Developing and Validating a Professional Development Model for High-school Principals: A Case Study of Principals of Schools in North Khorasan Province

The present study aimed to develop and validate a professional development model for high-school principals. This was an applied and cross-sectional research in terms of objective and time, respectively, and had a mixed method (qualitative and quantitative). The participants in the qualitative section included 22 experts related to the research topic in North Khorasan Province, selected by purposive sampling. Data obtained from semi-structured interviews were coded and their validity and reliability were approved based on the experts' and participants’ opinions and the agreement coefficient (CVR=0.87), respectively. The statistical population in the quantitative section included 1957 high-school principals in various academic semesters during 2019-2020, 340 of whom were selected by cluster sampling based on Morgan’s Table. The research tool was a researcher-made questionnaire developed based on qualitative findings, which included five main dimensions, 14 components, and 100 items, scored based on a Likert scale (one-six). The validity of the questionnaire was confirmed based on professors’ opinions and its reliability was approved at a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.88. From the perspective of the experts, the five dimensions of professional development included educational leadership, strategic leadership, communication management, organizational management, and ethical leadership, and 14 components were management on learning and teaching, creating a favorable learning environment, curriculum evaluation, vision drawing, continuous improvement of schools, effective communication, relationship with stakeholders, operations management, resource management, individual and team leadership, professional ethics, principles, and Islamic ethical norms, development of their profession and development of human resources profession. According to the results of structural equations with PLS Smart22 showed that the research variables were able to predict professional development at a 0.69 level. It is notable that the overall goodness of fit of the model was favorable (GOF=0.54).