Twenty First Century Principal Leadership

With the shifts and newly evolving complexities of the 21st century, the significance of what is needed from a successful school principal has reached a critical point. Today, one of the most vital roles of an effective principal is to, "Create a climate hospitable to education so that safety, a cooperative spirit, and other foundations of fruitful interactions prevail" (Foundation, 2013, p. 6). Therefore, the present study, using a constructivist research approach to conduct a phenomenological study, strove to understand a phenomenon, in this case, the phenomenon of leadership as it is practiced by high school principals (Adom, 2016). This study endeavored to use phenomenology to explore the experiences of those that practice leadership daily to examine the essence of how they lead. To comprehend what leadership skills high school principals in Fairfax County employ to promote a positive learning environment, a qualitative research design was used. In this phenomenological qualitative interview study, three individual interviews were conducted with the principals of Woodmont High School, Marshall High School, and Robinson High School. Three separate focus-group interviews took place with assistant principals, and three separate focus-group interviews were conducted with district high school teachers from each of the aforementioned high schools. The aim of the researcher was to have a focus group size of two to four assistant principals for each focus group session and four to ten teachers for each focus group session. Each interview was recorded, transcribed, and coded into theme-clusters (Field et al., 2016). The participants’ lived experiences were examined to understand their interpretation of leadership, and to find connections within shared domains—specifically about meaningful experiences related to a positive learning environment (Nuñez & Yoshimi, 2017).