The Research Of A Principal’s Leadership In Xining Elementary School

Principal is the core and soul of a school.The key part of school’s development lies in principal’s leadership,which reflects a principal’s ability to leader.Leadership is also a principal’s vitality.A principal’s leadership can be expressed by how to use development and changing views to command a school’s issues and enact a school’s blueprint.Therefore,in order to build a better Xining elementary school,this thesis discusses current situation of the school and provides with relevant solution and suggestion by analyzing five-dimensional model of school leadership.Based on the theory of five-dimensional model of school leadership,the thesis investigates the principal’s leadership by five dimensions,which are structural leadership,human leadership,political leadership,cultural leadership and educational leadership(every dimension is divided by three smaller dimensions,emotion,behavior and cognition fields).The research methods are questionnaires and interviews.The results show that male and female teachers have same cognition on the principal’s structural,human,political,cultural and educational leadership and its three smaller dimensions.Young teachers aged from 20 to 30 have lower cognition on the principal’s human leadership in cognition field,political leadership in emotion and cognition field,cultural leadership in behavior field,educational leadership in emotion and behavior field.Teachers in elementary schools with different education levels have similar cognition of a principal’s leadership on the five dimensions and smaller fields.Teachers in the elementary school with different positions have similar cognition of a principal’s leadership on the five dimensions and smaller fields.Teachers whose teaching experience is under 5 years have lower cognition of a principal’s leadership especially in the cognition field of human leadership,emotion and cognition field of political leadership,behavior field of cultural leadership,and emotion and behavior field of educational leadership.A principal’s leadership in the five dimensions and three smaller dimensions would not be different according to different principals’ ages.The summary of results: the principal’s five dimensions,from the strongest to the weakest,are cultural leadership,human leadership and political leadership(equal position),structural leadership,educational leadership.In terms of cultural leadership,it is the last position in the five-dimension leadership.Cultural leadership gains the lowest score.When it comes to the smaller dimensions,from lowest to the highest,they are cognition field,emotion field and behavior field.Teachers aged from 20 to 30 and having less 5 year-teaching experience have lower cognition especially in the behavior field of cultural leadership.Those teachers have lower cognition in the cognition field of human leadership and also in the emotion and cognition field of political leadership.In terms of structural leadership,it gains decent scores.There are few issues in the structural leadership.In addition,the score of cognition field in structural leadership is similar to the average score of five dimensions but lower than emotion field and behavior field.In the aspects of educational field,teachers aged from 20 to 30 and less than 5-year teaching experience have lower cognition on emotion and behavior field of educational leadership.I mainly analyze the reasons from internal and external elements.In terms of external reasons,I mainly analyze from political economy and social culture perspective.The political economy elements include : the implement of principal responsibility,the implement of curriculum change and revision,the implement of professional principal standards,“public school principal’s professional standards” and less developed economy in Xining.The social culture elements include that most teachers who were born between 1980 s and 1990 s are the only child in their family and their growing up environment was stable but competition are very fierce.Thus,those teachers request democracy,freedom and sensible management system.In addition,people’s personalities are influencing principal’s five-dimensional leadership.Internal reasons are analyzed from cultural,human,political,structural and educational leadership’s forming reasons.The reasons are: material culture were mistaken as the whole school culture.Moreover,in order to build school’s culture,humanity needs to be emphasized and completion of system and humanity care also needs to be emphasized.The reason why young teachers have lower cognition of behavior field in cultural leadership is that those young teachers need more space to talk and more encouragement.There are some problems in human leadership because young teachers need more communication and more attention from the principal.There are also some problems in field of political leadership because young teachers are “real paradox”,for they are feisty and stubborn.The internal reason in structural leadership is that the principal doesn’t explain school management very well.Thus,teachers are not clear about changed plan and system.The management cooperation needs to be strengthened and the democracy of all teachers’ management needs to be deepened.The internal reason in educational leadership is that young teachers don’t have enough ability to solve problems in teaching.They emphasize teaching theories but don’t have much teaching experience.According to the existing problems and reasons,we put forward some strategies to improve the principal’s leadership.The strategies include improving cultural leadership,making school’s culture content,paying attention to schools’ “humanity” culture,“soft” culture and “hard” culture as well as seminars about school culture building.Those strategies also include improving humanity leadership,understanding and respecting teachers,strengthening commination with teachers and creating cooperation team.Especially for young teachers,communication and humanity care is very important.Improving political leadership includes establishing serving consciousness,democratic management,fair and open information,as well as providing open working atmosphere.Improving structural leadership includes strengthening study of theory,paying attention to aim management,emphasizing emotion management.Improving educational leadership includes adding more teacher-training curriculum which are suitable for teachers,as well as encouraging young teacher’s passion to teach.