This study discusses the identity construction of school's principals in two approaches: the public discourse present in the documents and laws that define their "profile" and the discourse of directors to characterize their performance in the every day schools practices. The assumption of the study is that the identity of principals is the set of representations put into circulation by both the official discourse about the ways of being and acting school managers in performing their duties. One aspect of analysis relates to the contribution of bureaucratic and centralized structure, which permeates the social institutions in Brazil in the construction of official identity established for school principals. The discussion of identity construction of school principals has its importance in that it falls in expectations about the performance of the same in different historical moments.
principals' identity; democratic management; professional identity