From the best practices of successful school leaders: Developing and validating the principal competencies inventory in South Korea

Abstract

This study aims to develop and validate the Principal Competency Inventory (PCI), an instrument used to assess a principal’s leadership competencies that promote student learning in South Korea. An extensive review of prior work was conducted to understand the theoretical foundation related to school leadership and the competency construct of the PCI derived from the Behavioural Event Interview of principals. Then, the psychometric procedures used in developing and validating the PCI were followed. The significance of this study and its practical implications for the use of this new instrument was discussed. From a theoretical and practical standpoint, this study contributes to the school leadership field by describing development and validation procedures, identifying where evidence of the reliable assessment instrument is lacking, and utilising the advantage of the competency-based framework. Also, the analysis of this study provides international perspectives about school leadership practices, thus supplementing the prior Western-focused literature in this field. In addition, this study offers useful information for policymakers and principal leadership development program designers who want to assess and evaluate principal leadership competency.

Keywords

Principal leadership school improvement self-assessment Principal Competency Inventory

In the era of school-based accountability, a principal's successful leadership practices are key to improving school effectiveness and student outcomes (Marks and Nance, 2007; O’Donnell and White, 2005). Researchers have consistently provided strong evidence that principal leadership greatly affects student performance (Leithwood et al., 2004; Marzano et al., 2001; Murphy and Hallinger, 1988). Principals indirectly influence student learning by playing a multidimensional role in managing school internal processes related to school performance, such as curriculum, teaching and learning practices, school climate and parents’ involvement (Day et al., 2009; Hallinger et al., 1996; Marzano et al., 2001). Under the accountability policy context, the principal's role is increasing in interpreting, translating, and implementing external reforms in their school context in response to external policy demands (Day and Gu, 2018; Eddy-Spicer et al., 2019; Louis and Robinson, 2012).

The ever-increasing importance of principal leadership practices calls for a well-developed standard to evaluate and promote leadership practices that are strongly associated with school improvement. Most Western countries, where the educational accountability system has been long implemented, have developed national standards for principal leadership practices to utilise in the selection, evaluation, and professional development processes. For instance, the United States developed the Inter-state School Leadership Licensure Consortium (ISLLC) policy standards in 1996 to guide what school leaders should know and be able to do to improve teaching, learning, and student achievement (CCSSO, 1996). Many states have adopted or adapted the ISLLC standards for use in their selection, preparation and evaluation of principals. The ISLLC standards have been revised and updated to reflect changes in school leadership expectations over time, and since 2015, the Professional Standards for Educational Leaders (PSEL) has replaced the ISLLC. The PSEL incorporates broader references to leadership expectations and more specific indicators of effective leadership action. It also has a clear emphasis on centring children in education and accepting responsibility for the success of each student. England also recently revised The National Standards for Headteachers, which was developed in 2004. The new National Standards of Excellence for Headteachers demonstrates selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership as a core of the standards, and further expected 10 standards comprised: school culture, teaching, curriculum and assessment, behaviour, additional and special educational needs, and disabilities, professional development, organisational management, continuous school improvement, working in partnership, and governance and accountability (Department for Education, 2020).

Korean context

Affected by global trends in educational accountability, South Korea has notably emphasised outcome-based accountability policy since the 2000s (Chung and Chea, 2016) and has attempted to develop national job standards for school leaders. The National Teacher Professional Development and Evaluation System offer the guideline for job standards to ensure that all principals implement effective leadership practices across the nation. In comparison to the principal recruitment and selection system seen in places such as the United States, Australia and England, South Korea adopted the promotion system in which teachers can earn chances to be promoted to the principal by accumulating point scores over a long period. Although competitive open recruitment for principals was introduced in 2007, the selection process of principals in South Korea is still largely dependent on the promotion system. To be qualified for a principal position, a long experience of being a teacher – an average of 25 years – is required. For countries with a recruitment system, attracting and recruiting principals are challenging issues (Busby, 2019), whereas preparing principal candidates among teachers for a leadership position and re-training them are critical issues in South Korea. Since the roles of principals and teachers are fundamentally different in practice, it is important to support both principal candidates and principals throughout the promotion process and in-service training to help them successfully transition to the position as a school leader and develop effective leadership practices.

Meanwhile, South Korea has experienced education decentralisation over the past half-century (Lee and Park, 2014) and has developed an accountability system (Chung and Chea, 2016). Even more, in the last 10 years, unprecedented education policy experiments (e.g. hyukshin school, exam free-semester, open principal recruitment, etc.) have been implementing at the national level, which centre on students’ authentic learning and a diverse experience beyond content knowledge and school context to solve the traditional Korean education problem, excessive focus on the high-stake academic testing scores (e.g. Sung and Lee, 2018; So and Kang, 2014). This reform trend requires much more school-based curriculum development that urges decision-making by teachers and collaboration with parents and local communities to utilise external resources. According to the rapid change of the educational environment, the school management paradigm has shifted to emphasising democracy and collaboration, a bottom-up approach from being dependent on the principal's authority and charismatic leadership that helps to implement mandated national standards under the centralised system in the past.

Despite this change on the school ground, Korean researchers have raised great concerns that principal qualification and in-service training programs almost entirely focus on knowledge-based content that is separate from the actual leadership practices related to school improvement (Kim et al., 2016). For instance, the National Professional Qualification for Headship in England has recognised the importance of hands-on practice for principals and has attempted to provide more personalised and practice-oriented programs such as on-the-job leadership training in the workplace, a feedback portfolio and mentoring (Aravena, 2016; Cowie and Crawford, 2007). In comparison, principal qualification programs in Korea have largely relied on instructor-led courses in short-term training of 180–270 h and barely offer personalised and hands-on programs. Even after principals get promoted to a leadership position, they usually do not have chances to understand and reflect on their leadership competencies and practices in in-service training through an individualised program.

Moreover, Korean studies to identify core competencies for school leadership have mostly been based on ISLCC of the United States (Cho et al., 2010) as well as has only relied on literature analysis and perceptions of general principals, not focusing on what successful Korean principals actually do in their school (Cho et al., 2010; Kim et al., 2016). Given this context, principals tend not to benefit from understanding and benchmarking of best leadership practices that successful principals do for school improvement, especially reflecting the relevant context of Korea.

