The Impact of Gender on Educational Leadership Aspirations

Description

That “the principalship [is] in a state of crisis” (Davis et al., 2005, p. 3) due to high turnover rates and a lack of suitable applicants is well-documented, not only in countries with high accountability for school leaders, but recently also in countries which have a reportedly low accountability. With more vacant positions and fewer people being prepared to take on the challenge of being a school principal, we need to identify factors that encourage or deter suitable teachers (or in some countries also other actors in the education system) to become educational leaders. When we take into account that teaching is in many countries a female job, but being a principal is not, we also need to take gender issues into the equation when trying to unveil the reasons for the present lack of applicants. Previous literature has revealed a number of aspects which play a critical role in teacher’s application for principalship, but not necessarily to a similar extend for men and women. While there has been some research in other countries, school leadership motivation has received only little attention in the German-speaking countries. In those studies which investigated leadership motivation gender-related issues were usually not taken into account. The present Educational Leadership Motivation (ELMO) project seeks to identify push and pull factors of school leadership which need to be dealt with if we want to make being an educational leader an attractive and sought after position again.

Period	05 Sept 2014
Event title	ECER 2014: The Past, Present and Future of Educational Research in Europe
Event type	Conference
Location	PortugalShow on map