The Crowd in the Principal’s Office 35the principal’s own voice, from the planning activities prior to the year, through the critical
start-up phase, during the year, and afterwards, as the principal reflects on accomplishments
and future challenges.
A perspective on professional values. Our conception of principal practice as work
toward high-quality school conditions highlights the values that are used to define such
quality and provides a direct link between these values and practice. As principals define
criteria for optimal school conditions and then strive to achieve them, values become central
to the process of choosing problems for attention and deciding what constitutes successful
resolution of those problems (Robinson, 1996). In addition, we emphasize that these quality
features are always open for public discussion. They are not defined by professionals alone,
but are developed through constant interaction within and among policymakers, professionals,
and local publics. Principals and other professionals can influence the expectations that result
from these interactions, but they are not in control. This reinforces the importance of
preparation for dialog about school goals and values, not simply articulation of a personal or
professional position.
TOWARD NEW STRATEGIES FOR ENHANCING THE PROFESSION
Taken together, these earlier recommendations address several critical issues inherent in
ongoing efforts to strengthen the school-leadership profession. They offer a way to organize
professional knowledge around challenges of practice and to incorporate an epistemologically
diverse knowledge base in service of practice. Further, these recommendations deliberately
include craft knowledge and a structure for its communication. And, they provide a
perspective on how ethical, critical, and legal reasoning can be integrated with procedural
strategies as principals tackle their daily responsibilities.
While these and related possibilities still seem useful, they also appear insufficient in light
of Sullivan’s (2005) challenge to renew the field’s contract with the public that provides
legitimacy for professional practice. Legitimacy is weakening along with public confidence
that the profession can achieve reliable results as school situations become more complex.
More importantly in Sullivan’s view, the public’s trust that professionals are acting in
accordance with public values has declined, with a resulting challenge to clarify exactly what
connects their practice to the public’s interest and how professional norms and institutions
ensure integrity of these purposes. Responding to Sullivan’s challenge will require a
willingness to consider less conventional strategies as well as continuation of familiar efforts
to strengthen the profession.
My purpose in the remainder of the paper is to suggest three approaches for consideration
as education administration strives to enhance professional influence in the midst of a
crowded and contentious school office. Each departs from conventional assumptions about
the trajectory toward a modern professional ideal (Etzioni, 1969; Kimball, 1992). But, as
Yinger (2005) noted in a similar discussion of professionalism in teacher education, the risks
associated with new directions seem warranted as our field seeks to restore the public’s trust
that educators are working effectively, reliably, and in the public’s interest. The first two
suggestions involve ways that the professional-public contract might be reframed for school
leadership, and the third addresses related issues affecting the structure of principal-education
programs.