The Principal in a Process of School Revitalisation: a Metastrategic Role

The Principal in a Process of School Revitalisation: a Metastrategic Role - "The educational literature has popularised models of school leadership such as Instructional, Transformational, Strategic, Educative, and Servant Leadership. Whilst valuable as ways of conceptualising leadership styles, worldviews, traits, roles and functions of individual principals, these models fall short of capturing the dynamic between the outcomes of leadership and the leadership process in contemporary school contexts. Distributed leadership theory is held by many to be more attuned to the post-industrial needs of organisations, and its influence on educational research has seen the emergence of new ways of comprehending leadership in schools. One influential example is ‘parallel leadership’, a derivative of distributed leadership that describes teachers as leaders of curriculum and pedagogy and principals as metastrategic leaders. This study looks specifically at the leadership processes of a small sample of principals in the process of school revitalisation titled IDEAS (Innovative Designs for Enhancing the Achievements of Schools)."