Contribution of the Guidance Department to the pedagogical leadership development: a study on the opinion of the high school directors in Andalusia

Abstract

This study is part of a research project about leadership focused on learning at high school. It responds to the need to support the development of educational leadership of the school management in Andalusia. We search to understand, from the grounded theory of these professionals and the analysis of their speech, to what extent they find support in the guidance department, in which fields, and what needs they consider in this respect. We collected evidence of 15 in-depth interviews to school principals with an improving career. The conclusion was that those guidance departments, along with the head of studies, are the main educational supports and their distributed leadership gathers a group that is shaping its power of improvement. But it is up to professionals, schools and contexts. It is more evident in vulnerable contexts and with "good" school counselors and school principals that have redirected their functions to be supporting agents for educational improvement and better advice as a critical colleague.

Keywords:
school management; educational leadership; educational guidance; support; secondary education.