Identifying the factors affecting professional development among secondary school principals in North Khorasan Province

Subject Areas :

Morteza َAkhari ¹ , Maryam Taghvaei ² , Saeed Safarian Hamedani ³

1 - PHD Student in Educational Management, Islamic Azad University, Sari Branch, Mazandaran, Iran.
2 - Assistant Professor, Department of Educational Management, Sari Branch, Islamic Azad University, Sari, Iran.
3 - Assistant Professor Department of Educational Management, Sari Branch, Islamic Azad University, Sari, Iran

Received: 2021-02-25 Accepted : 2021-04-16 Published : 2021-05-13

Keywords: Leadership, Educational, school principals, professional development, development model, professional,

Abstract :

The present study aimed to develop and validate a professional development model for high-school principals. This was an applied and cross-sectional research in terms of objective and time, respectively, and had a mixed method (qualitative and quantitative). The participants in the qualitative section included 22 experts related to the research topic in North Khorasan Province, selected by purposive sampling. Data obtained from semi-structured interviews were coded and their validity and reliability were approved based on the experts' and participants’ opinions and the agreement coefficient (CVR=0.87), respectively. The statistical population in the quantitative section included 1957 high-school principals in various academic semesters during 2019-2020, 322 of whom were selected by cluster sampling based on Morgan’s Table. The research tool was a researcher-made questionnaire. The validity of the questionnaire was confirmed based on professors’ opinions and its reliability was approved at a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.88. From the perspective of the experts, the six dimensions of professional development included educational leadership, strategic leadership, communication management, organizational management, and ethical leadership, professional development and 14 components were management on learning and teaching, creating a favorable learning environment, curriculum evaluation, vision drawing, continuous improvement of schools, effective communication, relationship with stakeholders, operations management, resource management, individual and team leadership, professional ethics, principles, and Islamic ethical norms, development of their profession and development of human resources profession