Study On Professional Quality Of Primary And Secondary School Principals

The current basic educational level of China is still lagging behind that of developed countries to a certain extent, and it does not fully adapt to China’s economic and social development needs or ordinary people’s educational needs. As the main entities of providing basic education, primary and secondary schools’capacities determine the development level of basic education, and the capacities of primary and secondary schools are determined to a large extent by the capacity and quality of principals. Along with the deepening of China’s educational reform and the strengthening of schools’autonomy, principals, as supreme leaders of schools, is witnessing profound changes in its functions and roles. Demands by the government and the public to the ability and quality of principals of primary and secondary schools are also increasing. But currently, institutional construction concerning the ability and quality requirement, qualification and evaluation system for principals is still somewhat backward, mainly because the study on principal professionalization as its theoretical basis still needs developing.Primary and secondary school principals have become an important force affecting the development of China’s basic education. Professionalization of principals is an inevitable trend of the development of the role of principals and a necessary demand and future direction of the educational reform. Professionalization development and management has been increasingly covered and emphasized by the theoretical and educational sectors and has become a focus and emphasis of theoretical research and practical exploration. Among all the problems concerning professionalization development and management of primary and secondary school principals that puzzle primary and secondary school principals, the following outstanding problems need urgent solving:firstly, different groups, such as administrative departments of education, senior management of primary and secondary schools and ordinary primary and secondary school teachers hold very different views on the professionalization of primary and secondary school principals, this has caused chaos and confusion on the management and talent training; secondly, the professional quality or professional training and development of many primary and secondary school principals is not sufficient in China, this does not only affect the job performance of them but also restrict the development of China’s-modern school institutional’building and the educational level of primary and secondary schools.To solve these problems, this study firstly draws on the basis of theory and research, by empirical methods of interviewing and questionnaire, discuss the professionalization quality standard of China’s primary and secondary school principals from the perspectives of political quality, operational capacity and management level and develop models for principals’professionalization, and based on these models, explore selecting, training and professional evaluation mechanisms for primary and secondary school principals. Secondly, as available researches in China and abroad lack the study of the relationship between professionalization quality structural elements and job performance, this study will discuss the impact of the elements of principal professionalization quality models on their individual job performances, including its strength and relevance, and therefore analyze the current situation of China’s principal performance and ways and measures to improve it. Thirdly, by analyzing and researching many problems in the selection, use and evaluation of primary and secondary school principals, based on principal professionalization quality models, this study will explore the rank system of China’s primary and secondary school principals.The article includes nine parts totally. First of all, the introduction, defines basics concepts such as principal professionalization, professional quality of principals, schoolmasters rank system and performance. It also combines relevant theoretical results and give brief reviews, and finally proposed ideas, technology path and method of this study. The first chapter gives a brief description of the basis of the theory and proposes the basic theoretical assumptions of this study:the professional quality structure of China’s primary and secondary school principals includes seven elements:political quality, professionalism, professional ethics, professional ability, professional knowledge, professional experience, and physical and mental qualities. There are differences in the importance of various elements and therefore affect the prediction effect and impact of principal job performances. The second chapter introduces empirical research in scale design and survey implementation, including the theory base, pre-interview and pre-survey of scale design, and scale test. After that, it gives descriptive statistics of the formal investigation. In the third chapter, by statistical analysis of the survey, it studies the structural elements of school principals’professional quality and finds the seven dimensions of the school principals’professional quality is a hierarchy but there are great correlations between them and severe imbalance in the seven professional qualities is not possible. The fourth chapter, by comparing the cognitive differences reflected in different positions’answers to surveys of principal professionalization quality structures, it concludes that demands for principals from different groups holding various positions will cause not only homogeneity in the elemental structure of principal professional qualities but also differences. This also shows that attention should be paid to the difference in perception of the quality structure caused by position differences and therefore adapt to needs by different groups for the quality of principals. The fifth chapter mainly constructs the structural equation models between the seven elements of principal professional quality and the task and relationship performance, and therefore discusses the effecting elements of the performance. After analyzing and combing task and relationship performances, we can see that professional spirit and competence are the most important elements affecting job performance of the principals. The sixth chapter analyzes and compares the cognitive differences of surveyed persons in three kinds of positions in their recognition of principals’professionalization-performance models and finds that professional ability, ethics and spirit have a significant influences on the overall performance models of school principals and their influences on task and relationship performances are relatively even but the other four kinds of professional qualities have relatively low overall influence on the performance. This difference also reflects the actual work conditions of China’s school principals. The seventh chapter is suggestions based on the principal professionalization quality structure model, including specific suggestions on building principal occupation analyzing system, talent selection and reservation mechanism, professional training and education mechanism, professional standard evaluation system and improving principal performance management system. In the end, it discussed about measures and methods in constructing principal rank system and payment incentive mechanism. The last part of the study is a summary of the main conclusions and presents the outlook for further researches.In short, exploring the establishment of principal professional quality structure will help to further transform the mindset of China’s primary and secondary school principals and establish modern education management thinking, improve professional ability and quality. It will help to reform the performance evaluation system of school principals, improve the incentive mechanism and strengthen supervision on powers. It will help to promote the principals rank reform and abolish the position administrative levels of principals, strengthen principal qualification institution and promote appointment system, finally establish market-oriented configuration modes of principal. Fulfilling these targets will mobilize the enthusiasm of principles in education and further deepen the reform of the education system, which will help the realization of the goals of the basic education of the nation.