Primary School Principal Leadership Behavior Research

With the emergence of new public management movement,education reform have swept the world.As a result of the devolution of administrative power in education,elementary principals are getting more powerful and their responsibilities are enlarged,which significantly alter their roles and behaviors at school.Elementary school principals today are no longer passive education policy practitioners and school administrators.Instead,they are leaders in running school,shaping school and developing school.They have been key figures for the reform and development of schools.Due to the changes in the internal and external environment of schools,the factors that affect the development of primary schools are increasing,and various forces are interwoven into the school to jointly influence the school development and changes.Therefore,elementary school principals,who have become the vital core figures facing both opportunities and challenges,can never be blind to the problem----how shall they take effective leadership and balance reform and stability of a school.Under the new reform situation,the leadership of elementary school principals are confronted with the following problems: First,what changes have taken place to the leadership environment? What challenges have the changes brought to the principals' leadership behavior? Second,how are the principals executing powers endowed by the government to lead reforms at school? what are the problems with their leading practice? Thirdly,what are the factors that restrict the leadership behavior of the principals ? How do these factors interact with each other? It is the key to promote the education reform in our country to form a correct and comprehensive understanding of these problems.With the above understanding,it is believed that the study on the power-exercising process of elementary school principals are of vital importance among all other studies on the practice of principals' leadership.The reason is that school education reform is realistic and facing many uncertain factors;it can not be implemented either with a "metaphysical" thinking alone or administrative orders only.A holistic field exploration is needed for the shaping of theory,which form the bases both for other theoretical research and the school education reform practices.And only with a thorough observation and understanding of what is going on when elementary school principals take their leadership,the realistic approaches and methods for optimization can be discovered to put forward the basic education reform in our country.The beginning of the present study,which serves as the theoretical basis,presents an in-depth discussion on the theories about leadership behavior of primary school principals,including defining the concepts of leadership behavior and principal's leadership behavior,exploring the particularities of principal's leadership behavior,and analyzing the value as well as its contents of the leadership behavior.Then,a quality-oriented research is adopted for the purpose of better identifying problems the principals are facing,clearly presenting the situation they are in,analyzing their leading practice and discovering possible causes.Three elementary school principals are chosen for the long term follow-up survey,during which the principals' leadership practice are observed from the dimensions of leadership vision construction,association with teachers and negotiations of school external environment.At last,the research probes into the existing problems and conflicts during the elementary school principals' power executing process by analyzing data obtained from interview,observation and other research means so as to locate the underlying reasons that affect their behavior and put forward possible solutions.Through investigations and analysis,three defaults are found relating to elementary school principals' leading behavior: firstly,the leadership objectives are dislocated;secondly,the approaches for leading rigidify;thirdly,the leadership power is out of balance.Possible causes of the above defaults include but not limited to the following: 1)personal factors including education beliefs,education characters and life experience can affect principals' leadership behavior;2)school organizational culture infuses their behavior;3)social factors muzzle their behavior.All of these factors together have impact on the elementary principals' leadership behavior.Finally,possible strategies to optimize elementary school principals' leadership behaviors are put forward: on the part of the principals,their leadership behaviors should be more educational through principals' self-improvement;on the part of school,a better school culture of dialogue mechanism and incentive mechanism should be constructed;on the part of external environment,improved conditions outside of the school should be created through redefining power limits of the government and schools and getting the government-school relationship into a positive circle.