Abstract:
Recent New Zealand Ministry of Education documents highlight the challenge to
provide professional learning opportunities for principals and the current initiative
to support and strengthen school leadership through the Professional Leadership
Strategy. There is a need for professional development strategies and
opportunities that help principals more effectively understand their school contexts,
responsibilities and their own competencies, leadership styles and practice. To
transfer and be sustainable, effective leadership practice requires the building of
principal leadership learning communities within individual New Zealand school
contexts.
This thesis builds on previous studies of New Zealand women principals'
experiences of leadership, contributing to a greater insight into the identities, role
and practice of women principals while modelling a framework for reflective
practice as a tool for professional and educational leadership development. As an
iconographic study of three New Zealand women secondary school principals this
thesis exhibits the life stories and experiences which have impacted upon their
personal theories about leadership styles and practice. Composed through a
métissage (merging) of image and dialogue to create portraits of the principal's
leadership identities it is set in situ within a principal professional learning
community.
A qualitative, multiple-case studies methodology was employed. The design was
informed by a reflective practitioner approach and action learning orientation
underpinned by arts-based inquiry, a methodological and theoretical genre that
proposes a reinterpretation of the methods and ethics of human social research.
The findings indicate that the personal development, self-awareness and growth of
a leader are a catalyst to stimulate collective development and accomplishment.
