Research On The Principal Competency From The Perspective Of Governance

With the expansion of the scale of school-running and the deepening of the complexity of the school-running process,the administrative authority continues to play an important role in school management,and at the same time,it increasingly relies on the participation of professional forces and social forces.Moreover,professional forces and social forces cannot play a full role in the traditional school management framework.The participation of professional forces in school education is not only limited in the framework of democratic management,but also has a profound impact on the scientificity of school decision-making.The participation of social forces in school development is not only the resource allocation at the level of market transaction,but also has led the direction of school education.Therefore,it is necessary to expand the vision of traditional school management,and bring the concept and practice of school governance into the school development strategy.After the concept and practice of school governance are integrated into the school development strategy,the school management paradigm will change.It is the change of school management paradigm that puts forward the need for adjustment and improvement of the principal competency model,which is necessary reexamine the principal competency.After bring the concept and practice of school governance into school strategy,What are factors will affect the work structure of principals?Under the influence of these factors,what is the ability of principals to understand and cope with the changes of work structure?Can the existing principal competency model explain the management behavior of principals?Based on a number of the existing studies on related topics,this study focuses on the three aspects of the principal competency from the perspective ofgovernance:professional working context,social working context and administrative working context.Furthermore,this study analyzes and discusses the aspects of principal role cognition and behavior characteristics under each working context.Using the method of qualitative research,this study interviewed principals,teachers,secretaries of the party committee of the school,vice principals,investigated and observed the management behaviors of 24 principals.It described and presented the real patterns of principals' management behaviors,and further revealed the significance behind these real state.This study found that:Firstly,after bring the school governance concept and practice into the school development strategy,principals need to interact with teachers,students,parents,community subjects with vertical power relationship with schools and community subjects without vertical power relationship with schools.In the interaction with these different subjects,principals play different roles,including managers,social activists and representatives and value leaders.For these roles,the principal basically recognizes and accepts the manager and the representative.They has different attitudes towards the social activist,and some of them take the initiative and some of them have no choice but to accept.The principal finds that personal authority can be established when leading by value,so they are actively building the role.Secondly,on the whole,in the speech of principals,they expect professional working context.In the real behavior,they attach importance to the administrative working context and less attention to the social working context.What the principal wants most is to be engaged in the management work inside the school,to play his own working ability in serving teachers and students.However,in reality,due to the restriction of the superior administrative power and the complexity of administrative affairs,the principal is more able to deal with administrative affairs.In addition,although the concept and practice of school governance are incorporated into the school development strategy,the principals also recognize the importance of interaction with the main body in the social work situation,but they have little efforts in action.What is different from this is that we find that teachers and other subjects agree with the principal's administrative working ability more than the principal's professional ability,which conflicts with the principal's own cognition.It is in such a conflict that principals are competent for their work.Thirdly,there are new phenomena in the management behavior of principals,such as the behavior of curriculum leadership and leading by value,which can not be covered by the principal model from the perspective of management.In addition,the principal competency model from the perspective of management lacks attention to the principal competency in different working contexts.All of these require the improvement of the principal competency model from the perspective of management and the construction of the principal competency model from the perspective of governance.Based on the above research findings,on the basis of replacing and adding the competency elements in the principal competency model from the perspective of management,this study constructs the ASP principal competency model from the perspective of governance.The model includes three kinds of competencies,three types of core responsibilities,four types of roles,five groups of competency features and 41 competency elements.The three kinds of competencies which are the administrative competency,the social competency and the professional competency.The core responsibilities that include exercising the administrative power in restriction and establishing personal authority in leading by value,interacting with parents and communities for getting resources,and serving teachers,students and schools by management.The four types of roles are managers,social activists,representatives and value leaders.The five groups of competency features are achievement features,influence features,management features,cognitive features and personal efficacy features.The 41 competency elements include initiative,value leadership,curriculum leadership,boundary management awareness,self-control,etc.Based on the above research findings and the principal competency model from the perspective of governance,this study puts forward some possible suggestions to improve the principal competency from the aspects of pre-service training,post-service training and self-improvement of the principal.Finally,this study discusses some shortages and the direction of further research.