In this regard, what needs to be investigated is a more effective way of providing professional development relevant to the current Korean context that also supports more personalised reflection on leadership practices. Developing an assessment instrument is a cost-effective and useful way to provide them with chances to assess and reflect on themselves and to inform them of important domains for successful school management and improvement. Therefore, this study aims to develop a new instrument to assess principals’ leadership competencies that can provide a more useful and relevant training program for professional development.

Developing assessment instruments for principal leadership and the competency approach

Despite the burgeoning use of leadership assessment instruments, only a few meet the psychometric standards in developing and validating procedures (Clifford et al., 2012; Ginsberg and Berry, 1990; Goldring et al., 2009; Porter et al., 2010). Golding et al. (2009) found that most of the instruments are not based on a sound conceptual framework with strong evidence of effective leadership and do not document psychometric properties. The use of unreliable measurement can be damaging because it may result in principals having negative effects on student outcomes (Porter et al., 2010). Only a properly designed instrument that targets effective leadership practices known to promote student achievement can help a principal develop effective leadership behaviours. Thus, the school leadership field requires theoretically and psychometrically reliable instruments and must document a transparent procedure in developing a new principal evaluation instrument.

In developing a principal leadership assessment instrument, it is critical to identify the primary behaviours that can be generalised and enacted in practice (Leithwood et al., 2017). This indicates that an assessment instrument for school leaders should not only include a generalisable core set of behavioural indicators but also embrace comprehensive domains that adequately involve multifaceted roles for principals. Most of the existing school leadership assessment instruments, however, provide a vast list of indicators that pertain to leadership practices in general situations rather than the school context (Goldring et al., 2009). Also, the instruments derived from theoretical trends (e.g. instructional and distributed leadership) tend to emphasise a specific aspect of school leadership, which does not capture the multidimensional roles of principals.

In contrast, competency-based modelling provides a useful guideline for a proper principal assessment instrument by describing a core set of knowledge, skills, and behaviours that contribute to outstanding and effective performance in specific job situations (Boyatzis, 1982; McClelland, 1973). Competency modelling especially attempts to identify internal characteristics and manifested activities that produced actual performance in a given job position (Spencer and Spencer, 1993). Furthermore, it can provide a collection of specific behavioural practices related to successful performance, which can help train principals to focus on the activities they need to develop for school improvement. By focusing on the individual properties and behaviours that contribute to performance rather than the performance itself, competency-based modelling can identify a core set of leadership practices as well as provide valuable information for formative feedback.

Despite the advantage of the competency approach used in the study, there are concerns about reductionist and context-irrelevant aspects underlying this framework (Glatter, 1999). Much of theoretical criticism argues that the competency approach may not capture holistic features of work by dividing complex practice into discrete behaviours. As criticised, the competency approach may not fully explain a comprehensive work process in the workplace; however, providing critical discrete domains and skill sets of complex tasks is somewhat necessary for the purpose of assessment, selection and learning (Hawkins et al., 2015). From a developmental and diagnostic perspective, understanding discrete domains and tasks related to successful outcomes help individuals understand what they need to do in a complex work situation. To support integrated practice in the field, an individual-oriented approach such as consulting or coaching should be needed, which requires high costs and time. Thus, this study attempted to utilise the competency approach in developing an assessment tool, considering efficiency in terms of cost and time to support professional development.

Another criticism is that the competency approach focuses on generic attributes rather than considering the context in which those attributes are applied. It also concerns that benchmarking the best practices may not work in different situations. For instance, the same type of competency like communication skills may work differently for the young and the old, or in different workplaces. It is, however, inescapable that generic skills are the basis of successful practice in many contexts. Indeed, many researches reviewing the international literature of educational leadership suggest evidence that successful principals and headteachers present and value similar practices (Day and Sammons, 2013; Leithwood et al., 2020), indicating that understanding general attributes of successful leadership practices could be a good starting point in the professional work context.

These general competencies from the best practices may offer critical mental models or milestones to guide principals’ more deep reflection when they integrate and develop their leadership practices in their actual context afterward. Especially, the best practices conducted in school settings have some benchmarking advantages to relatively less experienced principals even though they need to be applied more rigorously and criteria for assessing the best practice need to be clearly specified (Glatter and Kydd, 2003). For the purpose of comparing school principals’ performance in terms of selection and feedback, there also need to identify the best practice models and their specific observable criteria of competence.

In addition to this, the competency modelling method used in this study extracts common attributes and practices from a direct interview with school principals. This approach thus explored what successful principals actually do in the Korean education context rather than relying on the standards and previous literature of the competency model based on the Western context. It can provide more nuanced culturally relevant information about leadership practices that are considered important in the Korean context.

As such, despite its concerns and criticism about the competency approach, it has significant practical usefulness in the context of learning and assessment. For this reason, the competency approach has been widely utilised in the education field, for instance, in a medical setting where actual practice as the outcome of educational programs is important (Hawkins et al., 2015; Ross et al., 2018). Since the concept of the competency approach has been introduced in early 2000 in Korea, it is widely adopted and is well positioned in organizational practice today. In 2020, the Korean government has reviewed to further adopt a competency-based framework for principal and vice-principal evaluation process as well. To identify what principals need to do to improve and monitor the quality of school leadership, a certain agreed level of a core set of competencies should be set up in practice. In this regard, an instrument based on the competency approach can provide a useful starting point to check principals’ competency by enhancing their understanding of strengths and weaknesses and develop more situated programs based on the individual profile. Therefore, this study adopted the competency framework to develop a sound assessment tool for principals.

The present study

The purpose of this study is to develop and validate the Principal Competency Inventory (PCI), an instrument used to assess a principal's leadership competencies that promote student learning in South Korea. An extensive review of prior work was conducted to understand the theoretical foundation related to school leadership and the competency construct of the PCI derived from the Behavioural Event Interview (BEI) of principals. Then, the psychometric procedures in developing and validating the PCI were followed.

Conceptual framework: student learning-centred leadership

Figure 1 presents the conceptualised process of how principal leadership influences student learning. The PCI incorporated prior evidence from school leadership theories and empirical findings on principal practices for school effectiveness. This framework provides a theoretical foundation to understand the competency domains of the PCI empirically derived from the BEI method.

