UNDERSTANDING OF BASIC EDUCATIONAL VALUES AS THE BASIS OF EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP

Concept of leadership has become very popular in the field of education during at least past three decades. Theories of educational leadership have been developed first on the basis of theories from general management theory. More recently such theories try to define leadership in the educational context. Core element of such attempts are educational values as the basis. Most such theories focus on values of learning and development as the most important for the specificity of educational leadership. One of important problems is that such values can be understood in many different ways that brings not only theoretical but also practical problems when we think about leadership in schools as organizations.

Paper tries to define educational leadership based on values of individual human development and learning, showing consequences of different understandings of those values. Such theoretical basis was used to carry out research on understanding both values. Research was conducted with participation of 100 candidates for the position of school head taking part in pilot postgraduate course of educational leadership. They were asked to define and describe how they understand learning and development. Qualitative analysis of their answers is presented with conclusions aiming at recommendations for changes of courses in educational leadership and management preparing heads of schools and training them.