Principal Meetings: Pressure Mechanisms That Shape Professional Knowledge

• In Event: The Principals' Everyday Practice Examined

Abstract

Principal meetings comprise more than 75% of a school principal's workday (Morris, Crowson, Porter-Gehrie, & Hurwitz, 1984; Wolcott, 1973) and have various labels and ostensible purposes and yet, despite their ubiquity, this paper shows that meetings of the principal remain unnoticed. First, educational literature rarely considers meetings of the school principal as constituents of educational leadership practice. Secondly, based on an ethnographic study of principal meetings, this paper illustrates that principal meetings act as pressure mechanisms to shape school members’ professional knowledge. The deliberate reconnection which AERA envisages with the daily practices of practitioners like school principals and the importance of principal meetings makes a strong case to discuss this study’s findings.

Author

• Gopal Midha, University of Virginia