Secondary school vice‐principals: Commitment, challenge, efficacy and synchrony

Abstract

The study sought to investigate Hong Kong secondary school vice‐principals’ job facets leading to overall job satisfaction, and to differentiate the satisfaction of vice‐principals of different career orientations and gender groups. The findings indicated that there are four main facets of satisfaction, in rank order of influence on overall satisfaction, ‘professional commitment’, ‘level of personal challenge’, ‘sense of efficacy’ and ‘sense of synchrony’. The study also found that vice‐principals who aspired to the principalship exhibited a higher degree of professional commitment, a stronger sense of efficacy, and experienced lower levels of stress associated with personal challenge than vice‐principals who did not aspire to a principalship.