Figure 1.

The student learning-centred principal leadership conceptual framework.

Instructional leadership and transformational leadership have been suggested as two dominant theories for improving student performance (Hallinger, 2003, 2010). Instructional leadership highlights the strong role of the principal in improving the quality of instruction and student performance (Barth, 1986; Edmonds, 1979; Hallinger and Murphy, 1985; Leithwood and Montgomery, 1982). It focuses on principals’ managerial behaviours and instructional supervision, such as sharing a vision, monitoring curriculum, instruction and assessments (Bamburg and Andrews, 1990; Murphy, 1990).

While the conventional notion of instructional leadership emphasises principals’ direct responsibility for curriculum and instruction in school, transformational leadership focuses on the role of the principal in shaping an organisational culture that leads to innovation (Bass, 1985; Leithwood and Jantzi, 2000). To achieve educational change and reform, transformational leadership seeks to build collective competence in schools by empowering and supporting teachers (Conley and Goldman, 1994; Leithwood, 1994; Leithwood and Jantzi, 2000). In a similar vein to transformational leadership, shared or distributed leadership, recently emerged in the educational field, which emphasises that each member of the larger school community should share a commitment and collaborate to lead change in schools (Lambert, 2002; Spillane, 2006).

In the school context, these theories aim to demonstrate the most influential leadership practices that improve student learning. To accomplish this ultimate goal, instructional leadership and transformational leadership emphasise different dimensions of the principal's responsibilities. Whereas instructional leadership focuses on the core of educational practices in school, transformational leadership highlights the most effective organisational features to drive instructional improvement. To respond to the educational challenges that schools face, principals need to collaborate with school members to improve student learning. Accordingly, integrated leadership that embraces both instructional and transformational leadership theories has emerged in the recent educational leadership field (e.g. Hallinger, 2003; Leithwood and Jantzi, 2005; Marks and Printy, 2003). In real practice, as a school leader, the principal should understand and implement both instructional and transformational aspects of school leadership by building organisational capacity for high-quality instruction to improve student learning; thus, the study has demonstrated integrated leadership would present great synergistic power in school improvement (Hallinger, 2011; Marks and Printy, 2003). Therefore, this study emphasises ‘learning-centred’ leadership by embracing an integrated view.

As stated, principal leadership should focus on students learning. Principal leadership practices have an indirect impact on student learning as being mediated by key elements in school (Day et al., 2009; Hallinger et al., 1996; Marzano et al., 2001). Based on empirical findings, we clarified four elements primarily related to student learning: teacher, curriculum, school climate, and environment (parents and the local community). Previous studies on teachers’ effect on student learning have suggested that a teacher is the most influential factor for improving student achievement (Greenwald et al., 1996). High-quality teachers not only raise student academic performance by implementing effective teaching practices but also promote emotional development by building a positive relationship (Blazar and Kraft, 2017; Croninger et al., 2007; Darling-Hammond, 2000; Heck, 2009). Developing and monitoring curriculum is important for promoting student learning experiences by helping guide and involve teachers and students in educational goals and instructional activities (McCaffrey et al., 2001; Reys et al., 2003). Along with the importance of teachers and curriculum, creating a positive school climate is essential for promoting student learning because it shapes overall organisational and relational patterns in school (Anderson, 1982; Berkowitz et al., 2017).

The Wallace Foundation (2009), which has introduced new perspectives for assessing principal effectiveness, has emphasised the importance of focusing on ‘driver’ behaviours. The principal carries out a variety of duties every day, from smaller chores involved in school management to broader tasks related to school vision and curriculum. To promote student learning, however, it is important to identify and prioritise principals’ specific behaviours that are most related to improving student achievement rather than daily managerial tasks. That is, to promote student learning, the assessment should identify and focus on the principal's ‘driver’ behaviours that can most effectively influence the core elements of the school including teachers, curriculum, climate and environment. We define driver behaviours as related to these four key elements in a school as task-focused competencies.

Principal's behaviours and actions are inevitably attributed to individual values, traits, and characteristics. Bethell-Fox (1992) defines these underlying qualities to be directly associated with effective performance as meta-competences. He conceptualised four domains of meta-competencies: a ‘cognitive’ competency represents cognitive ability, including analytical thinking, an ‘influencing’ competency refers to the interpersonal ability to build and understand a relationship in the context of the organisation, a ‘managing’ competency is related to managerial skills, and a ‘personal’ competency involves personality traits such as having initiatives and tenacity. These underlying meta-competencies are defined as foundational competencies, which help principals continue developing driver behaviours.

Recently, there is great pressure on principals to understand and enact the external educational initiatives of the broader district, state and national-level policies. Treating these challenges is crucial for principals in integrating their internal school demands with external mandates. When schools face external reform demands, successful principals should act as a mediator to build collaborative capacity by creating a shared vision and expectations among school staff to continue embedding innovation in the school (Gu et al., 2018). They also can interpret and clarify comprehensive policies into more specific actions and can situate these actions into their school context (Spillane et al., 2002). As such, principals should interact with and mediate the broader policy environment to promote student learning.

In summary, student learning-centred principal leadership focuses on behaviours directly related to promoting student learning. We defined foundational competencies as the underlying characteristics (cognitive, influencing, managing and personal) that affect the principal's leadership driver behaviours. And, task-focused competencies are defined as the qualities contributing to a principal's ability to operate four elements of their school – teachers, curriculum, school climate and environment including parent and the local community. While task-focused competency is essential to conduct multi-dimensional job tasks in school, foundational competence is critical to carry out and continuously develop or enhance task-focused competency.

Development process of the principal competency inventory

The following sequential process of competency modelling was conducted to develop the initial construct of the PCI:

Step 1. BEI was conducted to interview 14 principals considered as successful school leaders. We used a purposive sampling method to find principals who present successful leadership practices for school improvement. After officer panels from the Jeollanamdo Office of Education were fully explained and understood the purpose of the study and then nominated potential interview participants within their geographic region¹. The final 14 participants were selected by considering the best within a set of diverse characteristics such as gender, school level, public/private school and years of experience, and performance criteria including awards relevant to the individual and school performance (e.g. a national list of the top 100 schools for the best curriculum implementation). Selected participants were granted at least one award associated with educational activities at either the individual or school level. Two interviewers attended each interview session, which lasted from 1 to 2 h, averaging 110 min in duration. Using a semi-structured questionnaire with ‘introducing’, ‘focusing’, and ‘in-depth probing’ stages, each session for BEI (Spencer and Spencer, 1993) was designed to identify specific behaviours that successful principals do in school situations. All interviews were recorded and transcribed for analysis.

