Are principals of russian schools ready for transformational leadership?

Abstract

Based on results of TALIS- 2013, of which Russia was a participant for the first time, we analyze the demographic characteristics, years of work experience and workload of school principals, their competencies and opportunities for professional development, as well as their working conditions, responsibilities and priorities. We also discuss how principals participate in teacher performance assessments and delegate their school management powers, which resources they need, and how they assess the performance of their schools. Research was conducted in 14 regions of Russia and revealed different levels of leadership potential in educational institutions. The recent changes to the education system (the new Federal Law "On Education" and the new Federal State Educational Standards) require principals to work in a transformational leadership style, but only few of the respondents appear to succeed in this. Principals prefer "operating manually" and interacting with individual teachers, not staff groups. Authoritarianism and unwillingness to delegate power are the major handicaps to the transformational leadership of schools principals. There has been no established system for school principal training in Russia so far. Only a few of the regions are reported to have trained over 20 percent of candidates prior to employment; meanwhile, there are some regions with no principal training at all. It is imperative that school principal training programs teach teambuilding, delegation of power and distributed leadership skills.