El director escolar. Necesidades de formación para un desempeño profesional.

Abstract

In the context of the educative decentralization, and in support to the tried school autonomy, the school director functions and tasks are now taking a new direction, now they are focused on the educative center as a privileged space to perform specific actions for the educative improvement, and the school director is now seen as a professional that has to lead the school in order to obtain optimal results in the learning process. This paper supports the idea of the educative change, has the motivation of seen the school director as a professional, and specifically, is oriented to determine the training needs of the school directors, considering them as the main participants, as well as the school and the surrounding community. In this research, the identification of the training needs are based on three main aspects: the director, the school and the society. The aim of the study is to tied up the individual necessities of training for the school directors, the theoretical analysis on the transformation of the school as an organization, and with the social demands conformed and related to the new educative environment. The considered social needs are related to the new changes in the social environment due to the economic globalization, the development of new informational and communicational technologies, and their impact in the educative systems. The organizational needs are associated to the new educative model that emerges concretely in Latin America and in Mexico in the 90´s aimed on the institutional change, and finally, the individual needs are identified with the needs of the school director, based on its performance and training. The methodological design of the investigation projected the accomplishment of the study in two levels: a documentary investigation to know the social and organizational needs in the new reality and in the new conformation of the school; and an empirical investigation to know the individual needs related to the necessities of directive training, obtained by the school directors, the teaching staff and the different educative employees of different levels in the educative administration. The school directors of basic education of Nuevo Leon, Mexico, conform the population of the study, from which a representative sample was obtained to obtain pertinent data about their practice and also the related aspects to their training; quantitative and qualitative techniques were used. The results of the investigation allowed to determine the normative, expressed and perceived necessities, using a triangulation process, of the training needs of the school directors. These needs are the sustain of some of the main elements on the new role of the school director. The training necessities were grouped in three scopes: 1. - The director as subject of the change. 2. - The director as author of the change. 3. - The director as manager of the change. Finally, some implications of the study are indicated and new lines of investigation are proposed.

Date of Award	27 Nov 2006
Original language	Undefined/Unknown
Supervisor	Joaquín Gairín Sallán (Director)