The Role Evolution Of The Principal

Principal is the soul of a school. Along with recent overwhelming trend of meliorating the cotidition of schooling and improving the quality of education all over the world, the importance of the principal, who is supposed to take the full responsibility of carrying out the reform efforts, can not be ignored. Due to the key role that the principals play in educational reforms, it becomes to be the heat issue regarding principal as well as principalship in recent educational researches. What are the qualities of the principals of the 21 st century is also the focus of the discussion among educators and educational theorists. In respect to quality of a principal, it should not be something intangible. It is the personalized requirement and reflection of the principalship. In this regard, understanding the characteristics of the principalship is the prerequisite of the research on qualifications of the principals. This research is trying to define the characteristics of the principals from the perspective of the role evolution of the principal. In this research, through literature review from a historical perspective on qualifications, main responsibilities, as well as selection of the principal, the researcher concluded that the principals of elementary and middle schools in China have evolved all the way from a simple supervisor, through conservative manager, then to an explorative director. The historical process of the evolution of principalship is also identified and illustrated.