Portraits of Principal Practice: Time Allocation and School Principal Work

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine how school principals in urban settings distributed their time working on critical school functions. We also examined who principals worked with and how their time allocation patterns varied by school contextual characteristics. Research Method/Approach: The study was conducted in an urban school district with approximately 50 school principals and utilized self-reported End of Day log data collected at multiple points in between 2005 and 2007. We utilized hierarchical linear models to analyze variation in principals’ time allocation by time (hour, day, semester), school function (building operations, student affairs, district functions, etc.), and school personnel (self, teacher, student, etc.). Findings: Variation in principals’ practice is domain dependent. Consistent with prior research, we find that a principal’s workday is characterized by long hours and diverse tasks. We find little support for the notion that typical tasks are characterized by brevity. Principals also spend most of their time working with within-building colleagues rather than working alone. Of all predictors we examined in the study, only hour of the day predicts principals’ time allocation on different functional domains. Conclusions: The portrait of principals’ work described in this study expands and enriches the field’s current understanding of how principals allocate their time across the multiple domains of responsibility that require their attention. We find that our data offer support for some of popular conceptions of principals’ work described in the research literature while challenging other common conceptions.

Principal Instructional Leadership, Teacher Self-Efficacy, and Teacher Professional Learning in China: Testing a Mediated-Effects Model

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“…Arguably, the expectations for today's educational leaders are more broad and complex than ever before (Green, 2010;Peterson, 2001;Sebastian, Camburn, & Spillane, 2018). Researchers, such as Cuban (1988) and Neumerski (2012), acknowledge the persistent tension for educational administrators to lead and manage.…”

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“…Among the quantitative research, most studies operationalized DL through shared decision making, empowering the staff, and leadership development reported in a meta-analysis (Hairon & Goh, 2015). The studies focusing on the practice of DL (Camburn et al, 2010; Grissom et al, 2013; Sebastian et al, 2018; Spillane et al, 2007), however, more exclusively emphasize school principals. There has been less equivalent enthusiasm for “subordinates” and “situations” from the prevailing evidence.…”

“…In addition, current DL research evidence was largely generated from cases using relatively small sample sizes, which could not determine how contextual variables affect leadership distribution (Liu et al, 2018) and thus adds difficulty to research generalization. As argued in a recent study (Sebastian et al, 2018, p. 50), “there is limited work examining how school context influences principals’ workdays.”…”