Abstract:

The present study investigates elementary school principals’ work-related ecological system and how principals experience the interaction with and between different elements of their work. Current study qualitatively contributes to the existing literature by expanding our understanding about how principals perceive their work and which elements are experiences as resourceful and/or demanding. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with elementary school principals from 10 Finnish municipalities. Data was analysed by using theory driven content analysis.

Preliminary results show that first, principals work-related ecological system consists of:
(a) Person: internal influencers, health and recovery from work;
(b) Microsystem: teachers, students, guardians, supervisor, other principals, management team at school, other external facets and other staff. In addition: interaction between teachers, -students and teachers, -guardians and teachers and interaction between students, guardians and teachers
(c) Mesosystem: interaction between different levels;
(d) Exosystem: legislations, upper administrative level, superior, collaboration with other principals;
(e) Macrosystem: society, publicity and school context; and
(f) Cronosystem: work experience, educational background, life history, future objectives.

Second, starting from the microsystem, principals reported interaction with guardians and other facets being the most demanding. Interaction between teachers, between students and teachers, between guardians and teachers and between students, guardians and teachers, were also reported as most demanding elements of their work. On the contrary interaction with superior and management at school were reported as most resourceful on at this level. On exolevel, principals experienced legislation, availability of resources, local principals’ network, interaction with superior and other facets to be demanding. However, interaction with other facets and local principals’ network were also describes as resourceful. On macrolevel, most demanding seems to be publicity and school context. School context was reported also as resourceful. Furthermore, it seems that principals experience of their work at this moment of time is strongly influenced by their life history, work experience, educational background and future objectives. The results revealed that how principals experience their work is individual and influenced by different internal and external factors. This indicates that when planning and offering support to principals the individual needs should be considered. In addition, pre-service training should give more realistic picture about principals’ work. Furthermore, it seems that principals need more in-service training concerning social interaction and human resources management. We might also suggest that sharing leadership tasks with management team at school and with teachers might ease principals’ work. However, it required teachers who feel comfortable taking leadership role and most importantly being capable of leading themselves.

Keywords:

Educational leaders, principals' work, work ecosystem, elementary school principals, principals' experience.