Looking behind the Curtain

Abstract

This article extends mixed-methods longitudinal research with school and district leaders (2008–present) about their most pressing leadership challenges. Here—through in-depth, qualitative interviews—we explore how a subsample of 30 principals described and understood their internal experiences of addressing pressing challenges. More specifically, using an adaptive/ technical lens, social-emotional frameworks, and constructive-developmental theory, we illuminate how principals‘ social-emotional and developmental capacities influenced their leadership, and highlight findings with in-depth mini-cases. By focusing on the inner workings of principals’ leadership for managing change, this article offers implications for professional practice and school-wide change locally and globally, leadership preparation, policy, and future research.

Elementary school principals’ work from the ecological systems perspective: Evidence from Finland

“…Principals face enormous implicit and explicit complexities in their work as they are required to deal with a variety of issues, such as distributing leadership, supporting everyone in their school community, adapting the Common Core and new evaluation systems and much more, all within accountability and sanction-driven context (Drago-Severson et al, 2018). Thus, managing multiple responsibilities and working under increasingly stressful conditions can result in lower levels of job satisfaction, increased occupational stress and burnout (Salmela-Aro et al, 2019) and have an impact on their occupational and overall well-being (Collie et al, 2020;Darmody and Smyth, 2016;Elomaa et al, 2021).…”

“…Darmody and Smyth (2016) found job satisfaction and occupational stress to be related to a complex set of personal characteristics, working conditions and school context. The personal characteristics influencing principals' work might be, for example, gender, age and length of service (Darmody and Smyth, 2016), health concerns (Elomaa et al, 2021) and internal dimensions of leadership (how a leader feels about the school, colleagues and themselves) (Drago-Severson et al, 2018). In addition, Leithwood and colleagues (2020) found that a set of cognitive (problem-solving expertise, domain-specific knowledge, systems thinking), social (perceiving emotions, managing emotions, acting in emotionally appropriate ways) and psychological (optimism, self-efficacy, resilience, proactivity) personal leadership resources can explain a high proportion of the variation in leadership effectiveness.…”

“…Buonomo et al, 2020;Leithwood et al, 2020;Milley and Arnott, 2016) and less on their experiences as principals. Considering the high workload and rapid changes in principals' work and the necessity that they receive the pest support possible to deal effectively with these factors, it is important to investigate principals' own perceptions about their work and occupational well-being (Drago-Severson et al, 2018). The current study contributes to the existing literature by suggesting a framework which could be used to investigate principals' work and leadership in a more personal manner.…”

“…Principals juggle multiple responsibilities and work under increasingly stressful conditions (Darmody and Smyth, 2016;Drago-Severson et al, 2018;Elomaa et al, 2021). The way principals conduct their leadership influences students' achievement, teachers' well-being, teacher instructional practices and school organisational health (Liebowitz and Porter, 2019).…”

“…Principals do not work in a vacuum: in addition to dealing with elements they cannot affect but which directly influence them (e.g. school context and publicity), interaction with different stakeholders on an everyday basis is an essential part of their work (Drago-Severson et al, 2018;Tintoré et al, 2020). Job characteristics such as job demands and resources affect employees' health and well-being (Bakker and Demerouti, 2018).…”