PerceptionofCurriculumLeadershipofPrincipalsbyKindergartenTeachers.PDFVIP

Perception of Curriculum Leadership of Principals by Kindergarten Teachers Huei-Fang Cheng Yuling Hsue Abstract Curriculum leadership is generally carried out by kindergarten principal and implemented by teachers. Previous studies about curriculum leadership have mostly been using the top-down approach to find out investigated the principles and processes practiced by principals. Studies show that the degree of adaptability of kindergarten teachers is a major issue during the implementation of curriculum leadership, and the way how teachers understand view curriculum leadership may lead to a lower degree of adaptability. This study aimed to research possible factors leading to the different perceptions of teachers, about the bottom-up approach curriculum leadership using by principals. This study adopted interview and document analysis methods. The research subjects were the principal and two middle-senior class teachers. The content of the interview included: 1) perceptions of the curriculum leadership; 2) the content of the curriculum leadership carried out by the principal; and 3) the academic background of the teachers. Documents analyzed were mostly meeting minutes, which is helped the analysis of these documents investigated to know how the principal carried out curriculum leadership. The four major analytical perspectives include: leadership itself, personnel, curriculum and instruction method, and interaction with community and parents. From these perspectives, we examined the perception of the teachers, regarding the curriculum leadership of the principal. We found there were four major factors which influenced the two teachers’ perception of the principal’s curriculum leadership: 1) the different roles of the principal and the teachers led to different views; 2) the teachers’ lack of knowledge about cu