School Principal Leadership and Learning through Practitioner Research: Towards Innovations in Education

The purpose of the paper is to contribute to the literature on leadership, innovation and learning for quality of school education. The special attention is paid to the role of school principal leadership in creating and sustaining the innovative learning environments that support the development of critical practitioner research. It is assumed that practitioner research can promote creative partnerships between those institutions in which teachers and academics work in order to support knowledge creation and quality of teaching. This paper presents chosen findings of a study that involved interviews with a number of focus groups involving school leaders in a number of Polish state schools. The main aim of this research was to recognize the experiences and the needs of school principals concerning practitioner research, their perceptions on the role of school leaders in supporting culture for quality improvements in practitioner research, and on the conditions of mutual participation of academics and practitioners in the social process of creating educational knowledge. Findings direct our attention to the role of school principals and their leadership in creating the innovative learning environments that are favorable for mutual participation of academics and practitioners in the social process of educational knowledge creation