School Leaders’ Tasks and Professional Development

In 2016, 40% of the Flemish primary and secondary schools started with a new school leader. Moreover, school leaders increasingly resign after holding the position for two or three years. This implies among other things a loss of expertise and hence, research on school leadership and in-service professional development is needed. The present paper reports on a qualitative study regarding the perception of 16 primary school leaders about their day-to-day tasks, their perception of school leadership and their professional development. Findings demonstrate that school leaders fulfil a myriad of tasks including management tasks, solve all kinds of problems, fulfil administrative tasks, participate in internal and external meetings and coach all staff members. With regard to leadership behaviour, they mainly report relation-oriented, f.i. providing support and encouragement to teachers and task-oriented behaviour, such as monitoring operations and the quality of performance. Considering school leaders professional development, they indicated a variety of professional development methods. On the one hand they mentioned formal learning techniques: workshops, seminars, coaching trajectories and prolonged trainings, on the other hand they also explained informal learning techniques such as learning in interaction with others and learning by consulting theory.status: publishe