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published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

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Today’s contemporary challenges of educating students place responsibility on school principals that may be unmatched by any other generation. Principals in their early years of the portfolio face an even greater task as they become comfortable with the portfolio and the school community which they lead. Drawing from the leadership literature that emphasized the importance of trust for effective school leadership and improvement, this qualitative study examines the formal and informal leadership practices of seven principals/ headmasters with less than eight years of experience in private high schools in Ontario. The study focuses on the practices that these leaders identify as being crucial to building trust. Their responses reveal that trust building includes personal and professional honesty, transparency and clear communication and a sharing of decision-making powers which all help to minimize the micropolitics that arise in a school, engenders better relationships with faculty members, increases capacity of faculty members more effectively, and ultimately provides support for the principal and decreases personal stress. This study contributes to the Canadian literature on school leadership and the literature on private school leadership and concludes with recommendations for both research and practice.

Today’s contemporary challenges of educating students place responsibility on school principals that may be unmatched by any other generation. Principals in their early years of the portfolio face an even greater task as they become comfortable with the portfolio and the school community which they lead. Drawing from the leadership literature that emphasized the importance of trust for effective school leadership and improvement, this qualitative study examines the formal and informal leadership practices of seven principals/ headmasters with less than eight years of experience in private high schools in Ontario. The study focuses on the practices that these leaders identify as being crucial to building trust. Their responses reveal that trust building includes personal and professional honesty, transparency and clear communication and a sharing of decision-making powers which all help to minimize the micropolitics that arise in a school, engenders better relationships with faculty members, increases capacity of faculty members more effectively, and ultimately provides support for the principal and decreases personal stress. This study contributes to the Canadian literature on school leadership and the literature on private school leadership and concludes with recommendations for both research and practice.

The study of promotion or executive succession has been of interest to educators since the beginning of schools. Who should be a school's principal? The purpose of this study was twofold. First to investigate executive succession within large, urban Canadian schools boards, and second, to use a dramatic work---a play---to represent the major findings. Theatre is used to present society and its workings, it is a method of data representation that permits human emotion, care, conflict and tension to become palpable, to provoke an audience. The two purposes of this study merged to provide insight unto the "reality" of school principals' promotions from the perspective of practitioners. / Data on promotion was collected from thirteen seasoned school administrators through extended interviews. Respondents were encouraged to relate stories of individual promotions, as they understood them. The data was transcribed and analyzed using the constant comparison approach. This method yielded multiple levels of analysis including areas of reference, spheres of infra-influcnce (highly related concepts), and rules of inclusion (subsuming large amounts of data). / It was clear that promotion was a "political act" where several stakeholders fought for their interests. Then followed transcendence---the movement from the naturalistically collected and analyzed data to the play---the movement from science to art form. The rules of inclusion inspired the foundations of the novella, the novella led to the play; characters, scenes and actions were developed. A group of actors rehearsed and prepared a staged reading. Tim play was presented to a group of educators who were asked to respond to it at two levels---the work as a provocation device for preparing educational administrators and the work as the "reality" of promotion. / Clearly, the theatrical work stimulated the audience and indicated there is a valid place in administrator preparation programs for dramatic works. As well, the notion of promotion as "seeking the best possible candidate" was challenged as stakeholders' Interests dictated both promotion procedures and candidate succession. The title, Transitional Wars, seemed to capture the essence of the work.

Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2009.

This is a qualitative study which investigates the attitudes of school principals towards school guidance in the historically disadvantaged secondary schools in the township of Madadeni. The sample consists of five secondary school principals recruited from Madadeni schools. Structured interviews were used to collect data. A set of questions were drawn up by the researcher and aimed at collecting such information as the opinions of the principals on the importance of school guidance, what school guidance should provide, adherence to school guidance periods, the role of a guidance teacher, and the expected position of school guidance in the Curriculum 2005. The results indicated that although the school principals see the need for school guidance in secondary school, there seem to be problems emanating from lack of resources and insufficient personnel. There were also indications that school guidance will have an important role in the Curriculum 2005 in the form of Life Orientation learning area. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 1999.