What Successful School Principals Do and What Unsuccessful Ones Fail to Do

Abstract

School administration is a special process from the standpoint of management; it is no wonder that it is called both a science and an art. The chief distinguishing characteristic of the process of administration in education is that quite often in the not too distant past, school principals had been teachers in the collective they supervised. However, in a similar environment (all former teachers without the skills of administrative activity or specialized management education), there are some principals who achieve professional success for themselves, for the pedagogical and the student collectives, for the city, and for the region, while other principals may achieve modest success with a level of functioning that is acceptable for the school. Why is the success of some school principals so much greater than the success of others? What manifestations of success make them different from their colleagues? What factors account for the success of the very best? What strategy of behavior do administrators of an educational organization choose that leads them to success? What do other principals fail to do, and what makes them unsuccessful?

Notes

English translation © 2015 Taylor & Francis, from the Russian text © 2013 “Narodnoe obrazovanie.” “Chto delaiut uspeshnye direktora shkol, i chego ne delaiut neuspeshnye,” Narodnoe obrazovanie, 2013, no. 10, pp. 125–30. A publication of the Russian Federation Ministry of Education and Science, the Russian Academy of Education, and the Pedagogical Society of Russia.Galina Mikhailovna Ponomarëva is the director of the division of organization and methodology at Khabarovsk Krai Institute for the Development of Education in the city of Komsomol'sk-na-Amure; she is an honored worker in education.Translated by Kim Braithwaite.