Committed, Resilient, or Transient. School Principals’ Perception of Professional Identity

Abstract

ABSTRACT Building a professional identity as school leader is essential to the success of any management project. The Spanish context makes it twice as important to know its managers’ perception of their role and practice as school principals. This article aims to: (a) identify principals’ profiles based on both the transition from teaching to management and their expectations of permanence in the post; (b) establish relationships between these profiles and relevant aspects concerning the process of building a professional identity as school principals; and (c) to determine whether gender is related in any way to the principals’ profiles and the rest of the aspects investigated. The information was obtained with an ad hoc questionnaire from which 779 valid records were obtained, corresponding to principals of schools in all Spanish regions. Cluster analysis established three principal profiles: committed, resilient, and transient. Subsequent analyses compared the three groups according to the stated objectives. The results and conclusions of the study lead to implications about the need for institutional support for school principals during their transition from teaching and allow us to specify aspects and modalities on which such support should be focused.