A Case Study of Curriculum Leadership of a Kindergarten Principal

• Main Authors: Syu-Syuan Yang, 楊于萱
• Other Authors: shu-hui chou
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/50910281460698254924

碩士 === 國立新竹教育大學 === 幼兒教育學系碩士班 === 97 === This case study is a qualitative research making use of observations, interviews, and documentations. It explores a kindergarten principal’s course in curriculum leadership (between July and August, 2008). The focus is on challenges faced by the principal and responsive strategies he adopted. There are 10 major challenges under 3 categories of “personnel”, “curriculum”, and “parents”. Issues of “personnel” include lax personnel system, frictions between teachers paired up for one class, the need of teachers’ cognitive improvement of thematic curriculum, unexpected personnel deployment, overall personnel mobilization difficulty, and personnel . redeployment“Curriculum” includes unspecified curriculum direction, slow progress of curriculum connection, and the need of curriculum integration. The aspect of “parent”is involved in confidence crisis of parents.There are 18 strategies used by the principal, and they fall into 4 categories of “Principal”, “personnel”, “curriculum and education”, and “interaction with community and ” parents. “Principal” includes enrichment of the principal’s professional knowledge regarding curriculum and Instruction, and full time implementation of curriculum leadership on campus. “Personnel” strategy includes reducing teacher-student ratio, careful paring of teachers, assisting new-coming teachers in adaptation and knowledge pass-down, valuing teachers’ welfares and assisting teachers in need, boosting teachers’ morale and recognizing their profession, rationally solving issues regarding teacher paring up and their staying or leaving. The aspect of curriculum and education, which is involved in short-termed, medium-termed, and long-termed goals, includes continuous promotion of curriculum principles, advancing teachers’ professional growth, provision of a supportive teaching environment, allowance of teaching autonomy, and integration of English into curriculum. “Interaction with community and parents” includes taking opportunities to communicate with parents and gain their recognition, showing students’ improvement to parents, parents to teaching activities, encouraging the combination of curriculum and interaction with community. This case study discovers that the principal is dedicated in full time on campus curriculum leadership. All the strategies he adopted aim at supporting educational activities, which reveal his insistence on profession. The strategies are diverse. Each challenge encountered is involved in the adoption of several strategies, and each strategy is related to different issues, which indicates that the intertwined complexity of curriculum leadership is relevant to every aspect of a kindergarten.Finally, the researcher proposes related recommendations to the other kindergartens, principal, and future research based on the result of this case study.