ABSTRACT

The majority of studies into recruitment to the headship role have focused on supply-side dynamics and teachers’ own accounts of the factors that (dis)incentivize them from aspiring or progressing to headship. Significantly less work has been done in analyzing demand-side factors. This paper addresses the gap by presenting findings from a mixed-methods analysis of headteacher job descriptions (n = 67) published in a complete school year within Wales – one of the UK’s devolved education systems. A discourse analysis was conducted, based on organizational and occupational conceptions of professional work, which informed a subsequent content analysis of the job descriptions. Our findings identified a dominance of articulations that privileged organizationally-orientated understandings of headship and evidence of a lack of contextualization and agency by stakeholders responsible for recruitment. Such ‘demand-side’ analysis offers scope for examining and understanding the way in which headship is framed and aligns with policy within a variety of international educational contexts and jurisdictions.

摘要

大多数关于招聘担任领导职位的研究都集中在供应方动态和教师自己对（不）激励他们有抱负或晋升为领导职位的因素的描述上。在分析需求方因素方面所做的工作明显较少。本文通过对校长职位描述 (n = 67) 的混合方法分析得出的结果解决了这一差距，该分析在威尔士（英国权力下放的教育系统之一）的一个完整学年中发布。基于专业工作的组织和职业概念，进行了话语分析，这为随后的职位描述内容分析提供了信息。我们的研究结果确定了一种表述的主导地位，这种表述有利于以组织为导向的对领导地位的理解，以及负责招聘的利益相关者缺乏情境化和代理的证据。这种“需求方”分析为检查和理解领导职位的制定方式以及与各种国际教育背景和司法管辖区内的政策保持一致提供了空间。