A Qualitative Multi-site Case Study of how Elementary Principals are Selected in Suburban School Districts in Southeastern Wisconsin PDF Download

Author: David Newman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Employee selection
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
The principalship is a critical role that impacts the overall success of a school (Marzano, Waters, & McNulty (2005). Small suburban districts frequently engage in, and have well established processes for, hiring teachers. Vacancies in the principalship occur more rarely (Goldring & Taie, 2018), resulting in less established processes for hiring, including posting, screening, interviewing, and selecting candidates. To better understand how suburban districts in a region of a midwestern state engage in this infrequent, yet important process, the researcher enlisted a descriptive, holistic case study of four suburban school districts that had recently hired an elementary principal. Employing a semi-structured interview approach, the researcher interviewed superintendents or human resource managers in each of the districts and gathered artifacts related to their hiring process. Teachers and principals who were part of the formal selection committee were also interviewed to learn more about their perceptions of the process. Using the conceptual framework based on NewSchools’ (2008) recommendations for principal selection and a selection utility analysis model advocated by Boudreau, Sturman, and Judge (1994) as the theoretical framework, the researcher analyzed and compared each district’s selection process to the conceptual and theoretical frameworks. Despite technical differences in the details of the process, each organization was able to develop an individual process intentionally aligned to their own organizational values. In the process of screening candidates, cover letters and letters of recommendation greatly impacted a candidate's likelihood of being interviewed in each district. Interview team participants all identified how their input had meaning in the decision making process when selecting their preferred candidate. The process also yielded distinctions among the districts in the selection process. Those included utilizing candidate profile listening sessions and how interviews were structured in the first and second rounds. After the results are presented, a series of recommendations are made that school and district leaders can use to affirm, plan, and clarify their elementary principal selection process.