An Investigation into the Lived Experiences of Primary School Principals in Ireland: The Role of Relational Leadership

McCarroll, Carmel Gildea (2024) An Investigation into the Lived Experiences of Primary School Principals in Ireland: The Role of Relational Leadership. Doctoral thesis, Liverpool Hope University.

Text 28th June 2024 Thesis .pdf Restricted to Repository staff only until 1 August 2025. Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial. Download (4MB)

Abstract

In response to the growing concerns surrounding the sustainability of the school principal’s role and the recognition of the need for support at every stage of the career trajectory, this study investigates the lived experiences of primary school principals based in the Republic of Ireland. First, the thesis focuses on leadership in general, then it delves deeper into the lived
experiences of the relational side of the role. The study’s theoretical framework considers the impact of relational leadership on the leader. It explores how principals navigate the tensions and opportunities through the relational aspects of the four 'I's in transformational leadership theory (TLT) (Bass, 1985): individual consideration, idealised influence, inspirational motivation and intellectual stimulation.
The literature review examines policy influences that challenge principals to enact distributed leadership as a preferred model with little professional support. It illuminates the lack of research available from a principal's perspective, leading to a gap in what is known about the lives of principals.
The research adopts a phenomenological approach with a qualitative design. Phase one gathered data from twenty-six semi-structured diaries with phenomenological elements such as text messages, letters, emails and photo elicitation. Data was analysed using reflective thematic analysis, and the emerging themes influenced the questions posed in the six semi-structured interviews and photo-elicitation in phase two. In the diaries, principals share workload demands, psychological impact and relational complexities. The interviews shed light on the relational aspect of the principal's role and how they negotiate and navigate the tensions and opportunities that arise from their multiple relationships and the impact on them personally and professionally.
The findings illuminate the relational aspects of TLT’s four ‘I’s. They reveal insightful and unexpected insights into how principals balance the pressure from the external expectations of the Department of Education’s policy agenda and the internalised consequences. Principals internally negotiate the tensions and opportunities of being authentic to themselves and others by finding safe spaces that facilitate self-care and collective support. The findings build upon and contest aspects of TLT’s four ‘I’s to include a fifth ‘I’, a principal's ‘internalised leadership’, as they conceal and isolate themselves and embody personal feelings while simultaneously endeavouring to be authentic.
This study contributes professional practitioners' lived experiences and knowledge to educational leadership research and practice. It adopted an innovative methodological approach that collected multiple views using multimodal methods, producing new knowledge that could contribute to
policy development.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Additional Information and Comments:	Copyright © The Author 2024. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request.
Faculty / Department:	Faculty of Education and Social Sciences > School of Education
Depositing User:	Matthew Adams
Date Deposited:	01 Jul 2024 15:13
Last Modified:	12 Nov 2024 14:38
URI:	https://hira.hope.ac.uk/id/eprint/4310

Actions (login required)

View Item