Core values of educational leadership : how school leaders understand concepts of development and learning

The educational management theory still needs ideas and concepts that can help to better understand and describe, but also stimulate the organizational development of schools. A good example for this is the concept of leadership is It has been used in discussions aiming to define skills and competencies of people responsible for school management, especially since the early 1990s. Regardless of this fact, it must be noticed that the educational management theory still needs ways of thinking about leadership that would be adequate for educational contexts. The author argues that the attempts to define educational leadership have to reject the attitude of transferring theories and concepts from the general management theory and start from pointing out core educational values and building a specific understanding of educational leadership on that basis. The author proposes to put individual human development and learning as the core values defining educational leadership. The problem is that core educational values can be defined in a different way. In this case it it crucial to identify different understandings of core values among professionals responsible for leading educational organizations, since different understandings can influence people’s actions. This paper presents the results of the research on the understanding of development and learning among school heads in Polish schools. The research was carried out with the participation of a group of headmasters taking part in a project that tries to build a new model of school head professional preparation, induction and continual professional training. This paper shows different perspectives on these values and tries to discuss practical consequences on different ways of understanding