Abstract:

This paper analyzes, from an ethnographic perspective, the academic dimension of school management built from the convivial link established between the teachers and the school principals. Nine school principals were subject of this investigation, 6 from elementary schools and 3 from pre-school education, as well as 22 teachers distributed in the same proportions as the school principals for both educational levels, all subjects were thoroughly interviewed in order to create two primary texts to be analyzed with the software Atlas TI 6.2.

The theoretical approach for the research, incluyed the contributions of Lavin (2000), Reynaga & Farfan (2004) and Pastrana (1997), about the academic and convivial dimension inside the school management, also the rol of school principal in articulating these dimensions.

As result of the theoretical discussion is stated that a necessary basis of the academic dimension, is the convivial dimension. In this way, the school principal first must to develop the convivial warp, that interrelates to all the persons inside the school community: teachers, students, parents and social leaders that are interested in the school. When this form of relationship is built then it is possible to respond with better conditions, the academic dimension of school management

The objectives in the research were:

-To characterize – according to a substantive characterization- the relational weft and warp that is established by the school managers and the teachers when developing the convivial dimension of management at their schools.
-To identify through the use of some categories of analysis, the way in which this relational weft constituted by the managers and teachers helps to strengthen the academic dimension at the school where they work at.

The results of this analysis highlight the presence of the following category: technical-pedagogical-administrative leadership with an intermediate convivial foundation, which corresponds to an academic dimension diluted within the managing function, with a school principal that achieves a balance but whose main area of interest is not the academic, also the following categories are presented: weak pedagogical leadership with a convivial foundation, professional-technical leadership with an intermediate convivial dimension and managing leadership confronted with teachers. Among the three categories that show a deficit in terms of the academic-convivial are: full academic-convivial dimension, whose school principal is an academic- leader and manager, who also acknowledges himself to be an apprentice school principal, the school principal whose leadership is questioned and neglects the academic-convivial dimension, asserting him or herself in their texts legitimizing themselves this way.

The first category analyzed - the technical-pedagogical-administrative leadership with an intermediate convivial foundation- is accord with politician style principals, unfortunately the most cases under study, are part of this category, that not correspond to bad principals, but also correspond to a Director "equilibrist" that is not a good academic principal.

The research calls for strengthening the cases of good managers with a comprehensive academic and convivial dimension.

Keywords:

School management, principal, teachers, academic, convivial.