Download Reading 1.6 Planning for future leadership of schools: an Australian

leadership of schools: an
Australian study. Journal
of Educational
Administration, 40(5) 468
-485
D’Arbon, T., Duignan, P. & Duncan, D.
(2002)
There is growing evidence of a
worldwide shortage of persons willing
to apply for vacant principal positions
in schools
•Catholic education systems in Australia concerned lack of ongoing well
qualified principals.
•Need to develop a strategy to ensure these needs are met.
•However the lack of well qualified and highly motivated principals
applying for positions is not solely within the Catholic structure..
The Principal and its
challenges
• Leaders in contemporary educational organisations
are confronted by external and internal
challenges and expectations that make demands
on their time expertise energies and emotional
wellbeing.
- Held accountable for their performance
- Expected to comply to moral and ethical
standards of practices.
• Corporate leaders feel ‘excessive managerialism’
and of having ‘to do more with less’
• (Duignan and Collins, 2002) indicates that the
most difficult challenges facing educational
leaders present themselves as dilemmas,
paradoxes or tensions.
- People centred tensions and involving contestation
of values and/or ethical contradictions.
- Frequently had to make choices about people in
situations where there are no obvious answer
Principals were prepared and trained on
management competencies but were not
equipped to deal with such tensions.
Thus:
• The role and expectations for the
principalship are increasing in
intensity and complexity and are
causing many principals to reflect on
why they should continue to do the
job or why aspiring principals might
be discouraged from applying in the
first place.
• Lacey (2002) identified that school
prinicipals are embedded in school
communities which are becoming
more demanding and are surrounded
by a critical society.
• Draper and McMichael (1998) UK
research
Identified that the decision to apply
for principal ship was based on the
balance of lifestyle, personal
qualities and professional aspirations
as well as the job itself.
• Crows (1990) focussed on incentives
and disincentives. Whereas James
and Whiting’s (1998) findings
suggested that principals were given
a useful career as an anchorage.
Leadership in Catholic
schools
• Catholic schools are affected not
only by contextual stresses and
dilemmas but also by factors peculiar
to the Catholic Church and its
response to a rapidly changing
Catholic education system (Budge,
1994).
• Expected to take up the role as
religious leader ( in some cases such
a demand not all principals are ready
• Why are more eligible people not
applying for the principal ship in
Catholic schools?