Principal’s Educational leadership literacy in Education System: A Mixed-method Approach
Publisher: name: The University Of Kurdistan
Year: 2021

description: Since 1950 some international organizations decided to establish a unanimous\nmethod and standard in defining the aspects of literacy. According to\nUNESCO “Literacy” is the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create,\ncommunicate and compute, using printed and written (and visual) materials\nassociated with varying contexts. Literacy involves a continuum of learning to\nenable an individual to achieve his or her goals, to develop his or her\nknowledge and potential and to participate fully in the wider society. However\nLiteracy is a multilateral and dynamic concept and is impossible to be limited\nto this definition or any other interpretation.\nOn the one hand, the school institution is the main platform in realizing the\neducational goals of each nation. The majority of the experts believe, the\nschool administration plays a fundamental role in both schools’ function in\ngeneral and teacher-pupil function in particular, that develops the demands,\nneeds and the expectations of the society from the schools’ outcome. In recent\ndecades, the responsibilities of the school principals have transformed and\nbecome more expanded, complicated, challenging and undetermined with lack\nof transparency. A school principal have to be an effective organizer,\nsupervisor, planner, decision maker, financial manager, and the most important of all, educational leader, that is in constant transformation. Thus, one of the\nstrategies of management based on the contingency theory, is to delegate some\nlevels of the authority and the power to the educational administration and\nleadership.\nOn the other hand, there have been several approaches to the educational\nleadership defined and discussed. Despite the numerous expressions used in\ndifferent schools, the structures and characteristics of the educational\nleadership are the same. Educational leadership, mostly includes certain\nfunctions as: supervising the education in class, developing the curriculum and\nthe staff, enabling and empowering the staff and the educators, the proficiency\nin the school management and preparing a curriculum in the school, all the\nresponsibilities that the leaders take to improve the teaching and learning\nprocess in the schools, the concentration of the principal on the teaching and\nlearning process and the interaction between the teachers and the pupils, and\netc. These definitions and expressions depict the deep concerns about the role\nof the principals in the teaching and learning process. However, according to\nthe researchers, educational leadership is one of the aspects of the school\nprincipal which aims to an effective teaching and learning in schools.\nTherefore, several researches have been conducted in order to evaluate the\nprincipals both inside the country and abroad. In spite of the researches on the\nevaluation of the leaders and the principals of the schools, and the emphasis of\nthe fundamental document on the development of education on the role of the\neducational leadership, there has been no researches conducted specifically on\nthe role of the educational leadership literacy of the school principals that\nclearly establishes a platform for the evaluation of the principals particularly\nin this field of study.\nIn other words, it is not determined what knowledge, skills, attitudes and\nresponsibilities meet the requirements of the fundamental document on the\ndevelopment of education in order to transform the role of the school principals\nfrom the management to the educational leadership position. Considering the\nfact that there are deferent perspectives revolving around educational\nleadership inside the country and abroad, it can be concluded that some\ncognitive skills as: planning, intelligence, creativity, critical thinking,\nrationality and etc. are the abilities that an educational leader must retain. The\nmajor question that is raised here, is what kind of literacy, a principal is\nrequired to have, as an educational leader? Based on this question, this research\nis done with the aim of establishing a framework of educational leadership\nliteracy of the school principals in the Iranian Education System.\nConsidering that the purpose of this study is to provide a framework of the\neducational leadership literacy in the school principals of the Iranian Education\nSystem, the qualitative research design and The Meta-Synthesis Method is\nused and includes 6 steps: 1- taking a philosophical stance and establishing the question. 2- Resources research. 3- Qualitative evaluation 4- Analyzing the\nresearches. 5- Combining the findings. 6- Validating the finding. In the first\nstep, and after providing the questionnaire, the members of the meta-synthesis\nteam were determined. The meta-synthesis team members included 2\ncurriculum planning experts, 1 expert in the field of education and the metasynthesis method accompanied by an expert in data bases from Mirzaye Shirazi\nLibrary with Master’s degree in the field of Information science and\nknowledge management. The association of the data bases expert, is due to\nreliability and validity of the brute-force search and systematic review of the\nliteratures related to the subject and finding the needed resources. In the second\nand third step, research data from reliable sources, including Latin data banks\nof Scopus and Springer (2005 to 2019), and Persian data banks of Magiran and\nNoormags and etc. (1378 to 1398 Solar Hijri Calendar) were determined based\non the Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria. By using Systematic Review Method\nand the following keywords of: literacy, educational leader’s literacy,\nframework of the educational leader’s literacy, were searched with the word of\n“qualitative” in the study field of educational science, then the search was\nlimited and the word of “educational leadership competency” was searched\nand 600 qualitative and mixed articles were analyzed (only the qualitative part\nof the mixed researches were analyzed) and categorized in 3 groups: a:related\nb:somehow related and c:unrelated. Finally, 42 articles were chosen. . In the\nfourth step, with the data analysis, first, 331 Educational Leadership contentbases were extracted. Then using introduction-writing and classifying method,\nthis 331 content-bases, were classified into 20 organizing components of\nInformation Literacy, Communication Literacy, Leadership Literacy, Ethic\nLiteracy, Personality Literacy, Religious Literacy, Vocational Literacy,\nEconomic Literacy, Digital Literacy, Health Literacy, Social Literacy,\nInternational Literacy, Organizational Literacy, Thought Literacy, Cultural\nLiteracy, Academic Literacy, Attitude and Perspective Literacy, Legal\nLiteracy, Research Literacy and Aesthetic Literacy, and formed the framework\nof The Educational Leaders’ Literacy in the school principal’s. The designed\nframework can be used as a standard for choosing or planning a curriculum for\nin-service training courses of the school principals in the educational system,\nor be used as a required syllabus of The Educational Leaders’ Literacy in the\nuniversities and the higher education institutions.