Analyzing the lived experiences of school principals from school administration and leadership

Document Type : Research Paper

Author

FUM

Abstract

Introduction: The current research was conducted with the aim of analyzing the lived experiences of school principals from the phenomenon of educational administration and leadership with regard to their roles and responsibilities in the school.

research methodology: In this study, descriptive phenomenological research method was used. The participants of this research were the principals of the schools of districts one, three, four and Tabadakan district of Mashhad in the academic year of 2019-2020, which were selected with the purposeful sampling method and criteria such as administrative experience of more than 15 years, gender (male and female), girls and Since the school is for boys and in both primary and secondary levels, 28 school principals were selected as key informants to describe their roles and responsibilities in the school from their own perspective and language. In order to collect data, semi-structured interviews were used and thematic analysis method was used for data analysis. Also, in order to ensure the validity of the results, three validation techniques were used by the members, analytical comparison and external review.

Findings: The results of the qualitative data analysis showed that instructioal leadership (planning and setting instructioal goals, concern for improving student learning, continuous presence of the principal, monitoring and evaluation of teaching and learning and professional learning of teachers), school communication (communication with outside the school, inter-school communication), supportive school culture (supporting students, supporting teachers and creating a friendly atmosphere), collaborative school culture (parents' participation, collaborative decision-making in the school) and administrative and executive affairs (administrative and financial management, preparation School in the summer, organizational powers) introduce the most important roles and responsibilities of the studied principals in the phenomenon of educational administraion and leadership.

Conclusion: It seems that the roles and responsibilities of principals have been considered in recent studies in the context of educational leadership, learning-based leadership, distributed leadership, transformational leadership, ethical leadership, managerial leadership, interpersonal leadership and collaborative leadership.

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