Instructional leader or school manager? The evolution of the principal's role in Chile

Abstract

In the quest to improve education, the Ministry of Education of Chile (Mineduc) has promoted during the last years, a series of reforms that directly or indirectly affect the work of school principals. In light of the principles of the New Public Management (NPM) and, using a documentary analysis, this article studies the evolution of the role of director in the public policies of the last 40 years. The results reveal: 1) that all the characteristic elements of the NPM (individual work, competence, orientation to meet indicators, short-term plans) are present in the policies, which implicate a managerial role of the school director. 2) That during the past 3 years, policies have been dictated away from the principles of the NPM that generate a new role for the director, that of the instructional leader. 3) That one role does not evolve into the other, but rather both coexist in schools, generating a possible tension that the director must resolve. The real feasibility of school principals to exercise their role as an instructional leader oriented to the collaborative construction of trust and abilities in the school is discussed, in a scenario marked by a long history of policies that favor individual work with indicators that must be met in the short term, principles that are specific to the NPM, and are more related to the work of a company manager.