Is a Principal Still A Teacher?: Role Discontinuity in the Lives of Women Administrators

From a life course perspective, this paper examines role discontinuity as a potential barrier to women aspirants to the principalship. Common barriers to the principalship, such as discrimination in hiring and promotion, lack of mentoring, and the entrenchment of the "good old boy network, " have been well documented. However, role discontinuity between teaching and administration has been under explored as a potential barrier, especially for women aspirants who have had long tenures as teachers. On the contrary, prior literature portrays women’s transition from teaching to administration as a continuous (and presumably, harmonious) trajectory. Because scant research exists on within-group differences and barriers among women aspirants, we know very little about their subjective experiences with this dramatic role change. Utilizing personal accounts and surveys, I examined the transition experiences of 31 African American and Caucasian women administrators in the Chicago metropolitan area. On their way to the principalship, these women experienced intense role conflicts which emerged from their movement from the relatively private and intimate domain of the classroom where they focused on instruction and on students, to the public domain of the school where the