Who am I? - Exploring school leaders professional identities

In addition, school leaders play a crucial role in linking curriculum, implementation of innovations, and teachers' professional and learning culture.

However, school leadership is under strain for several reasons: school leaders experience high workloads due to growing responsibilities, increasing complexity of the work context, policy changes, and societal criticism. Moreover, not all school leaders meet quality standards and there is a growing shortage of school leaders.

To counter the aforementioned problems, professional standards have been formulated and investments are being made in training and professionalization of school leaders. School leaders themselves, however, are not always aware of what they consider important from a personal perspective in their leadership role and in daily work practice. Professional identity does influence important decisions such as how and when actions and innovations are initiated, but school leaders are often not aware of their professional identity. In addition, feeling you can be who you want to be in your work creates positive feelings of effectiveness, self-esteem and authenticity. Thus, having an understanding of one's professional identity contributes to maintaining resilience and effectiveness at work.

What personal and professional norms play a role in school leaders' professional identity; how work situations and others in the work environment influence that professional identity; and how school leaders' professional identity varies or changes at different career stages are not yet known.

The central question of my PHD-research is therefore

What does school leaders' professional identity look like given (the interaction between) personal and professional identity standards (in interactions in situations and with others) and how does it change in different career stages?

My research is conducted in secondary education and is mostly carried out in professionalization courses that are offered by the VO-academie, which is part of the VO-raad (Dutch educational council).

Since the start of my research a practical article about my research is published in a leadership journal De nieuwe Meso. The article is available as a download on LinkedIn: Wie ben ik als schoolleider? - De nieuwe meso

I expect my first article Who am I? - Exploring secondary education school leaders' professional identity, is to be published online soon in EMAL (Educational Management Administration & Leadership).