Facets of school leadership: contributions of a phenomenological research approach

The impact of principalship on school effectiveness has become one of the central topics of school leadership research. Meanwhile, while it is assumed with some certainty that a relationship exists between leadership and student achievement, there is a lack of research on how school leadership and student learning are related. Particularly in German-speaking countries, only a few studies have been conducted in this area. This paper responds to this deficit and discusses the results of a recent research project conducted at 28 schools across Germany that won the German School Award. Using a phenomenological approach, the project investigates how school leadership action is reflected in successful schools. Observations and interviews with principals, teachers, and students were conducted during three-day site visits to each school. Grounded theory sensitized our data coding, which relied on inductively formulated categories that reflected ‘facets’ of leadership experiences. The different facets are presented in this paper from a phenomenological research perspective as a kind of ‘response register’. We propose that these can form the basis of a facet model for successful school leadership, and use empirical data to illustrate the applicability of the facets.