Competencies of the school director: Perspectives of project coordinators

Abstract

School, as an organization, has been going through deep changes over the past years, concerning managing processes. These changes require new competences, especially from those members who are in leading positions, such as the school director. The publishing of the Law-Decree n. º75/2008 has instituted a management model in public schools centered on the director. We intend to focus on the fundamental relevance of this new manager at schools, since he has to face new and difficult challenges every day. We also want to listen to project coordinators, in order to understand how they feel about these new managing competences, taking into account that the school director is the main character in the school organization and the creator of new dynamics and changes in public schools in Portugal. Facing these issues, we have defined as objectives for the present research: - To analyze the relations between school board and the project coordination; -To identify the competences of the school director most valued by project coordinators; - To analyze the perspectives of the project coordinators over the way the school director can influence the development of projects at school. We have chosen a mixed research methodology, in order to achieve the stated objectives, and used the interview and the questionnaire, as data gathering methods, and statistical analysis, as well as content analysis, as data analysis techniques. Both instruments for collecting data applied to public school teachers who play the role of project coordinators, in the district of Porto. We applied the questionnaire to 50 teachers and the semistructured interview to 4 teachers in the same county. The study results indicate that the project coordinators accept the vital importance of the school director and value his competences of leadership, communication, sharing and flexibility.