How does effective leadership work in Chinese preschools? Roles and practices

This study aimed at identifying the effective leadership roles for quality programmes in a market-driven, Chinese preschool context. It adopted a qualitative research strategy with in-depth case studies of two preschools in Hong Kong. Effective leadership was investigated from the multiple perspectives of various school stakeholders. The findings indicated that principals of the two schools tended to take up three major roles: role model, school manager, and mentor for curriculum and pedagogy. With reference to the contemporary leadership models proposed by Leithwood and Duke (1999), the characteristics of effective leadership perceived by various school stakeholders were similar to those of moral, managerial and instructional leadership but were different from the Western notion of distributed leadership documented in the literature.