Principal's Lived Experience of Curriculum Leadership in Secondary Schools

Curriculum leadership in school is important as a way to improve programs and practices. However, there has been little attention to curriculum leadership. Accordingly, the present study aims to investigate principal's lived experience of curriculum leadership in secondary schools of Rudsar city. This study is a qualitative research in the form of interpretive phenomenology. The population of this study was all principals of secondary schools in Rudsar city in the academic year of 2016-2017. Target-based sampling was used to select these individuals. Semi-structured interviews were used to collect data. The interview included 9 questions about the experiences of principals about curriculum leadership (30 to 40 minutes). After interviewing 8 principals with experience in management and enough experience in secondary school, information richness, saturation and repetition of data were obtained. Data analysis was performed on the basis of a seven-step Colaizzi method. From the research data, 30 subscales were extracted, which were classified in seven main subject themes (as positive experiences of principals from curriculum leadership and negative experiences of principals of curriculum leadership). The results of this study showed that the curriculum leadership takes into account the responsibilities and roles of school principals, but it is a construct that less attention has been paid to the approach of school principals by the experts in this field. Therefore, school principals should be considered in the curriculum leadership.