Middle Leadership in Irish Primary Schools: A Critical Analysis of Principals’ Perspectives

Abstract

This paper shares some preliminary findings from doctoral research exploring Irish primary school principals’ views regarding middle leadership. This qualitative study used a grounded theory approach to investigating their perspectives, using interviews, observations, and extant documents. The findings reported here relate to interviews conducted with ten principals. Leadership’s centrality to quality schooling is widely recognised, but the demands of school leadership have become too vast for individual leadership. Middle leaders (MLs), situated between senior leaders and teachers, are uniquely positioned to assist with this. Their proximity to the classroom enables them to influence teaching and learning more readily than principals. But their role remains under-researched. Investigating principals’ perspectives is critical to leveraging the ML role because principals can decide its parameters and act as a barrier or support to the role.