Step 2. Thematic analysis (Boyatzis, 1998; Braun and Clarke, 2006) was used to identify the competencies of individual outstanding principals from recorded interviews from the first step. The research team thoroughly and repeatedly read the interview transcripts and coded ‘behaviours’, ‘actions’, or ‘thoughts’ to be clustered within a similar category. We then derived a common theme in which the similar traits of each code could be classified. The research team repeatedly discussed their classification and reviewed themes and codes derived from their analysis and reassigned the code. Through the three-iterated process, 44 themes and 158 codes were derived from this phase. Next, we refined the themes and codes in considering whether these are relevant to the principal's excellent performance for school improvement. Ten outstanding principals, who were in a potential pool but did not participate in the interview stage reviewed whether each item was relevant to the school context, and if the initial themes and codes were appropriate for school practices. We excluded less important themes (e.g. promoting and sharing school success) and less specific or general themes to conduct the role of principals as an educator (e.g. commitments and responsibility) from the competency list.

Step 3. Defining competency and content validity: We categorised themes based on the conceptual framework previously derived, and then named each competency. Among codes we previously classified, the research team selected representative items to describe behavioural indicators under each competency category and developed four items under each component. As a result, the competency model includes eight domains, 22 components, and 88 behavioural indicators. To ensure content validity, the competency model was reviewed by five additional experts, three current principals, and two faculty members who have doctoral degrees in the education field.

Step 4. Two experts reviewed a pilot 88 questionnaire representing behavioural indicators. With their feedback, the pilot-PCI has 8 domains, 22 components and 66 questionnaire items were confirmed.

Validation method

Data and sample

The data for PCI validation were collected from 722 principals in the province of Jeollanamdo, South Korea. After excluding incomplete responses, a final sample of 656 was analysed. The sample was randomly split into a training set and a validation set with an equivalent size (N = 328, respectively) to perform exploratory and confirmation factor analysis separately in each sample. The sample was sufficient for scale development since 300 cases are generally recommended in factor analysis (Worthington and Whittaker, 2006). It approximately reached to minimum ratio of 5:1 participants-to-items suggested by Gorsuch (1983) as well.

The average age of participants was around 58 years (SD = 2.97). The average number of years of experience in a teacher position was 25.17 years (SD = 7.24), and the average number of years of experience in a principal position was 4.49 years (SD = 4.45). Twenty per cent of participants were female. Ninety-two per cent of principals were in public schools, and 56% were in elementary schools, 28% were in middle schools and 16% were in high schools.

Instrument

The Principal Competency Inventory

As previously stated, the construct of the PCI is composed of 8 key domains, 22 components and 66 behavioural indicators. We used a Likert scale ranging from 1 to 4 to avoid the tendency of participants to respond to the average within 5 scales. The examples of wording in items are ‘I congratulate each student's accomplishment in person’, ‘I consistently search for and benchmark successful school practice’ and ‘I encourage teachers trying a new instructional practice’.

Additional 14 items were included in order to reduce response bias. Seven items were included with a pair of Likert-scale items to identify the consistency of response (e.g. a: ‘I frequently meet and ask after disadvantaged students’ is a pair with b: ‘I meet disadvantaged students on special occasion’). Seven items were included to mitigate the social desirability bias in responses indicating the tendency of participants to respond socially desirable and acceptable, which is commonly reported in a self-reported survey and assessment tool (Nancarrow and Brace, 2000; Paulhus, 1991). These items include the wording that seems to be desirable, but extreme to be done in practice (e.g. I perfectly deal with the conflict among teachers in my school). The total number of questionnaire items is 102 including demographic questions.

All participants completed the self-reported PCI distributed online in December 2015. Prior to delivering the PCI, all participants were informed of the purpose of the study, instructions and guidance via email. We, especially, clarified that the PCI is (a) a self-assessment tool, not evaluation, (b) thus not being used for an evaluation tool and (c) not survey to ask their opinion or thoughts. Therefore, guidelines for PCI asked respondents to check each item based on their actual behaviours and actions in practice.

Measures²

Individual-level performance

As a proxy of individual-level performance, we used the number of awards an individual principal was granted within 5 years. Each award was weighted according to the level of authorities (2 for President's commendation, 1.5 for Minister's commendation, 1 for Superintendent's commendation, 0.5 for Head administrator's commendation). Participants have 0 to 20 in this measure and the overall mean of individual performance is 1.07 with a standard deviation of 1.99.

School-level performance

The number of awards granted to a school was used as a proxy of school-level performance. Each award was weighted in the same way that we computed the individual performance measure above. The school performance measure ranges from 0 to 53 and has a mean of 1.07 with a standard deviation of 3.37.

Analytic strategies

First, an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was performed with a training sample (N = 328) to examine the factor structure of the assessment items. The principal components analysis extraction with Promax rotation was conducted because the sub-dimensions of the principal competency model are assumed to be correlated. Cronbach's alpha coefficient was used to test the internal consistency of the factor structure.

Second, a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was performed with a validation sample (N = 328) to test the statistical stability of the factor structure obtained from the EFA. To evaluate the soundness of the model fit, five indices were considered: chi-square, standardised root mean square residual, comparative fit index (CFI), the Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI) and the root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA). The multiple-group CFA was conducted to examine whether the factor loadings, factor variances, and factor correlations from the CFA model hold the same construct across different groups (Byrne, 2013; Marsh, 1994). The factorial invariance can be tested by performing a series of statistical tests from the default model with no invariance constraints to restrictive models with subsequent parameter constraints (Bentler, 1990; Cheung and Rensvold, 2002; Steenkamp and Baumgartner, 1998; Vandenberg and Lance, 2000). The invariance across multiple groups would be supported if the difference among nested models with constrained parameters is not statistically significant or all the models show to provide a good model fit with multiple model fit indices (Marsh et al., 2005).

