אחר

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates elementary school principals' management of "challenging” teachers intheir schools. 'Challenging' defined as those perceived as under‐performing, an important and under‐researched area of educational management.

Design and methodology

We carried out qualitative interviews with 40 elementary school principals, sampling every gourth school in the Haifa district. They were asked to recall a particularly difficult teacher and their shortcomings and then asked about the measures they took, in chronological order, to solve the problem.

Findings

We found that principals preferred supportive measures or making changes to the organization over confrontational approache. Over half the principals started by ignoring the difficulties, and towards the end most did discuss the situation with the teacher and that sometimes involved direct criticism. In half of the cases the teacher left the school by the end of the year.

Research limitations

The research is limited in that it only relates to the views of the principals rather than objective measurements of difficulties, leading to a possibility of researcher empathy with the principals. Further research might investigate the teachers' perspective.

Practical implications

This research indicates that elementary school principals need to be better equipped with knowledge, managerial skills and sources of assistance to solve personnel difficulties.