A Case Study On Promoting School Improvement By Principal’s Curriculum Leadership

Curriculum leadership is an organic combination of curriculum research and leadership science, either the goal of curriculum research or the aim of leadership benefit the development of school. Principal’s curriculum leadership considers the principal as the core of curriculum leadership to set the power of its own school, gather the resources outside the school, and revise the curriculum system of the school. All these things make it meet the characteristics of age and students. The work of curriculum leadership directly influences the quality of school education, and contributes to the improvement of school in the terms of integration and utilization of resources and renewing the school culture.Adopting the method of case study, this dissertation chooses a high quality urban primary school (C Primary School) as the case. Applying document analysis, interview and observation comprehensively, it reveals the process and mechanism of C Primary School that promoting school improvement by principle’s curriculum leadership. Combining theory with practice, it concludes the advantage of the curriculum leadership in the school improvement and generates the framework of promoting school improvement by principle’s curriculum leadership. What’s more, it puts forward further suggestions aimed at some problems that need to be paid attention to, hoping to provide beneficial information to the study of improving primary and secondary schools. The dissertation is divided into five parts.The first part is the introduction. Firstly, according to historical background and practical condition, it states the origin of the problem. Then, it has a consideration on the development of school improvement research and defines the core concepts of research. The second part is the research design. It includes the purpose, significance, thought and method of this study and the selection of case.The third part is the theory and hypothesis of research. Through the combing and analysis of literature, it reveals the internal relationship of the principal’s curriculum leadership and the school improvement in theory. They not just have common grounds which including unified theoretical basis, overlapping subject of reform, similar connotative system, and common core of leadership, but also advocate team work. Then, it preliminarily constructs the theoretical framework of promoting school improvement by principal’s curriculum leadership.The forth part is the process and discovery of research. Firstly, the dissertation expounds the general situation of C Primary School. Then, it emerges all the actions of C Primary School that promoting school improvement by principal’s curriculum leadership, which including determining the school’s development vision, guarding and exploiting school-based curriculum, developing distinctive school-based teaching and research, and implementing democratic school-based management. Next, it combined with interviews, observations and school documents show the improved effect. Finally, it concludes the advantage of the curriculum leadership in the school improvement and some problems that need to be paid attention to, as well as the framework of promoting school improvement by principal’s curriculum leadership. The principal’s curriculum leadership contributes to improving teaching quality, optimal utilizing the resources and creating positive school culture, but for the sake of becoming a continuous improvement, it should make efforts on curriculum development and integration, teacher professional development and the external cooperation and exchanges.The fifth part is the conclusion and suggestion of research. Firstly, it generally summarizes this research that we need to establish the concept orientation of curriculum leadership and draw lessons from the theory and practice of school improvement, as well as continuously reflect from the practice. In addition, it proposes suggestion to principle’s curriculum leadership and school improvement from five aspects including communication network, leadership culture, organization construction, teacher’s allocation and evaluation mechanism.