Paradigms of Leadership – Research on Thinking of Head teachers of Public Schools in Poland

Background. The leadership concept seems to be one of the most promising for attempting to understand and develop the nature of management in the public sector and especially in the sphere of educational organizations such as schools. It is also gradually becoming one of the important issues in recent reforms of educational systems. The problem is that there are different paradigms of thinking about leadership and that they lead to quite different practical applications. In that context it is essential to develop knowledge about ways of thinking and understanding of leadership concepts among those involved in educational management as this can be a crucial factor contributing to the effectiveness of reforms introduced into that domain of the public sector. Research aims. The main aim of the presented research was to identify ways Polish school head teachers think about leadership and compare it with the results of a different study carried out on an international group of students involved in special courses on educational leadership especially designed to develop a new understanding of leadership. Method. Research was based on Avery’s (2004) typology of four types of leadership: (a) classical, (b) transactional, (c) visionary and (d) organic. Author used a questionnaire designed using descriptions of four types of leadership that consisted of 15 questions concerning different aspects of leadership in schools as organizations. The research group consisted of 120 randomly selected groups of school head teachers from different types of Polish schools located all over the country. Key findings. Analysis of the collected data shows that the classical paradigm of thinking about leadership is the most frequently practiced among Polish school head teachers and the organic paradigm the least frequent. A comparison of the Polish group results with the international study shows the opposite results. It was also interesting that quite a big group of participants of the Polish study answered in such a complex way that their thinking was classified as “mixed paradigm”