How Do Principals Perceive Their Role In Leading And Managing Educational Reforms

Title of Thesis:
“An examination of how principals perceive their role in leading and managing educational reforms in learning and teaching in Irish Post Primary Schools.”
The purpose of this qualitative study is to understand the role of experienced and new principals during times of stressful educational reform and which types of leadership are most effective.
The thesis will be based on the following research questions:
1. How do principals lead the whole school community to ensure that educational reform or change is effective and implemented?
2. Will these reforms such as the New Junior Cycle, Assessment for Learning (AFL) and Wellbeing Programme be possible for just one person to implement?
3. Which types of leadership will be the most
The opposite seems to be the case. Educational change comes in many forms and is already happening, all the time. Students’ lives, the lives of teachers, not to mention schools as organisations are being changed by globalisation, technology, changing societal institutions, and the prevailing economic and political climates. At the level of the many daily learning interactions taking place in every school, change is an ever-present factor”. (NCCA, Dublin, 2009,
The case studies give insight in to how different countries and different styles of leadership can affect the teaching and learning within schools. This research looks at the principal leadership cross culturally and describes the similarities and differences in the work of school leaders ranging from England to Australia and Sweden. Bringing together this case study research which helps explain what all successful principals do and the ways in which context shapes some of their work. It investigates the difference between instructional, transformational, distributed and collaborative leadership and how each is effective in the correct sphere. Similarly, in Riley and Seashore-Louis study “On Leadership for Change and School Reform” (Riley & Seashore- Louis, London, 2001), reflects how context plays a major role on leadership factors. What is also reflected is “the ability of qualitative, small case studies to locate factors- especially leadership factors- that seemed to influence the outcomes of change encouraged a focus on how to manage better, a change process that inevitably takes place in rather chaotic unpredictable and often non-rational context” (Riley & Seahorse-Louis, London, 2001, 2). This clarifies the research