Making the Mission Matter: Exploring the Novice School Leader’s Sense Making A Qualitative Action Research Study

Abstract

ABSTRACT A principal’s journey to leading an effective school is paved with many winding roads with different choices of which path to take. The number of challenges a principal can experience daily is astronomical and overwhelming, especially for a novice principal learning the trade. With all the different voices and influences coming at the leadership of a school, the principal needs a guiding light to lead the school in the same direction towards the success of all. Lezotte and Snyder (2011) describe seven strategies to creating a successful school, one of which, the school mission, became the focus of this research. This study set out to explore the sense-making process and experiences of a novice principal as they worked to keep the mission central. This qualitative action research study focused on a novice principal’s sense making processes related to leadership experiences considering the school’s mission. The author served as that novice principal in this study and tracked reflections, sense making and experiences across a three-month journaling period. Results indicated that the school mission played a significant role in the sense-making process of a novice principal, regardless of the type of experience at hand such as personnel decisions, professional learning communities and collaboration, as well as instruction and student learning. In addition, the study showed that keeping the mission central during the sense-making process allowed for the novice principal to move in a direction that was consistent and allowed the “noise” of the world of education to be quieted to remain focused on the task at hand: educating all. The study results found that additional research needs to be conducted on school mission and its direct connection to student achievement and school outcomes.