Finally, a correlation between the score of the PCI and individual- and school-level performance was examined to test criterion validity.

Results

Exploratory factor analysis

The EFA examined the factor structure of the PCI. The value of Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin for sampling adequacy was 0.93 and Bartlett's test of sphericity was significant (χ² (2145) = 11158.42, p < 0.001), indicating that analysed data are appropriate to perform EFA (Tabachnick and Fidell, 2001).

The 14-factor solution with eigenvalues greater than 1 was extracted. To establish meaningful factors underlying the PCI, we excluded factors that cannot be supported by the theoretical model and that have a minimum of two items loaded on it. We removed items that were conceptually irrelevant to a factor structure. Eliminated items were highly cross-loaded and were loaded less than 0.30. After excluding 26 items out of a total of 66 items, the results indicated a seven-factor structure with 38 items.

Table 1 presents the factor loadings, communalities and Cronbach's alpha coefficients of this final model. All items had factor loadings and communalities above 0.35, and seven factors explain 48.95% of the total variance. The Cronbach's alpha coefficients of each factor fall between 0.70 and 0.87, indicating the internal consistency reliability of each scale is acceptable (DeVellis, 2016).

Table 1.

The results of EFA.

Items	Factor
Items	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	Domain
A1	0.653							Resolving conflicts and building trust
B4	0.652
B3	0.630
A4	0.629
A3	0.627
B1	0.540
C1	0.491
D1	0.407
E2		0.831						Pursuing and promoting change
D1		0.688
F3		0.685
E1		0.679
F1		0.638
G3	0.299	0.525
H2			0.824					Democratic management
I2			0.744
I3			0.711
H4			0.546
H3			0.507
I1			0.411
J2				0.889				Student-centred thinking
J1				0.807
J3				0.615
K2				0.565
K3		0.261		0.399
L4					0.958			Setting a vision and goals
M1					0.858
L3					0.855
L2	0.283				0.427
M4					0.370
N1						0.618		Supporting teacher professional development
N2						0.507
O3						0.495
O2						0.464
P1						0.408
Q1							0.682	Establishing a partnership with the local community
Q2							0.618
Q4							0.468
Explained variance	7.758	7.656	5.978	5.959	7.420	5.704	5.813
Explained (%)	29.099	5.780	4.039	3.542	2.535	2.147	1.809
Cumulative (%)	29.099	34.879	38.918	42.460	44.995	47.142	48.951
Cronbach’s α	0.818	0.858	0.816	0.731	0.873	0.831	0.702

Note. Extracted by principal component analysis; rotated by Promax; factor loadings over 0.25 only displayed and factor loadings larger than 0.35 are in bold; A: managing parents’ conflict and complaints; B: building a good relationship with teachers and staff; C: building a partnership with parents; D: persuasion and cooperation; E: continuing self-development; F: innovative thinking and risk-taking; G: assessing the situation and analytical thinking; H: delegating authority; I: democratic decision making; J: building a direct relationship with students; K: caring of disadvantaged students; L: setting a vision; M: setting a shared goal and developing action plans; N: instructional development; O: coaching and mentoring; P: supporting teacher research; Q: building a partnership with local communities.

Using these results, we labelled each dimension of each competency. The sub-dimensions of the final model were narrowed from eight to seven sub-dimensions compared to the initial model. It is similar to the initial model in terms of the main construct; however, the definition of the sub-dimensions became more clarified as some of the indicators were incorporated. First, the sub-dimensions of ‘Promoting Change’ and ‘Self-development’ are integrated into ‘Pursuing the Change’. The reconstructed competency is defined to represent the ability that can promote change through continued self-improvement. Second, ‘Instructional Management’ is redefined as ‘Setting a Vision and Goals’, as indicators related to curriculum management and evaluation were eliminated. Third, ‘Building a Collaborative Organisational culture’ was reconstructed to ‘Resolving Conflicts and Building Trust’ to embrace the indicators that are related to parents, such as ‘Building a Partnership with Parents’ and ‘Managing Parents Conflict and Complaints’. Finally, ‘Establishing a Partnership with Local Communities’ is constructed as an independent sub-dimension.

As a result, we identified seven constructs of the principal leadership competency model: (a) Student-centred Thinking, (b) Pursuing and Promoting Change, (c) Democratic Management, (d) Supporting Teacher Professional Development, (e) Setting a Vision and Goals, (f) Resolving Conflicts and Building Trust and (g) Establishing a Partnership with Local Community. Table 2 presents the titles of the sub-dimensions, definitions, and the number of items from the EFA results.

Table 2.

Final competency model of PCI: definitions of competencies and indicators.

Domain	Competency	Definition	Indicators	No. of items
Foundational competency	Student-centred thinking	Prioritizing on student's growth and development	- Building a direct relationship with students - Caring of disadvantaged students	5
	Pursuing and promoting change	Promoting change through continuous learning and innovative thinking	- Assessing the situation and analytical thinking - Innovative thinking and risk-taking -Continuing self-development	6
	Democratic management	Empowering school members and engaging them in the decision-making process	-Democratic decision making -Delegating authority	6
Task-focused competence	Supporting teacher professional development	Supporting teachers in developing and maintaining professionalism	-Instructional development -Supporting teacher research -Coaching and mentoring	5
	Setting a vision and goals	Setting a proper vision in the school context and establishing specific goals and practical strategies	-Setting a vision -Setting a shared goal and developing action plans	5
	Resolving conflicts and building trust	Building a trusting relationship among school members and resolving conflicts among parents and teachers	-Building a good relationship with teachers and staff -Managing parents’ conflict and complaints -Building a partnership with parents -Persuasion and cooperation	8
	Establishing a partnership with the Local community	Establishing a partnership with the local community to create a supportive network for school improvement	-Building a partnership with local communities	3

Confirmatory factor analysis

The multiple indices were examined to provide the adequacy of the model fit. All these goodness-of-fit indicators suggest that the seven-factor model from previous the EFA has a good fit for the data. As shown in Table 3, general model-fit indices are acceptable (CFI = 0.911, TLI = 0.903 and RMSEA = 0.047). The chi-square estimate is statistically significant. However, we did not use the chi-square estimate to determine the model fit given the large sample size of the study because it is highly sensitive to the sample size (Schermelleh-Engel et al., 2003). The standardised factor loadings of each item ranged from 0.484 to 0.859, indicating that all loadings were statistically acceptable (Stevens, 1992).

