Unplanned Principal Meetings: Candid Knowledge Encounters

• In Event: Underexplored Facets of Educational Leadership: Emotion, Roles, Crisis, and Time

Abstract

Unplanned meetings involving the school principal comprise significant time of their workday and accomplish urgent administrative and instructional tasks, yet unplanned principal meetings (UPMs) remain largely overlooked as research topics. This paper draws upon scholarly literature and findings from an empirical study of UPMs of two elementary school principals to show that UPMs shaped and enacted the know-how of professional responsibilities, democratized voices, led to participative action, and contributed to plausible stories of school performance. This paper argues that the beliefs, behaviors, structures, and systems underlying UPMs may promote equity through unencumbered talk and less hierarchical control and therefore encourages critical discourse among scholars and practitioners around school leadership practice and draws attention to our own unplanned meetings.

Author

• Gopal Midha, University of Virginia