It is well known that leadership plays a key role in the overall success of school and learner achievement. Therefore, this multiple case study investigates what developmental programmes and training opportunities are in place to prepare HoDs to meet the demands of a formal leadership position. How these programmes are perceived by HoDs s also be outlined and analysed. The importance of the role that HoDs fulfil in schools is explored, as well as the importance of investing in their leadership development through formal and informal leadership developmental programmes. This qualitative study used interview data obtained from eight purposefully sampled recently appointed Heads of Department (HoDs) in public primary schools in Pretoria. This study outlined the importance of middle managers, such as HoDs and what measures need to be taken into account to ensure they are adequately prepared to meet expectations. / Dissertation (MEd)--University of Pretoria 2020. / Education Management and Policy Studies / MEd / Unrestricted

School principals lead and manage schools to achieve success. However, some schools are located in multiple deprived contexts, which affect the school internally and externally. Little is known about how principals in well-performing schools manage teaching and learning despite the contextual challenges. This study explored the role of successful school principals managing teaching and learning in schools in multiple deprived contexts in Gauteng Province. A qualitative case study within a constructive / interpretivist paradigm was adopted for the research. The theoretical framework of this study is grounded in the Context-Responsive Leadership theory by Bredeson, Klar and Johansson. Eleven secondary schools performing well in the Senior Certificate Examination in Tshwane North District were purposefully selected for the study. The school principals were the participants in this study. The data was obtained from different sources which include semi-structured interviews, observations and documents review. The data was thematically analysed and the results were categorised according to themes and sub-themes. The findings of the study highlight the economic and social factors used by the principals to describe the context of their schools as well as other external and internal factors that affected teaching and learning. Collaborative leadership, as well as instructional leadership of the school principal, seem to be a common strategy used by the principals of successful schools to overcome the contextual challenges. The principals also applied other relevant context-responsive leadership practices in their multiple deprived schools. The study concluded that leadership practices of school principals seemed to be based on an understanding and interaction of self and the context in which the school operates. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2019. / Education Management and Policy Studies / PhD / Unrestricted

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Thesis advisor: Shanta Pandey / Thesis advisor: Eduardo Abarzua / Stress among school workers and teachers is a growing global concern, specifically in Chile. This has worsened in post-pandemic times. School leadership can be a key factor for school performance and employee well-being. In Chile, although research in this area is still limited, it has suggested the importance of the role of school leaders in the work environment. The local context seems to affect the school leaders’ capacity to promote well-being. While the leaders’ influence on workers’ work stress and well-being is well established, we don’t know its mechanisms. It is not clear how personal and local contextual factors that influence school leaders' ability to manage work psychological risks are associated with work stress. Informed by conceptual frameworks of risk management, this dissertation helps to address current gaps in knowledge by probing the impact that leaders have on work stressors in a school setting within a school district in Chile. The author used mixed methods to accomplish this study’s objectives. Quantitative data were obtained from the Questionnaire of Psychosocial Risk Surveillance in the Workplace collected from 1,194 school workers of Talcahuano School District (DAEM) in 2018. The Qualitative data was obtained by conducting 12 semi-structured interviews with principals and pedagogical heads of the Talcahuano School District in 2022.Four key findings from this study will advance empirical knowledge of School leaders' abilities to manage and change the work environment: (1) The extent of school leaders’ influence on job stress is significant and relative. This influence is not the same for all psychosocial risks; for some, the leaders had no impact. Also, leaders’ capacity to influence the work environment varied by the school setting's meso and macro level factors that constrain leaders' abilities to mitigate these risks. (2) In addition to contextual constraints, School leadership substantially influences some risk factors compared to other predictors related to the school context and school leader characteristics. In the quantitative analysis, Quality of Leadership is a significant predictor of some stress-related risks and alone explains 8% of the variance in Psychological Demand and 23% of the variance in Meaningful Work. Qualitative results also suggest some possible ways for leaders’ practices and behaviors to influence other risks. (3) Leaders' general approach to work stress is characterized by their idea that work stress is a reaction to the whole environment of the educational system (micro, meso) and that they can manage stress among staff by focusing primarily on the socio-emotional aspect of the school and its environment. (4) School leaders implied that they can better reduce the stress level of workers with support at the meso and macro levels of management. The results also shed light on trends in pandemic and post-pandemic Schools’ work-stress. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2023. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Social Work. / Discipline: Social Work.

