Perceptions from public school teachers and principals on the principal's role as a leader to create and maintain a holding environment: A multiple-site interview study

The purpose of this qualitative study was to describe, analyze, and understand principal and teachers' perceptions at three New York City public schools concerning their principal's role as a leader to create and maintain a holding environment for their teachers' professional growth and development.I designed an exploratory multiple-site interview study involving interviews at three New York City schools that included the principal of each school, two tenured teachers, and two inexperienced teachers in order to identify perceptions around three research questions: (1) How do teachers describe and understand support and challenge for teacher learning and development, (2) How do principals describe and understand support and challenge for teacher learning and development, (3) In what ways, if at all, do principals and teachers perceive the principal's role as a leader in creating and maintaining a holding environment? My hypothesis was that a principal's understanding and definition of a supporting and challenging environment would encompass his or her teachers'. I had predicted that the teachers would perceive their principal as having a strong, perhaps critical, role in creating and maintaining this holding environment.I approached the data using the theories of constructive-developmental and transformative leadership. I also introduced an additional theory of the four pillar practices to better understand how I could address the emerging data for my third research question. My findings from my study suggest that while the principals did not identify the individual-specific needs of their teachers, their descriptions and understanding of support and challenge were similar to their teachers'. The principals had a critical, indirect role in creating the practices necessary to maintain the supportive elements of a holding environment. Neither colleagues nor principal offered consistent challenge elements necessary to maintain a holding environment.