Understanding Trajectories and Factors Associated with Primary School Principals’ Trajectories from 2015 to 2020

• In Event: Teachers’ sustainable professional development

Proposal

Principals are key in school improvement processes as well as in improving student performance (Day et al., 2011; Sebastian et al., 2016). The effect of leaders on school improvement is gradual and cumulative; likewise, they require long periods to achieve and sustain improvements in students’ learning (Miller, 2013).
Research on aspiring principals has often explored the interest, motivation and barriers that teachers, middle leaders and assistant principals experience on their way to principalship (Cooley and Shen, 2000). Findings concur that teachers’ interest in leadership is closely related to the amount of formal professional development opportunities to sustain leadership roles within schools (Earley, 2009). Findings also show that women face greater barriers to accessing leadership positions within schools (Chan et al., 2016).
There are various ways of understanding management trajectories, in this research we focus on what Ribbins (2008, p.64) calls 'becoming a manager'. Thus, this research has two focus, first, on the identification of previous positions aiming to unravel the steps that many teachers and professionals follow towards a principal career. Likewise, we sought to determine the effect of their professional experiences, and how they manage to connect with their own individual trajectories, inserted in the context of each school. Second, inquiring into their personal and contextual characteristics, we seek to explain factors that affect the likelihood that a person will become a principal.

Data and Method
The analysis conducted in this research considers the 2020 cohort of Chilean primary schools principals, that is, all those who in 2020 were working as principals in urban and rural schools with an enrolment of 100 or more students, belonging to the regular education system. For this cohort, a backward panel data was constructed for the period 2015 to 2020 generated from a series of databases available at the Chilean Ministry of Education. This database included variables such as positions held before becoming directors in 2020, gender, age, teaching specialty, and a set of variables (descriptive and outcomes) associated with the schools, among others.
First, by implementing trajectory analysis (Eisenberg-Guyot et al., 2020; Widmer & Ritschard, 2009) of principals’ careers, aiming to obtain representative clusters of the typology of trajectories of positions prior to becoming principals for this level of education. Aiming to show what are the most relevant trajectories held by individuals in the path to become principals. Analyses were performed with the R packages TraMineR, (Gabadinho et al., 2021), TraMineRextras (Ritschard et al., 2021) and WeightedCluster (Studer, 2013).
Then, we fit a multinomial logit model for panel data in order to obtain the marginal effects associated with each variable and each category. The categories considered through time were principal, teacher, middle leader (deputy director, counsellor, head of technical pedagogical unit) and school professional staff (e.g. member of the principal team or the technical team).

Findings
The most relevant findings are that the trajectories of female principals are similar to those of male principals, and that slightly more than 50% of the 2020 principals were principals during the five years analysed (Figure 1). As expected, trajectories are significantly different according to the age of the current principals.
Another relevant finding is that, the most expected trajectory of principals, i.e. those who begin their work experience as classroom teachers, who then occupy middle leadership positions and then become principals, is not generalized in Chile (Figure 2). Likewise, is also relevant the trajectories where teachers directly assume the position of principal, or education professionals who arrive from outside the schools and join one of them and shortly after become its principal.
During the analysed period, there are certain factors that affect the condition of remaining as principal. The most relevant variable is age; Chilean principals tend to be concentrated in age groups of 55 years or older, so that young principals have previously concentrated more frequently as classroom teachers. In addition, female principals have had less time in this role, while they have spent more time as classroom teachers or mid-level professionals. Another relevant factor is the school size; the larger the school, it seems to be less likely to remain in the position over time. Something similar occurs among less effective schools (Table 1).
Our analysis indicates that a particular set of variables affect a large proportion of the likelihood to become principal. The identification of key factors involved in the trajectories to an appointment to a principal post can support the development of strategies that contribute to the creation of policies that provide a career pathway that is effective in attracting, retaining and developing effective principals
This research provides valuable information for generating policies and/or incentives aimed at retaining effective directors for longer periods. These results can support the development of strategies that contribute to the creation of policies that provide a career path that is effective in attracting, retaining and developing effective directors.

Author

• Claudio Allende González, Universidad de Chile