“We Don’t Have the Principals’ Handbook. . . .” Early Career Principals Tell on a Practice of Socializing Into Leadership

• In Event: Roundtable Session 84
  In Roundtable Session: Human Capacity Building in Africa and in the Caribbean

Abstract

The Government of Trinidad and Tobago has registered a concern for school leadership through a demand for schools to develop cultures of excellence (GOTT 2008). Employing an interpretivist approach and recent developments in practice theory, we examined the social conditions that influence a practice of socialising into leadership for early career primary school principals in Trinidad and Tobago. The central question: How do early career principals (ECPs) learn the practice of principalship in primary schools? Acknowledging that leadership transformation and school transformation are initiated in the practice of socialising into leadership we examined the overlapping social projects of education, evangelisation and socialisation and their related social sites (school, church and community), which prefigure practices of socialising into leadership for ECPs.

Authors

• Laurette Maria Stacy Bristol, Charles Sturt University

• Launcelot Brown, Duquesne University

• Talia Randa Esnard, The University of Trinidad and Tobago