A Narrative Study Of The Practical Wisdom Of Secondary School Principals

With the development of education reform, the principal's professional development and the promotion of leading capacity are becoming more and more urgent. Meanwhile, the diversity and amalgamation of cultures, the conflicts and collisions of values, the accumulation and release of contradictions, and the breeding of new substance create the atmosphere of principal's professional life in contemporary China. A school principal, only with practical wisdom, can fully display the individual's unique style, making the management free, harmonious, open and achieve an education realm of the combination of science and art. Therefore, the practical wisdom that is full of changes and creation is of great significance in theory and practice to the sustainable development of education, characteristic construction of schools and principal's professional development.The principal's practical wisdom refers to his ingenious resourcefulness and smart talent by which he, on the basis of certain moral values, observe and solve the school management issues with the help of his knowledge and experience. This practical wisdom is not only the results of long-term practice, perception and reflection, in seeking educational management law, but also the comprehensive embodiment of the principal's highly person qualities in school-running concept, knowledge accomplishment, value orientation, pedagogical tact and management style, and so on.The principal's practical wisdom has four remarkable characteristics:creativeness, practicalness, tacitness and flexibility. This wisdom, supporting the detailed choice and judgement in reality, is supposed to get close to the principal's daily life and reflect how this wisdom comes into being in reality. Therefore, This paper use a narrative way to describe the professional development of a principal with practical wisdom, and present his practical wisdom in the perspective of management innovation, construction of teaching staff, teaching mode development, school branding construction, and the methods of managing occasional events. This could be the basis to start on the understanding of principal's practical wisdom.The promotion of principle's practical wisdom is a progress of gradual accumulation, which needs to clarify the generating elements and seek the professional development ways including expert guidance, peer coaching and self-reflection. The generation of practical wisdom is influenced by both internal and external factors. Among them, some subjective factors, such as the principal's individual experience, knowledge, thinking ability and disposition play a decisive role. It should combine the reality and ideality, make the practice reflection and action search as the foundation, rely on dialogue seminars and professional training, and make the principle's professional development become a process of full of reasonable and self-realizing. This is just the feasible way to promote the school principle's practical wisdom.