Abstract:

The Principal Education Program is subject to a regulatory outline. Thus, a demand for the entirety of the program regarding the curricular structure, contents, and scope of hours, was underpinned by a set of principles and standards, as well as by a solid rationale. Gates et al. (2020) explored the use of State-Level policy levels to promote principals’ quality. They illustrated the importance of state regulation concerning authorization of support and constant examination of education programs, for the purpose of ensuring high-quality education processes of pre-service principals. The starting point of each good curriculum is the ability to identify meaningful needs and respond to them. It is clear that the pandemic has global and far-reaching implications for all areas of life. This gives rise to the question of the validity, duration, feasibility, boundaries, and interpretation of a pre-formulated curriculum from theory to practice. This does not imply only the various and natural transformations of the curriculum, from the national level and up to the actual teaching and learning processes. This also refers to guiding perceptions and principles.

Research questions:
What kind of Curriculum decision making was in Principal Education Program during the COVID-19 Pandemic?
What kind of identity-shaping process as a principal were addressed?

Methodology:
Data were collected from a group of 25 pre-service principals and from 4 members of the teaching stuff, using research tools in a qualitative-interpretive approach throughout one education year, from October 2020 until June 2021, on the background of three pandemic waves.

Findings:
Holistic content analysis of the data indicated characteristics of the Curriculum decision making process: It was navigated within a set of oxymorons, among them the shift between center and margins, between certainty and uncertainty, between structured curriculum and flexible, changing, and growing curriculum, between physical and virtual, between uniformity and uniqueness, between loneliness/disassociation and cohesion/sense of belonging.

Discussion:
In each of these varied transitions, foci defined were identified as omission, as well as foci identified as learning opportunities and in-depth observation of the program and its components and, hence, a potential of change and growth, as well as an identity-shaping process. This process is intertwined in all parts of the program, aiming to create a Hermeneutic circle. The Hermeneutic circle is an interpretive process that originates in the personal and the individuals, allows an intra-personal and inter-personal discourse, conceptualizes with reference to a wide picture and comes back to the individuals in a spiral manner. This is a process that shifts between self-identity and collective identity. A reference made to the meeting point between the curriculum decision-making process and the identity-shaping process exposed three key foci of strength: engagement in identity and identity awareness, ethics of alliance, and leadership.

References:
[1] Gates, S. M., Woo, A., Xenakis, L., Lin Wang, E., Herman, R., Andrew, M., & Todd, I. (2020). Using State-Level Policy Levers to Promote Principal Quality. Rand Principal Preparation Series, 2.

Keywords:

Curriculum decision making, pre-service principals, identity-shaping process.