Table 3.

The results of CFA.

Model	χ²	df	△χ²	CFI	TLI	RMSEA
7 domains	1115.175^***	644	1.732	0.911	0.903	0.047

Note. CFI: comparative fit index; TLI: Tucker-Lewis index; RMSEA: root-mean-square error of approximation.

***

p < 0.001.

Table 4 presents the results of multiple group invariance tests. Prior to conducting the multi-group CFAs, it was ensured that the posited measurement model is acceptable in both groups. The measurement model showed an overall acceptable fit across the two groups. Model 1 (unconstrained model) allows all parameters to be unequal across groups provided a good fit to the data. Model 2, with constraints on factor loadings, had an overall good fit, and the chi-square difference from Model 1 did not significant at 0.01 level. Model 3, which additionally constrains the variances and covariances of the latent variables, also has a good fit (α = 0.01) and did not significantly degrade fit relative to Model 1. Lastly, the variances and covariances of measurement error were additionally constrained in Model 4. It showed an overall good fit and the increase of chi-square was not significant at the level of 0.01 as well. Thus, these results support that the measurement model is invariant across the two sample groups.

Table 4.

Measurement invariance test of PCI.

Model	χ²	df	△χ²	CFI	TLI	RMSEA	SRMR
Single group solutions
Calibration model (N = 328)	1171.494	642		0.900	0.891	0.061	0.050
Validation model (N = 328)	1047.969	642		0.923	0.916	0.052	0.044
Invariance test
Model 1 (Unconstrained)	2198.337	1284		0.914	0.906	0.033	0.060
Model 2 (Measurement weights)	2231.602	1315	33.170	0.914	0.908	0.033	0.058
Model 3 (Structural covariances)	2279.802	1343	79.665	0.912	0.908	0.033	0.060
Model 4 (Measurement residuals)	2334.938	1383	131.660	0.910	0.909	0.032	0.060

Note. CFI: comparative fit index; TLI : Tucker-Lewis index; RMSEA: root-mean-square error of approximation; SRMR: standardised root mean square.

Criterion validity

Table 5 presents the correlation coefficients between scores in total and for each component of our assessment instrument, and outcome measures in individual and school performance. The correlations between scores in both total and for each component and individual performance measure are not significant. School performance is, however, positively correlated with competency scores in total and for each sub-dimensions of our competency model with a p-value at the level of 0.05. The total score of the competency model is correlated with school performance (mean r = 0.106). Among the seven domains, we did not find a statistical correlation between the two domains: ‘Democratic Management’ and ‘Supporting Teacher Professional Development’ and school improvement. This result may suggest that such practices of principals indirectly influence student learning by affecting the quality of instruction and empowering teachers. Other domains are significantly correlated with school-level performance ranging from 0.082 to 0.089.

Table 5.

Partial correlations between PCI score and performance variables.

	Total	C1	C2	C3	C4	C5	C6	C7	P1	P2
Total	1	0.693**	0.815**	0.677**	0.791**	0.770**	0.804**	0.710**	0.068	0.106**
C1		1	0.568**	0.350**	0.441**	0.448**	0.396**	0.434**	0.048	0.089*
C2			1	0.445**	0.613**	0.571**	0.527**	0.481**	0.057	0.084*
C3				1	0.415**	0.384**	0.551**	0.406**	0.021	0.032
C4					1	0.585**	0.591**	0.515**	0.066	0.066
C5						1	0.569**	0.525**	0.054	0.082*
C6							1	0.557**	0.048	0.116**
C7								1	0.075	0.086*
P1									1	0.093*
P2										1
Mean	3.272	3.192	3.072	3.423	3.332	3.071	3.499	3.127	1.067	1.675
SD	0.388	0.568	0.555	0.464	0.555	0.532	0.404	0.628	1.992	3.370

Note. Total: total score of the PCI; C1: student-centred thinking; C2: pursuing and promoting change; C3: democratic management; C4: supporting teacher professional development; C5: setting a vision and goals; C6: resolving conflicts and building trust; C7: establishing a partnership with the local community; P: individual-level performance; P2: school-level performance.

*p < 0.05, **p < 0.01.

These results suggest that getting a high score on the PCI could moderately be correlated with school-level performance rather than individual-level performance. It affirms that our instrument is more related to school improvement than a principal's individual outcome.

Discussion

Principal leadership plays a critical role in school improvement. Developing a psychometrically reliable instrument to assess school principal competency is important to encourage principals to reflect on their practices and engage in effective leadership behaviours related to school success. This study, therefore, proposed the PCI, an efficient and practical instrument that is empirically derived from the best practices of successful principals in South Korea.

The seven dimensions of the PCI consistently support previous findings on leadership theories and practices. Previous research suggests that most successful school leaders are student-oriented, build and share a vision, manage teaching and learning and continue trying to positively transform the school climate (e.g. Heck et al., 1990; Leithwood et al., 2004; Marks and Printy, 2003; Matthews et al., 2014). For instance, focusing on student-learning centred value and making effort on collaboration, commitment, communication is also found in several case-study research of principals in England (Day and Gu, 2018; Day et al., 2000). Indeed, after an extensive review of school leadership literature, Leithwood et al. (2008; 2020) found that excellent school leaders have similar sets of qualities and implement the core practices with a high degree of commonality; at the same time, they know how to adapt leadership practices in considering contextual uniqueness that their individual school experiences. While researchers have raised attention that educational leadership practices are shaped and contextualised by social-cultural, political different settings across countries (e.g. Blunt and Jones, 1997; Hallinger and Walker, 2015), to surprise, many researchers found its similarities and commonalities of competency standards across countries as supported Leithwood et al.'s assertion (Dorfman et al., 1997; Lambert and Bouchamma, 2019; Ingvarson et al., 2006).

