Micro-political analysis of the principal selection in a Taiwanese elementary school

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate the micropolitical actions and strategies employed by the principal in the researched elementary school located in Northern Taiwan. Firstly, the author argues that the mechanism of the principal selection in Taiwan is the product of educational reform affected by policy borrowing. Secondly, drawing on ethnographic method the study illustrates the micropolitical dynamics of principal selection among the principal candidate, administrators and teachers. The research findings show that several micropolitical actions during the principal selection had been revealed, including the principal candidate seeking for internal teachers’ support, political competition between the principal candidate and the director in charge of academic affairs, building up guanxi from parents in the local community, and Confucian campus ethics as a major factor influencing the consequence of the principal selection. Key words: Micropolitics, principal selection, political competition, quanxi, Confucian ethics.