An exploratory study on principals' conceptions about their role as school leaders

This inquiry, by means of the case study method, explored how the conceptions of principals about their role of school leader contribute to a better understanding of their behavior and the impact on school climate. The results showed that differences of how principals conceive their role as a leader affect indirectly through their leadership practices (i.e. initiating structure and supportive leadership), the unity in vision, collegial relations, collaboration, innovativeness and satisfaction of teachers. Based on a content analysis of interviews with 46 Belgian school leaders we distinguished three profiles: (1) the ‘people minded profile’ with an emphasis on people, educational matters and thus on creating a professional teaching community; (2) the ‘administrative minded profile’ with the focus on paperwork and the implementation of formal procedures and rules; and (3) the ‘moderate minded profile’ with no explicit preference for people, educational or administrative matters. Drawing on three prototypical cases we described in depth that these types of principals often work under different school climate conditions. We relied on semi-structured interviews to gather data on principals’ thoughts about their role as school leaders. Also, survey questionnaires were administered among 700 teachers in 46 schools to assess several features of school climate (i.e. goal orientedness, participation, formal and informal relationships, innovativeness), satisfaction of teachers, and leadership role behavior (i.e. initiating structure and supportive leadership behavior).