School development

This research aims to identify the competencies of school principals based on Iranian studies for effective leadership in schools. Therefore, this research has been developed using a qualitative method and using meta-synthesis strategy. Therefore, after checking the keywords of managers' competence in internal databases, 150 types of research were extracted from 2005 to 2020, and finally, 70 types of research were included in the final analysis. The results included 19 primary pre-organizer themes and six secondary pre-organizer themes. Secondary pre-organizer themes include; Individual competencies (with primary pre-organizer themes: personal, professional, and functional), interactive competencies (with primary pre-organizer themes: intra-organizational interactions, extra-organizational interactions, and team building and teamwork), job competencies (with primary pre-organizer themes: career development, human resource management, and job recognition), organizational competencies (with primary pre-organizer themes: leadership, managerial-executive, soft capacity making, organizational effectiveness, and organizational quality), technical-specialized competencies (with primary pre-organizer themes: technological skills and knowledge skills), financial competencies (with primary pre-organizer themes: budgeting, financial management and planning, and financial efficiency and effectiveness). In the end, in addition to the network of themes, a competency model of school principals has also been drawn based on the results

This research mainly aimed to identify the indicators of pedagogically-centered leadership in Sanandaj primary schools, which was conducted using a qualitative research approach and a descriptive phenomenology strategy. The two main questions raised in the research were as follows. According to the mentalities and experiences of the participants, what are the meanings and indicators of pedagogically-centered leadership in Iranian elementary schools? What characteristics can make pedagogically-centered leaders separate and unique leader from other educational leaders? The current research is developmental-applied in terms of purpose and qualitative in terms of approach, which was conducted using a descriptive phenomenology strategy. To collect data, 18 primary school principals were selected by purposive sampling and interviewed through three-stage phenomenological interview protocols. Their perspectives and experiences were investigated during the interviews. After conducting the interviews, the data were first manually analyzed, and then by MAXqda 2020 software, based on three-stage thematic analysis (basic, organizing, and global) of Attride-Stirling, analyzed. As the result of data analysis, 90 initial codes, 42 basic themes, 18 organizing themes, and finally, 8 global themes were specified. Also, four distinctive characteristics were identified as unique features of a pedagogically-centered leader: participation-seeker, activist of social justice and equal opportunities, valuing subcultures, and leader of leaders. Findings implicitly indicated that the implementation of this style of leadership in schools requires major changes in the mental paradigms of school community members. These changes include changing the paradigm of playing fixed roles to flexible ones, changing the paradigm of management to leadership, changing the paradigm of bureaucracy to specialization, changing the paradigm of teaching-centered to learning-centered, changing the paradigm of parental participation to parental involvement, and changing the paradigm of knowledge transfer to knowledge creation in students