The principal’s on-job training needs A career-stage perspective

1. The principal’s on-job training needsA career-stage perspective Izhar Oplatka Tel Aviv University

2. What I learned about the educational system in Chile… • Principals can work in public or (subsidized) private schools (…or be the owner-principal…) • People believe private schools are better (55% study there) • Policies in recent years made private education more available and popular among middle-class parents. • Increased centrally controlled accountability and greater competition between public and private schools. • Principals are required to sign a 5-year contract and are committed to increase student enrollment and improve student achievement in national tests. • Marketing-like, short term solutions rather than long-term processes of school improvement.

3. Continued • New principals are expected to be instructional leaders and entrepreneurs after one day in post (Leiva et al. 2017) • Principals experience tension, alimentation and a sense of abandonment by the municipality (Montecinos et al. 2015). • Empowered principals are supposed (in theory) to recruit better teachers and ensure their improved professional development (Weinstein & Munoz, 2013). • The average age of principals is 55.7 in 2012. • Public principals are not responsible for curriculum building and financial resource management in reality. • According to the ‘good school leadership framework’ principals should be trained in conflict management, curriculum management, resource management, ethos management and change implementation.

4. 1860………..…and…….….1865………. I am afraid your principals will undergo the same aging process…

5. Hall’s model of career growth development growth stagnation establishment exploration decline age 20 + 30+ midlife

6. Principal’s career stages • Induction: socialization, acceptance, learning the school culture, inexperience, developing a sense of confidence • Establishment: growth, enthusiasm, control, competence, confidence, identity-building • Maintenance vs. renewal: low levels of opportunities for growth, stagnation, or enchantment, renewal, high satisfaction

7. My argument… • Learning to a be a manager is a process that requires the development of managerial identity over time. • Every career stage is characterized by unique needs, experiences and maturity levels. • A lack of consistency between characteristics of the career stage and work demands may lead to low performances and failures. So, let’s move on…

8. Early career in principalship (1-3)

9. Major experiences in early career • A feeling of 'reality shock,' 'surprise,' and responsive orientation to the lack of a full understanding of what it is to be a principal or administrator. • An overemphasis on technical rather than instructional work aspects, resulting in some sense of frustration and lack of professional fulfilment. • Dealing with multiple tasks and unexpected negative events before acquiring sufficient practical managerial knowledge and skills. • The co-existence of challenges and enthusiasm along with stress, loneliness, professional insecurity and fear of failure. • Uncertain, sometimes suspicious principal-staff relations.

10. A female principal’s voice “First year, I remember I couldn’t sleep calmly even one night, this is a very stressful year, also the forthcoming years, but I always tell new principals that we are lucky, like in marriage, that first year never comes back. The tension in this year was unbelievable to me, not to make mistakes, to keep everything okay…”

11. Another female principal’s voice “There were many, many difficulties. Personally, it is not easy at all to grow up in the teachers’ room and then to become their principal. Sometimes I was telling myself, but you are the principal, but you are the principal, you can tell your staff what to do, you are not part of the teachers’ room anymore.”

12. Career tasks in early career • Mastering the basic skills and competencies needed to perform effectively and efficiently in principalship. • Developing an understanding of the school structure, culture and environment in order to stabilise one's position in the school. • Becoming accepted as a competent educational leader whose staff and stakeholders trust his/her expertise and ability to run their schools. • Devising a new school vision with staff and constituencies leading to a new change program for the school. • Coping successfully with stress, frustration and negative emotions that accompany the establishment of a new role.

13. stageFactors affecting early career • The principal preparation program. • The leadership style of the previous principal. • The support given from teachers and stakeholders. • Clear district expectations and goals • the capacity of the staff to handle change • Mentoring • The assistant principals (information they give…) Success, effectiveness, teacher morale, student achievement

14. Help me survive!!! I need on-job preparations that… • Sharpen and practice basic managerial needs • Train me in practical aspects of school budgeting, staff management, human resource management, self-marketing, time management, in-group communication • Guide me professionally and emotionally (workshops) • Include Workshops for discussion about fears and barriers, role-playing, simulations activities, case-study analysis, and excursions to schools Leadership? Not yet – I am not ready to be a leader! I have to learn to be a manager first! This may increase novice’s self-confidence, self-efficacy and to gain an initial sense of managerial expertise

15. Ejemplos … • How to build a management team? • What are the best ways to build trustful relations with the administrative staff? • How are principal-parents relations shaped to allow cooperation and trust? • Who is the role player that the new principal should discuss with about personal difficulties and problems at work? The education counselor? Other principals? Senior teachers?

