Visible School Principals

Visible school principals are building leaders who are available when teachers, students, and parents need them. Each school needs a good principal who supports and enhances its achievement. Researchers have been studying the characteristics of a visible principal as one of the characteristics of instructional leadership that could shape and promote teacher performance (Niece, 1993; Whitaker, 1997; Blase & Blase, 2000; Quinn, 2002). The purpose of this study is to investigate the Saudi female middle school teacher's perspectives about visible principals and their opinion on how visible principals impact their performance. A survey research design will reflect on the behaviors of visible principals such as informal visit to classrooms based on teacher's perspective. It will also show how the identified behaviors influence teachers’ performance in classrooms. Moreover, this paper recommends the need for more studies on how visible principals could indirectly influence teachers’ behavior in the classroom and how principals could manage their time to be visible.

Introduction

A school is like any institution that has different tasks and goals. Some of school objectives are to develop students' character, build their creativity, and improve their talents. Schools are like any institutions which have a hierarchical system with different employees, and positions. One of the important employees in a school structure is a school principal. Principals have different responsibilities such as providing clear vision, creating better learning and teaching environment, and developing positive school culture. Principals have the ability to move schools forward or backward. Nowadays, schools are looking for principals with high instructional leader...

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...elation to define the degree of relationship between principles’ behaviors and teachers’ performance.

Limitations of the Study

There are two limitations to this study. First, the cluster sample approach might affect the result of the study in terms of its generalizability to the total population. While the researcher decided to include 17 teachers from each school instead of including all teachers from a school would adjust the sampling approach, the fact that certain individuals of the female middle school teachers will not be included. Second, the instrument, that the researcher has developed, might have limitations in measuring what it should measure. Although the researcher has mentioned different ways to test for the instrument reliability and validity, there is a potential chance that the instrument has items that are not measuring what supposed to measure.