Despite its similarities across the countries, our result provides a more in-depth understanding of how the local context shapes effective leadership practices. As mentioned earlier, the Korean education context has been changed to emphasise school autonomy and accountability; thereby the top-down and authoritative management that works in the past is not effective anymore for school improvement. Responding to this reality, for instance, democratic management including empowerment and engaging teachers in decision making has emerged as the key themes in the PCI. Interestingly, the previous survey conducted in 2010 has shown that Korean principals put second to the last priority for participative decision-making (similar to democratic competency in the PCI), 24 among 25 job competencies (Cho et al., 2010). It indicates that principals did not recognise the need for democratic management in the Korean school context just 10 years ago. Reflecting this point, Korean national standards for principals do not directly include the theme of democracy in their competency list. The aspects of democratic value have not been explicitly represented in the national standards in the other Western culture including England, Canada or the United States (Department for Education, 2020; Lambert and Bouchamma, 2019) since these cultures tend to highly value individualism and share low-power distance culture in school.

Considering that South Korea, however, has a high-power distance culture in school, this democratic aspect of school leadership must be explicitly manifested among successful leaders, especially in the recent changing Korean school context. Also, the domain of ‘resolving conflicts and building trust’ has a more special spotlight in this context since teacher and parents’ participation is ever-increasing with influence from the widespread value of democracy; therefore, conflict management has emerged as one of the most serious problems in school. In this context, this study demonstrated that the ‘heroic’ leadership style does not work anymore and has faded away in South Korea; instead, effective school leaders should represent the aspect of democratic leadership in practice.

Similarly, while the domain of ‘establishing a partnership with the local community’ looks very general across the cultures; however, the specific purpose of this action may vary. As a new policy trend has been implemented (e.g. exam free-semester), it requires principals to find and draw available external resources surrounding their schools. While principals in the past just make a positive relationship with the local community, today's principals must find out external resources and actively collaborate with the local community responding to national policy demands, which is more challenging than before. This indicates that while the competencies look similar, the specific action to achieve under these domains should vary in the changing local context. Hallinger (2018) suggested the importance of understanding what leadership practices in different contextual settings and how context (e.g. institutional, national cultural, socio-cultural political) shapes effective leadership practices. In this regard, our study provided the empirical case of how similar competencies are differently situated in the more nuanced national context.

Although all domains of the PCI have newly become important for principals’ leadership practices in South Korea, our results indicate two domains, ‘democratic management’ and ‘supporting teacher professional development’, are not significantly related to school-level performance. This may suggest that empowering teachers through democratic management and supporting teacher professional development are important for school improvement, but leadership practices influence school improvement under more complex organisational processes. Previous studies suggest that how teachers actually respond may play a mediating role in the relationship between these leadership activities and school performance. For instance, a feature of democratic leadership, such as teacher involvement in the decision-making process and leadership roles, and teacher empowerment, seems not to have direct impacts on student achievement unless these are closely connected to teacher instructional practices (Leithwood and Jantzi, 2008; Louis et al., 2010; Marks and Louis, 1997). Similarly, the influence of teacher professional development on student performance is mediated by the types and contents of professional development or actual teacher practices (Desimone et al., 2013; Wallace, 2009). Given this evidence, our results may suggest that a teacher's ways of working, especially teacher performance related to school improvement, can mediate the effect of the principal's leadership activities on school improvement. Given this evidence, the effect of the principal's leadership activities on school improvement can be possibly mediated by a teacher's ways of working, especially teacher performance related to school improvement. This indirect process of school leadership practice from previous work may provide a possible explanation that our results do not find a statistical significance of the direct path for ‘democratic management’ and ‘supporting teacher professional development’ to school improvement.

Despite the rising interest in democratic management and supporting teachers’ professional development for school leadership in South Korea, the empirical influence and the complex process of these leadership practices on school improvement remain unexplained in the local context. While a few studies have focused on democratic leadership (Jung and Cho, 2020; Kim, 2020) and the relationship between principal leadership and professional development (Lim and Yang, 2020), they did not pay attention to the process and conditions of how teachers’ agency and practices mediate leadership practices. Thus, further investigation on these issues may extend the global knowledge about the complex interaction among organisational conditions, teacher agency and the national-cultural context in which school leadership works.

This study suggests that successful principals perform multiple roles in practice that reflect various features of different leadership theories such as instructional, transformational, and distributed or shared leadership. Some of the instruments derived from specific theoretical tenets tend to focus on only one domain of leadership, such as instructional or distributed leadership (Hallinger, 2015; Halverson et al., 2014). In particular, many standards for school leaders and research on principal leadership have heavily weighted the importance of instructional leadership that emphasises principals’ direct involvement in instruction and curriculum (Hallinger and Heck, 1996; Murphy, 2005). However, findings from a study of principals’ daily log by Camburn et al. (2010) showed that principals devote only 19% of their time to instructional leadership and the remaining time is used to deal with general managerial, personnel, or student-related issues, etc. Our study also demonstrates that successful principals spend their time in various work areas, such as interacting with students, personal development for school innovation, supporting democratic school governance, promoting a positive work environment by building trust and partnership with school staff and parents, and the local community, alongside getting involved in teaching and learning practices. These results suggest that a specific theory-based instrument for principal leadership may fail to include the actual principals’ key actions required to improve student learning in school. This finding, therefore, suggests that a principal leadership assessment tool should embrace the multidimensional responsibilities of leadership practices related to school improvement rather than focusing on one or a few domains of school leadership theories.

Our results suggest that the PCI is a psychometrically reliable and valid measurement model of principal leadership practices for promoting student learning. Using EFA and CFA, we demonstrate that the PCI accurately measures principal leadership competencies as we intended to measure and present the consistent factor structure across multiple groups. The results provide evidence that a total high score on the PCI is associated with school-level performance (b = 0.106), indicating that the PCI reliably captures the principal's effective leadership practices that are tied to school improvement. Recent education research has identified only a few assessment tools developed through a psychometrically sound procedure, and further, researchers have rarely reported the development process of their instruments (Goldring et al., 2009; Porter et al., 2010). In this sense, this study could make a sample report of providing transparent procedures for instrument development for principal leadership measures.