16. The establishment stage (4-8/9) A time of growth and development

17. Career experiences at this stage • Higher levels of self-efficacy, professional confidence and feeling of control. • Greater attention to change initiation and implementation in the school. • A tendency to develop the school in accordance to the instructional vision. • More concern for students, teacher professional development, instructional technology and curriculum. • An ability to express greater sensitivity to teachers’, students’ and community needs. • A move from idealism to realism.

18. What kind of knowledge do established principals need? • External relations (e.g., school-community interactions, marketing, public relations). • Change management. • Instructional leadership (how to observe classrooms?) . • Innovative instructional technologies. • Forms and strategies of authority delegation Only now the principal can understand the meaning of Role playing, simulations and workshops Excursions to successful schools

19. Mid-career principals

20. Growth Acquire new skills Develop new ideas Break the ”awful” routine Enthusiastic and energetic Knowledge updating Change roles/schools Stagnated Engaged in what they know Stick to the status quo Bored with no energy low career opportunities Professional obsolescence Burnout and alienation What kind of principals shall we find in mid-career?

21. Many were found to …

22. What should in-service trainings do for principals in mid-career? • Make principals be familiar with the hazards of stagnation and boring after many years in post. • Help them cope with potential deterioration in post. • Encourage critical reflective thinking about one's career in order to acknowledge personal strength and weakness • Evoke professional updating, a search for new educational challenges, entrepreneurship… • Provide tools for conducting career change for those choosing to leave principalship. Discussion groups, personal narratives, and documentation of life-story may guide the mid-career principal in his/her way for professional renewal.

23. It is a time to be a mentor… Studying the complexity of mentoring relations A strong desire to leave a legacy Mentoring new principals or prospective principals

24. It is a time to be a transformational leader!

25. Late-career in principalship (13+)

26. Physical and mental withdrawal Slow reactions Subject to illness Unwilling to change Hard to train Deficits in processing capacity Declining intellectual performance Socially conscientious Loyal to work High level of skills No different between younger workers Deepened expertise High job satisfaction Mature Consultation A dual portrait of late-career workers

27. Findings – general picture Five major but not necessarily interrelated career issues in late career in principalship: • Enchantment and creativity • A sense of greater professional competence • Change initiation and implementation • Participative and considerate leadership • Changing the focus to other life spheres

28. Late-career principals’ voices • I still feel the enchantment of creation, and that's what distinguishes between a burned-out principal and I still fight for things I believe in, I still enjoy a child’s smile, I still cope with problems at school, and I'm not bitter… (F, 56) • I don't feel at the end of the road. I feel I have much energy and enthusiasm to go on working and doing for the school…and I hope to be healthy and energetic. (F, 55) • …I miss the school, the kids. I come every day with a song in my heart; I love my work. (F, 57)

29. A sense of greater professional competence …You acquire experience. If you made small mistakes in negotiations, you learned from that. Today I'm not making mistakes that maybe I would have made before I had professional experience…for example, the experience I acquired in interpersonal relationships, in budgeting helps me very much today. (Male, 59)

30. So, what’s the point in training late-career principal? On-job trainings may help them: • refine and sharpen their managerial expertise, • update their knowledge, • increase their self-image to demonstrate their relevance to principalship • Expose them to new instructional technologies, or new leadership styles

31. How? • Personal diary through which late-career principals may express their professional expertise and contribution to the area of school management, • discussion groups about the state of school management today as compared to the past, • excursions to extremely innovative educational institutions, • learning from colleagues, • meetings with education officials in a wide variety of agencies and institutions. Stimulate new challenges Facilitate the career exit

32. Our message as scholars in educational administration Educational leadership is extremely complex profession in our era of neoliberalism and accountability On-job trainings should be properly designed to facilitate the fulfilment of this role for the sake of our children worldwide