Providing a model of effective factors on professional development of Iranian school principals

Porpose: 

The aim of this study was to provide a model of factors affecting the professional development of Iranian school principals.

This study was quantitative in terms of applied purpose and descriptive in terms of implementation method. The population of the present study was 91972 school principals in Iran in the academic year of 1999-99. According to Krejcie and Morgan table, the sample size was 384 people who were selected by cluster sampling method according to the population size. The research instrument was a researcher-made questionnaire of factors affecting the professional development of Iranian school principals with 104 items whose face and content validity was confirmed by experts and its reliability was calculated by Cronbach's alpha method of 0.94. Data were analyzed by exploratory factor analysis in SPSS-23 software.

Findings showed that the factors affecting the professional development of Iranian school principals had 104 indicators, 9 components and 3 dimensions; Including individual factors (with four components of personality, cognition, general characteristics and behavioral characteristics), intra-organizational factors (with three components of learning manager, scholarly culture and driving leadership) and extra-organizational factors (with two components redefining school-community relationship and dynamic decisions Upstream) was. The professional development of Iranian school principals had a significant effect on all three dimensions of individual factors, internal organizational factors and external organizational factors (P <0.001).

According to the results of this study, specialists and planners of the educational system to promote the professional development of school principals can provide the basis for improving its indicators, components and dimensions.