While scholars have investigated the impact of school start times on adolescent students, there is limited research on how school start times affect teachers. In addition, recent reports of declining teacher morale emphasize the need for further study on influences of teacher satisfaction. Using secondary analysis of data from the 2017–18 National Teachers and Principals Survey (NTPS), this study measured relationships between school start times and other characteristics of responding teachers (n = 44,319) and their schools. The results identified trends in school start times by school level and community density. In addition, a statistically significant positive relationship between school start time and teacher satisfaction was found, as well a statistically significant negative relationship between school end time and teacher satisfaction. These findings suggest a need for further research on the association between school schedules and teacher satisfaction, but other variables appear to have a stronger influence on teacher satisfaction, such as teacher engagement in professional development. / Educational Leadership

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The cornerstone of transformational leadership is vision. For our school leaders to act as more than middle managers, they have to foster a school community's vision - cultivate the school community's direction and purpose. This qualitative study uses semi-structured interviews with school leaders and following focus groups with their teachers to understand better how principals develop and instantiate their vision and how this vision is perceived to have manifested by the school community. This study was designed to answer the questions of (1) do principals have a clearly defined personal vision for the schools they serve, and in what ways do they enact their vision?, (2) what professional and training experiences contribute to how a principal develops a vision for a school?, (3) what the relationship between the articulated vision and the culture of the school? The four themes that emerged from this study were that ( 1 ) principals have guiding statements that serve the same purpose as a formal vision that gives them and their school communities direction for the work, (2) principals primarily invest their teams in a shared vision through a visioning process, (3) principals most cited avenue for vision development was through working with others, and (4) principals whose articulated vision most aligned with the culture of the school were successfully able to operationalize the vision. The recommendations and implications for all stakeholders from this research are that (1) principals are trained taught how to develop guiding statements, (2) principals are taught how to invest others in a shared vision, (3) the importance of mentor matching and principal reflection in the principal training and development process, and (4) principals are taught how to operationalize their vision through ongoing coaching and support. / Educational Administration

The purpose of this study was to determine if the teachers in Sullivan County perceive that principals used the same leadership practices as the principals reported they use. The researcher used the survey method of data collection in which 897 teachers were given the opportunity to participate and 576 teachers returned completed surveys (63.2%). In addition, 29 out of 29 principals participated in the research (100%). The Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI) (Kouzes & Posner, 2003a) was used to gather information regarding the principals' leadership practices. Principals self-reported their perception of their leadership practices, whereas teachers reported their perceptions of their principals' leadership practices. Two major findings of this study were that principals reported significantly higher levels of each leadership practice than both the Kouzes-Posner norms and their teachers' perceptions of their principals' leadership practices. In addition, there was no difference between male and female teachers' perceptions of their male principals' leadership practices. However, there were significant differences between male and female teachers' perceptions of their female principals' leadership practices for all five behaviors. In each case, male teachers evaluated their female principals' leadership practices higher than did female teachers.

Swedish school law stipulates that the work of student health teams in schools should be mainly health promoting. However, earlier scientific studies and reports from authorities show that most schools work aren’t. The aim of this study is to investigate how principals in five upper secondary schools organize and lead the health promoting work and what challenges they experience in their leadership with regards to health promoting work. The study is qualitative, based on a content analysis of semi-structured interviews with five upper secondary principals in Sweden. The results of the study show that even though the principals have access to interprofessional health teams and good organizational structures the student health work in four out of five schools mainly focus on remedial work and that more must be done in order develop their health promoting work. More focus must be appointed to developing teaching and teachers and student health team personnel must work closely together. In addition, principals must integrate their health promoting work in the systematic quality work of the school.