(1105) STYLES OF LEADERSHIP OF HEADTEACHERS OF POLISH SCHOOLS OF DIFFERENT TYPES

摘要

Leadership is undoubtedly a key factor contributing to the effectiveness of schools as organizationsand, what is even more important, to the educational achievements of students. The importance ofleadership has been recognised by the OECD, the European Commission and many educationalbodies at the national level in most European countries trying to implement educational reforms aimingat the improvement of school systems. Polish educational system can be shown as a good example ofsuch interest in educational leadership as the key element of school transformation. Recent changesin the area of school leaders development and training have been strongly focused on schoolleadership instead of (or in addition to) school management.At the same time we must notice that it is not clear how we should define leadership adequately to theneeds of educational organizations. Such a difficulty can be noticed both in educational leadershiptheory and practice where there are many different understandings of leadership. Starting from a shortreview of theories or paradigms of leadership, this paper tries to point out the way of understandingleadership that is the best from the perspective of education.To find out if this understanding is present in thinking of existing school head teachers, research wascarried out with the participation of a group of 150 head teachers of Polish schools of different types.They were asked to assess their style of leadership using the questionnaire based on Avery's (2004)typology of leadership paradigms (classical, transactional, visionary and organic). The paper presentsthe results of that study with special emphasis on differences in the understanding of leadershipbetween groups of head teachers of schools of different types: primary, lower secondary and uppersecondary. It also tries to present some recommendations for training and professional developmentof school heads based on the acquired results.