The Research On The Factors Influencing Excellent Principals' Professional Development

As the leader of the kindergarten, the principal is the soul of a kindergarten. He or she plays an important role in the quality of education and even in the development of the whole nursery school. However, due to a lot of restraining factors, such as the low admission requirements on occupational qualification of the head of the kindergarten; the majority of principals having previously been kindergarten teacher or directly detached by the Administrative Department at the Higher Level, a lot of principals don't have actual ability and internal qualities. So they cannot be competent for their management jobs. This phenomenon restricts the development of principals'profession to a certain degree. At the same time, it also hinders the development of the kindergarten in a scientific and effective way. In order to be more competent for their management jobs, principals need to enrich their major knowledge. They hope to advance their professional skills through their continuous effort. Certainly, in the group of the principals, there are many excellent ones. Their experiences of professional development have strong representativeness. These successful experiences have set a good example for a large number of principals in their professional development.The principal should not only be an vocation, but also a profession. This research is based on the professional development of the head of kindergartens, teachers and principals and discusses the issue from the perspective of the individual principals. The process of principals'professional development is the same process in which their internal profession structures are continuously renewed, developed, enriched and improved. It is the process in which principals'individual profession increasingly perfects. Principals'professional development can be divided into four related and temporally connected stages: pre-vocational preparation, adaptation, competence and maturity.This research focuses on excellent principals. Both quantitative and qualitative methods are used, specifically documentation, questionnaire and interview. Through a questionnaire for 62 excellent principals quantitative data are obtained and analyzed, a general conclusion is then reached. Five of the principals are selected for a semi-structured interview and their real ideas and experiences in the process of the principals'professional development. In this thesis, internal and external factors influencing the principals'professional development are carefully probed and comprehensively analyzed; thus the genuine and convincing first-hand material is obtained.The studies show that among a large number of factors influencing the excellent principals'professional development; internal factors are more influential than external factors. The excellent principals'professional development is resulted from the interaction of the two factors. In the internal factors, principals'educational beliefs play a leading role among all the factors. This is a deep-rooted factor in principals'professional development. In addition, study and introspection, personal capability, the requirement and consciousness of their individual development, the attitude and motivation for their profession also have an effect to a different degree. Among the external factors, the kindergarten environment is the micro-environment of the principals'professional development. At the same time, the attitude and the action of superior organization and leaders, the autonomy of kindergarten's establishment also have strong influence on principals'professional development.Based on the above conclusions, the author of this thesis suggests the strategies of promoting the principals'professional development internally and externally. First, the principals should consciously promote their own development in the following aspects: inheriting the notion of education in running the kindergartens; keeping on studying and introspecting the experience of running kindergartens; elevating the capability and consciousness of individual professional development; and hold the right attitude and motivation in the process of running the kindergartens. Second, the external environment should be optimized in order to benefit the principals'professional development. The administration department of education should promote the principals'professional development by cultivating principals, establishing the corresponding principal management systems, and authorizing adequate right to manage their professional business. Key words: excellent principal, professional development, influencing factors...