Engaging actively in a meaningful learning process: The essence of being a school leader in Yayasan Seri Amal Medan-Indonesia

The role of school principal as a leader is imperative in determining school quality. Interest in school leadership and lack of study on leadership from the perspective of school leader in Indonesian context is the rationale of this research. The research focused on and explored lived-experiences of school principals. The aim is to determine and describe the essence of being school leader in Yayasan Seri Amal Medan-Indonesia. Since the issue studied is experience on “leadership” as a phenomenon, hence qualitative approach was the research method employed. Transcendental phenomenology with “epoche” or “bracketing researcher’s presupposition” on phenomenon is the most appropriate approach to describe the pure participants’ experiences. The research was conducted in Catholic schools of Yayasan Seri Amal Medan-Indonesia with five school principals as participants/co-researchers selected by using purposive sampling with certain criteria. Long and in-depth interviews with open-ended questions were done in collecting data. Data were analyzed using methods by Moustakas (1994). The result of data analysis revealed six core themes from all co-researchers’ experiences as a whole. Those core themes include: Goals Attainment; School Management; Collaboration; Teachers’ Development; Leadership Qualities; and Continuous Learning. The result also highlighted the experiences of the five co-researchers which are aligned with the findings in prior researches as reviewed in literature. The essence of being a school leader in YSA is: engaging actively in a meaningful learning process. It can be illustrated with a metaphor “like a captain in a big ship”. The ship is school, and the leader must be able to learn all challenges encountered that always change and can never be the same every time, and to empower all people involved in the school to reach the goals