Abstract:

School leadership is one of the most studied themes, as it is considered a priority in educational policies at the international level. The school is considered a system with weak articulation, the leadership should help to aggregate, bind, and create synergies in the organization. This can contribute to the improvement of student learning, through the improvement of school conditions and environments. The leadership style depends on the interaction between the followers and the leader, being an art of influencing people through a communication process so that a task is carried out or reached an established objective. To achieve success, it is necessary to define a direction, develop people, adjust and guide the organization, improve the teaching-learning program. The research question in this study is: How does the practice of leadership contribute to the success of school management?

The method used was the integrative review, qualitative nature, including experimental and non-experimental research, existing the triangulation of empirical literature with the theoretical foundation. Four keywords are gotten from the research question: “Leadership”, “School Management”, “Director” and “Portugal”, obtaining the Boolean equation: leadership AND (School Management OR Director) AND Portugal. We created eight inclusion criteria, duly justified. The consultation was carried out in national repositories with internet access, namely the Scientific Repository of Open Access of Portugal (RCAAP) and Scielo Portugal, as well as in some Portuguese open access journals. Considering the eligibility criteria, 35 documents entered the study, from which criteria were created to carry out their analysis.

The main results of the study are:
i) The mentioned management is more at the procedural level and more reactive, the director spends more of his time with management tasks than with leadership tasks.
ii) The leadership to be privileged will be that which enhances dialogue and participation, with a view to discussing and building expanded agreements.
iii) In terms of leadership styles, they were diversified, namely: autocratic, authoritarian, democratic, situational, participatory and dialogic, democratic and shared, transactional and transformational. The transformational is more referenced to characterize the leadership of Public Schools in Portugal.
iv) Transformational leadership is what is desired, but the margin of autonomy we have in schools does not allow this reality to exist.
v) Intermediate leaders appear in a non-assertive way, as they still have little expression.

For the improvement of schools, it is necessary to have a balance between the leader and the manager. The leader assumes the management functions and must intervene in the development of the culture, as he must guarantee collective participation in the sense of the school’s mission and vision. The leadership to be privileged will be that which enhances dialogue and participation, with a view to discussing and building expanded agreements. It is important that there is sharing in the execution of the educational project, so that it can be implemented, with responsibility, by all stakeholders, as the involvement of directors at the level of pedagogical leadership is more significant. Dialogue among peers, mobilization around collective causes and processes, as well as sharing team successes and encouraging decision-making are important factors for achieving the school’s success

Keywords:

Leadership, Educational Management, Success, Portugal.