Chapter 4 Template Versus Awareness

This chapter presents a rationale for the International Study of Principal Preparation, provides an overview of the study, offers descriptions of the assumptions that should underpin the pre-appointment experiences of school principals, and describes the context of the principalship. The chapter will close with commentary intended to assist and guide designers and providers of principal preparation programming.A central point of this chapter is that it is unlikely that a template for principal preparation can be designed for application in all settings. Indeed, attempts to create such a template are likely to result in culturally and educationally inappropriate approaches to leadership development and to ineffective principals. Instead, leadership development is best approached through a thoughtful and reflective awareness of a set of assumptions about leadership in cross-cultural settings and of the contextual variables impacting school leaders.