Headteacher in Tanzania
• 11 ‘I Think I Do a Good Job, But I Could Do a Better Job’: Becoming and Being a School Principal in Scotland
• 12 ‘Probably More Than I Bargained For’: A Headteacher in England Reflects on Her First Headship
• 13 When You Enter on the Dance Floor, You Have to Dance: A New School Director in Romania Reflects on Leading an Inclusive Community School
• 14 Comparing the Experience of Principals in Different Contexts
• Index