As women secondary school principals navigate their career paths and manage their work-life roles, they encounter varied obstacles and barriers requiring them to shift, pause, restart and maneuver to reach their goals. The purpose of this qualitative study is to capture an understanding of how women secondary school principals in British Columbia,…

We argue that teacher autonomy should be conceptualised differently from its current form, that confines teacher autonomy to the individual, or to freedom from control. Here, we investigate the role of trust concerning teachers' perceptions of their own autonomy, embedded in differing contexts and relations. To display contextual variations, we…

This paper investigates how the participants in literacy coaching (teachers, literacy coaches, and principals) perceive the success of their literacy coaching programs. This qualitative study uses data from interviews and observations of literacy coaching from three schools in Ontario, Canada. Four perceived indicators of success were found:…

Teachers might be working significantly more with one another, but principals are not. Superintendents might bring principals together for district meetings or even to expose their performance results to colleagues in public, but principal collaboration is too often trumped by district control. Even worse, more and more schools and their…

Trust is a critical factor in determining whether principal-teacher working relationships are positive or negative. This article begins to explore the concept of trust and its development in twelve Canadian secondary schools that experienced frequent principal turnover in a period of eight years. The authors found that the development of trust…

Discusses why the principal's position in the school system in general and within teachers' organizations in particular is, at present, hazy and in urgent need of reappraisal. (NEC)

The challenges of school restructuring have been cited as reasons for advocating a move from instructional to transformational forms of school leadership. This paper presents findings of a study that examined teachers' overall perceptions of their principals' transformational leadership performance. It also examined teachers' perceptions of how…

School culture consists of "the beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors which characterize a school" (Phillips, 1996, p. 1). It is the shared experiences both in school and out of school (traditions and celebrations) that create a sense of community, family, and team membership. It affects everything that happens in a school, including student…

Findings of a study that examined the nature of transformational leadership in 10 Canadian secondary schools are presented in this paper. Interviews were conducted with all of the principals and vice-principals and a sample of department heads in 10 secondary schools identified as successful in implementing change. This paper presents findings…

This paper summarizes a Master's project designed for principals who are interested in pursuing instructional leadership in their schools. The first part provides the principal with an overall understanding of, and rationale for, the role of the principal as instructional leader. The second part, written in the format of a handbook, describes the…