THE COMPETENCY OF BUILDING SCHOOL CULTURE FOCUSED ON INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT AND LEARNING FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF SCHOOL LEADERS

Two central values of educational leadership are student’s individual development and student’s learning. Necessity of building school culture that is focused on those values requires from school leaders two things: recognition that competency of building such culture is important and having such specific competencies. Paper presents results of a research carried out during the project focused on designing of a new model of school heads preparation in Poland that was carried out between 2013 and 2015 with participation of several thousands of teachers and heads of Polish schools of different type. First part of that research carried out with participation of approximately 3000 school heads shows how they value competency of building school culture focused on learning and development of students. Second part of presented research, done with participation of smaller group of 120 heads, focuses on details of their understanding of specific aspects of such learning/development focused school culture and competencies of school heads needed to build such culture.