Practical implications

The PCI has practical implications for educational practitioners who seek an effective instrument for assessing principal leadership competencies and improving their practices. The current instrument can be easily embedded in professional development programs to promote systematic and personalised learning. In actual principal training programs, we were able to confirm the promising use of the PCI in practice to improve the quality of principals’ professional development. Utilising the PCI, we assessed principals’ competency and offered them an individual feedback report (15–16 pages) with their performance profile and in-service training based on the results. One of the substantial advantages of adopting the PCI in the competency approach is that it can help to inform principals of their strengths and weaknesses of distinct domains. This profile measured by the PCI is useful for principals to assess their current status and to make them aware of the domains most to promote school improvement. Utilizing individual profiles from the results of the PCI, we provided professional development workshops. In workshops, we facilitated further discussion among principals about how they can leverage their strengths and compensate for their weaknesses as well as how they understand each competency domain in their school context.

Another notable benefit of the PCI is that it can suggest specific behavioural indicators empirically derived from interviews of successful principals. For instance, most assessment instruments suggest student-centred thinking is a core value for school leadership practices to promote student learning and include the list of indicators; they, however, tend to measure this domain by principals’ perception. Rather than asking the principal's perception of their values, behaviours or actions, the indicators of the PCI propose the key behavioural items to assess real actions to reflect on their daily practices. Accordingly, the current PCI provides specific behavioural indicators as a concrete example of leadership actions that principals can benchmark in practice. The ultimate goal of using a reliable measurement is to promote the change of the real actions of leadership practices; these need to be accepted and appeal to principals in driving change for their actions. Indeed, principals’ satisfaction level with this program was very high; they reported that the PCI result and related workshops are very helpful for them to reflect upon their leadership practices that they otherwise had not considered. Especially, they reported that the PCI's behavioural indicators, drawn from examples of the best practices for successful principals, are very useful to understand and reflect on their everyday leadership practices.

Moreover, because the PCI is a relatively simple instrument, it has a great advantage in terms of its cost-effectiveness and its applicability in practice. The PCI is a highly cost-effective approach compared to 360-degree evaluation or observation methods because it is an online-based self-assessment instrument. The average time to completion for the PCI is 30 min, which can be easily incorporated into various programs with a short investment of time.

Limitations

Despite its contributions to our understanding of leadership competencies and practical utility of the PCI, there are some limitations to be addressed. While a competency approach is widely established in the education and leadership field, it has received criticism that its atomised list of competencies divorced from the context cannot capture the holistic and complex nature of leadership practices (e.g. Glatter, 1999). This criticism is somewhat valid. Discussions on the competency approach have also acknowledged this criticism and have long attempted to incorporate a more integrated or holistic approach based on constructivist and interpretative perspectives (Cira and Benjamin, 1998; Gonczi et al., 1990; Martin & Staines, 1993; Sandberg, 2000). It is also true that this integrated approach is necessary for the professional development of principal leadership which requires more complex expertise and skills in varying school contexts. There have, nonetheless, not been established specific methods or models that can be practically utilised from the perspective of interpretative approaches. Further research on practical application based on these alternative perspectives of the competency approach needs to be conducted.

Considered such criticism, we should be aware that the PCI must not be used for identifying and completing the checklist only but be utilised for the purpose to facilitate further discussion to provide more contextual and practical professional development on the ground. Accordingly, as we explained earlier in practical implications, our work does not end at providing the results of the PCI; we must provide training workshops utilising the individual profile. By doing this, the PCI from the competency approach helps principals understand their situated context and provide perspectives to compare themselves and successful leaders. It is not merely a one-sided prescribed benchmark from the best practices using an atomised checklist; rather, it serves as a steppingstone to understand their leadership status and facilitate further critical discussion on leadership practices relevant to their school context and situation. Consequently, with the diagnostic result for each domain through the PCI and further discussion, they are more likely to think deeply about their leadership practices in different aspects as well as in an integrated way about how these domains can promote school improvement. Therefore, to minimize the caveat of the PCI based on the competency approach and leverage its practical advantage, an appropriate training program or workshop using the PCI result must follow.

Second, for collecting the interview sample, we requested a recommendation of the potential interview participants from officer panels. Although this method is known to have high validity in case that objective criteria or standards relevant to successful job performance are unclear (Spencer and Spencer, 1993), there is possible selection bias from the officer panels, especially stemming from authority. To mitigate this limitation, the research team determined the final sample among a potential pool of participants recommended by officer panels with careful discussion with the objective and qualitative criteria. However, the results from the sample used in this study need to be carefully interpreted with potential relations whether administrative officers’ perspectives were applied.

Third, in the validation process, we used the number of awards granted to an individual principal and a school as a proxy of individual-level and school-level performance to quantify the degree of principals’ success and school improvement. This proxy rating may not fully reflect many various aspects of school improvement. Therefore, future research should incorporate a variety of criteria to examine school improvement.

Footnotes

Author's note

Sanghun Lee now at the Korea Research Institute for Vocational Education & Training (KRIVET), Sejong-si, Korea.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Ministry of Education, Republic of Korea (grant number 700-20150081).

ORCID iD

Yeseul Choi

Notes

Author biographies

Yeseul Choi is a researcher at the Education Research Institute, Seoul National University. Her research interest is on educational leadership, school improvement, educational policies, and practices to support student's growth and learning. Her current work focuses on how educational systems and school settings can help promote academic resilience of low-income students.

Sanghun Lee is an associate research fellow in the Center for VHS (Vocational High School) Credit System in Korea Research Institute for Vocational Education & Training. His research interests include expertise development, talent development, and leadership in the public and private sectors. Recently, he has been exploring changes in the school system according to the introduction of the high school credit system in Korea.

Hunseok Oh is a professor at the College of Education, Seoul National University. His research interests explore school leadership, competence, expertise, and human resource development. His current work focuses on collaboration between university and city in terms of talent development, innovative and entrepreneurial leadership in education institutions.

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From the best practices of successful school leaders: Developing and validating the principal competencies inventory in South Korea

Abstract

Keywords

Korean context

Developing assessment instruments for principal leadership and the competency approach

The present study

Conceptual framework: student learning-centred leadership

Development process of the principal competency inventory

Validation method

Data and sample

Instrument

The Principal Competency Inventory

Measures 2

Individual-level performance

School-level performance

Analytic strategies

Results

Exploratory factor analysis

Confirmatory factor analysis

Criterion validity

Discussion

Practical implications

Limitations

Footnotes

Author's note

Declaration of conflicting interests

Funding

ORCID iD

Notes

Author biographies

References

Measures²