Professional vitality: perspectives from nine school principals

Susana Reyes-Gonzalez

doi:10.7273/000005593

Expanding expectations for student achievement and the demands arising out of the numerous daily tasks for which principals are responsible have led to several research studies on stress and burnout in the principalship. Among the job duties of today's school principals are meeting the needs of students, parents, teachers, support staff, community members, and administration. They must be managers overseeing the daily operations of a school. A few of these daily operations include scheduling, budgeting, reporting safety, dealing with disruptions, handling student discipline, and addressing parent concerns. The research on principals' experience with stress and burnout in this increasingly demanding environment exists. However, there is little research that focuses on the experience of school principals who are successful and remain hopeful, positive, and persist in the job. Further, there is little research that focuses on utilizing the construct of professional vitality (Harvey, 2002) to increase our understanding of the personal characteristics that principals possess which enable them persist in the job in the midst of this challenging profession.; The purpose of this study was to learn about the practices of nine school principals in their role as school leaders and their perspectives on dealing with the daily challenges of their jobs. Open-ended, semi-structured interviews were used as the method for collecting the data. Further, the study sought to expand on the study by Harvey (2002), which focused on professional vitality as a construct for understanding what may contribute to school principals' ability to thrive and therefore, persist in their jobs. Analysis of the data revealed that persistent, successful principals deal with various stressors inherent in the job of school principal. Further, the data illustrated that substantial stress is due to time constraints and accountability demands. The data also showed that the qualities of professional vitality: vigor, passion, facility, and job satisfaction can be used to describe how these principals view their experience in the principalship; and thus, may contribute to their persistence.

Professional vitality: perspectives from nine school principals

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