Novice principals’ attitudes toward support in their leadership

Abstract

Novice principals experience intense work situations and various solutions have been suggested to handle them. This paper explores western Swedish novice principals' attitudes toward support in their leadership. Specific questions addressed are whether the principals believe that two approaches, the so-called heroic and distributed approaches, could improve their job satisfaction, pedagogical leadership and relationships within their schools. The research provides novel contributions as it combines a scenariobased experiment with follow-up interviews to provide new insights regarding school leadership. The results clearly demonstrate that novice principals experience intense working situations. Moreover, they show that the principals significantly favor the heroic leadership approach for promoting job satisfaction and facilitating relational aspects of their work. However, for mitigating the loneliness associated with a leadership role, the principals significantly favor the distributed leadership approach. Thus, the results raise questions about previous suggestions that distributed leadership is a panacea for principals' intense work situations.

Educating school leaders: engaging in diverse orientations to leadership practice

“…Former research on novice principals show that principals often suffer from a practical shock on entry into the profession. The challenge of being totally responsible seems to affect the prioritizing among a variety of tasks and impedes a distributed leadership even though this is demonstrated as an advantage for school development (Liljenberg & Andersson, 2019;Spillane et al, 2015;Spillane & Lee, 2014). This might be the case if novice principals do not adopt an organizational orientation but try to engage with work through managing tasks or by implementing a certain idea without negotiating meaning.…”

“…Facing a pressured work situation filled with conflicting demands, being totally responsible while having to prioritize among a variety of tasks, and dealing with a number of unforeseen events, new principals often are shocked by the demands that are placed on them when they first enter the profession-i.e., they suffer from a practical shock (Kelchtermans et al, 2011;Spillane & Lee, 2014). This sense of responsibility often results in new principals resisting a style of leadership associated with distributed leadership (Liljenberg & Andersson, 2019;Spillane et al, 2015). To create a vision of what to achieve, novice principals sometimes engage in diagnostic and design work to identify what works and what needs fixing (Spillane & Lowenhaupt, 2019).…”

Principals' Attitudes, Knowledge, and Beliefs Regarding Active Learning Methodologies in Spain

“…However, the attitude factor rarely stands alone; it is usually accompanied by other factors, such as beliefs, perceptions, opinions, or knowledge. Thus, based on related studies in the field, such as those by Liljenberg and Andersson [13], Touloupis and Athanasiades [14], Nehez and Blossing [15], and Maelan, Tjomsland, Baklien and Thurston [16], principals' attitudes should also be investigated.…”

Put Your Big Girl Knickers on! The Experiences of Two Female Leaders in New Zealand Primary Schools Turning Schools Around

“…Educational leadership researchers (for example Herlihy and Herlihy, 1980;Northfield et al, 2006;Starr, 2011;Northfield, 2014) found novice, transferring and women school leaders are more likely to experience isolation than male leaders who have been in their current school for 3 years or more. It is therefore probable that positional isolation (Wesson, 1998;Lindorff, 2001;Raymond, 2007;Kelchtermans et al, 2011;Spillane and Lee, 2014;Waytz et al, 2015;Liljenberg and Andersson, 2019) is associated with a lack of professional networks and professional socialization (Crow, 2006;Robinson et al, 2019) as much as it is able establishing oneself as the leader of the school. School leaders in small and/or rural schools are likely to experience geographic and social isolation (Starr and White, 2008;Halsey, 2011;Lock et al, 2012;Wildy and Clarke, 2012;Sayce and Lavery, 2013;Cornish and Jenkins, 2015) where the physical distance between schools and communities make it difficult for leaders to establish professional and social relationships outside of their community.…”