“He is like Mevlâna!, She is an Amazon Warrior!”: Reflection on Successful School Leadership in Socioeconomically Disadvantaged Contexts through Metaphors

Authors: Ali Duran - Necati Cemaloğlu

The notions of successful school principalship and how to get things done effectively in schools are often argued about, but not definitely agreed upon, by educational researchers, policy makers, practitioners. This study was to contribute to the literature on what it means with successful school principalship, by analyzing the metaphorical perceptions of a vast array of participants (deputies, teachers, students, and parents) from a broad area of schools. Designed as qualitative research, this inquiry is an ethnomethodological attempt. The data were obtained through individual or focus-group interviews through a semi-structured interview form. The metaphorical analyses rest upon the interpretive content analysis that enabled us to conduct indepth analyses of metaphors so that we could make inferences about the professional identity of the successful school principalship. The metaphors are analyzed in a school leadership framework. This analysis contributes to the ongoing endeavour on seeking for successful principals’ characteristics, attitudes, and behaviors. Metaphors revealed in this study have shown that the successful school principals in socioeconomically disadvantaged contexts often display paternalistic, transformational, moral and servant leadership behaviors. The participants depicted affectionate, self-sacrifying, caring, disciplined, innovative and benevolent portrait of school principals. Several recommendations and implications for policy, research and practitioners are offered.

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