The Role of School Principals as Leaders of Educational Change in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

In an increasingly globalised world, public education reform in Saudi Arabia has been given high priority as a driver of economic and social development and its sustainability. This reform has impacted on the working lives of school principals, who are continually faced with complex global challenges in the education system, including higher expectations for schools and school leaders, moving towards decentralisation, making schools more autonomous in their decision making and holding them more accountable for results, with expectations of improved overall student performance while serving more diverse student populations. This study sought to examine the ways in which globalising pressures, particularly the neoliberal economic globalisation pressures, for educational reform are perceived and responded to by school principals in the Saudi educational system, with a view to informing educational policy and practice in responding to those pressures. The impetus for the study stemmed from the lack of knowledge about the impact of contemporary school reform initiatives on the leading change agents – school principals – especially in traditional Arabic countries. This research study used an interpretive case study that sought to construct and interpret the meaning of school principals’ experiences of managing educational reform initiatives in Saudi Arabia. Those experiences were explored and analysed by obtaining detailed information from 20 participants through semi-structured interviews, in conjunction with official documents relevant to the research topic being investigated.