Korean Educational Development Institute(KEDI)

Effective leadership of principals is one of the crucial factors for innovating schools and improving the quality of school education. At present, a Korean teachers’ union harshly criticizes the current recruiting system of principals, in which the government exclusively appoints new principals from a group of teachers who have acquired a principal’s certificate. As the union argues that this system has been the major hindrance of school innovation, they argue for a new system, in which a principal is elected by the teachers themselves, and demand a new democratic principal leadership. In this context, the challenges awaiting school principals in Korean society are remarkably big and unprecedented. As part of a larger cross-national study which compares the professional induction of beginning elementary school principals in several countries in the West and in the East, this study investigates what it is like to become a principal in Korea, who they are, what their expected roles, priorities, and concerns are, what challenges they have faced, and so on, and tries to find alternatives to help these beginning principals exert effective leadership and thus facilitate school improvement.