COMPETENCIES OF THE SCHOOL DIRECTOR: PERSPECTIVES OF THE PROJECT COORDINATORS

School, as an organization, has been going through deep changes, namely in its management processes. Alterations require new competences, above all those with the highest positions, such as the school director, which is a single management body established by Decree-Law 75/2008.

Starting from the perspective of a specific group - the project coordinators – we aimed to understand their perceptions about school director´s competences, as the central figure of the educational organization.

We established the following objectives in this study:
i) characterize the relationships between management and project coordination;
ii) identify the most valued director´s competences by project coordinators and
iii) understand the project coordinators perceptions on how the school director can influence projects development and coordination.

In view of the defined objectives, we outlined a mixed research methodology, using the interview (n=4) and the questionnaire (n=50) as data collection techniques, which were applied to public school teachers who played the role of project coordinators, in the district of Porto. With regard to data analysis, we used statistical analysis and content analysis for respectively quantitative and qualitative data.

The analysis allowed us to conclude that the inquired and interviewed coordinators value, among others, the need for a specialized training of the school director, power delegation, and leadership, communication, share and flexibility capabilities.