Page 108 - Educational Leadership in a Changing World

Martina Kovačič and Anita Trnavčević

Austria’s approach to supporting school principals places significant
emphasis on developing emotional and social competencies through
professional development opportunities such as the Leadership Acad-
emy Österreich. These programmes focus on cultivating empathy, ef-
fective communication, and conflict resolution, skills increasingly rec-
ognized as vital for nurturing collaborative school environments and
promoting organizational effectiveness.
Further insights into the evolving role of school principals in Austria
are provided by Wiesner and Schratz (2019), who discuss the balance be-
tween accountability and improvement. They highlight the challenges
faced by principals in navigating a highly centralized system while striv-
ing for school-based innovation. The authors also introduce the Field-
TransFormation360 model, which emphasizes the development of lead-
ership competencies across four quadrants: rational processes, strategic
processes, creative processes, and identity processes. This model under-
scores the importance of personal mastery and reflective practice in ef-
fective school leadership (Wiesner & Schratz, 2019).
While Austria’s legal statutes may not explicitly reference soft skills,
these competencies are firmly embedded in the national competency
frameworks and leadership training strategies, reflecting their central
role in effective school governance.

Comparative Insight
This comparative lens reveals key differences presented in Table 5.1.
These distinctions highlight the systemic strength of Italy and Austria
in formally acknowledging and embedding soft skills as essential com-
ponents of effective leadership. In contrast, Slovenia emphasizes pro-
fessional experience and optional training, but the absence of a stan-
dardized framework for evaluating leadership preparedness creates a
noticeabledisconnectbetweenlegal mandatesandeducational practice.

School Management, School Leadership and Principalship
To provide a limited overview of the number of publications on school
management, school leadership, and principalship, a basic search was
conducted across three different repositories. We intentionally chose
the terms school leadership and school management instead of educa-
tional leadership and educational management to highlight the roles
of principals as leaders and managers. In the Web of Science reposi-
tory, we found the following results for the publication years 2021 to

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