Effects of principal leadership on school culture and teachers' sharedsense of mission

Abstract

This is a case study to explore the effect of a principal’s leadership on teachers‟ shared sense of mission, through the mediating factor of culture. Culture is defined as a metaphor of the school, i.e. the school „is‟ culture. The analysis of culture is conducted through dissecting the core values as expressed in its practice: symbols, rituals and heroes. The study analyzed the principal’s values to picture his mission, since mission is a symbolic expression of values. Teachers‟ operational goals might vary in form, but were found to be highly consistent with the principal’s mission. Hence, they had a shared sense of mission. The study concludes that this was due to a high level of consistency between the principal’s personal values and the core values of the school. Thanks to the principal’s leadership, his personal values were firmly established in the power contest with other forces at the core of the culture, through his influence on the daily practice of culture: symbols, rituals and heroes. The study offers a discussion on the outcome of principal’s influence other than student assessment – teachers‟ shared sense of mission. This hopefully will encourage more efforts by other researchers in the future to investigate principal’s effects in addition to student outcomes.