Action Research and Critical Discourse Analysis: A Pathway to School Principals’ Professional Development

Abstract

a reciprocal relationship with practice, effectively integrating theory and practice. The main research method used in this project to enhance the school principal’s reflection was Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). This research choice, though not so common in AR (Katsarou, 2013), was proved to be very fruitful. Field-notes and journal entries were also used and analyzed. This article aims to document and reflect on the processes that facilitated a school principal’s shift, changing his perceptions about leadership and therefore his practice. Specifically, we aim to show how a school principal became empowered, managing to consciously distance himself from espoused theories focusing on leadership characteristics and behavior, towards theories highlighting social and material-discursive contingencies and collective actions, shaped by mutual discursive patterns that emerge and develop among participants in the educational situation under study. We consider this shift a prerequisite for improving his practice and a crucial step in his professional development. To achieve this objective, the article first discusses the key competencies of school principals and the processes through which these competencies can be mastered and then goes on to present a one-year, two-cycle AR project, utilizing CDA. Abstract: This article addresses the key leadership competencies of school principals and how these competencies can be mastered. We argue that combining Action Research with Critical Discourse Analysis can serve as a pathway to enhancing school principals’ professional development. The paper presents an Action Research project conducted in a Junior High School in Crete, Greece. The main research material collected included the transcriptions of principal-teachers’ assemblies, analyzed using Critical Discourse Analysis. Interesting findings emerged, shedding light on issues like who speaks, how much, the quality of turn-taking, narratives, role of context, etc. Drawing on the Critical Discourse Analysis findings and his conversations with the research team, the principal’s journal shows how his reflection deepens gradually, while new theoretical perspectives open. We conclude that, under specific circumstances, Action Research enhanced with Critical Discourse Analysis can enable changes in leadership, contributing to principals’ professional development.