DEVELOPING SCHOOL PRINCIPALS’ MANAGEMENT COMPETENCIES THROUGH INTERNATIONAL LARGE-SCALE ASSESSMENT DATA: A STRUCTURAL AND FUNCTIONAL MODEL
Keywords:
international large-scale assessments; school principals; management competencies; data-informed decision-making; pedagogical leadership; professional learning; school improvement; structural and functional modelAbstract
International large-scale assessments generate achievement and contextual data with considerable diagnostic value, yet the route from system-level evidence to a school principal’s professional learning and school-improvement decisions remains insufficiently specified. This conceptual study develops a structural and functional model for strengthening principals’ management competencies through responsible use of such data. An integrative design synthesis was conducted on a purposive corpus of 27 regulatory, methodological and scholarly sources. Comparative content analysis, functional decomposition, construct mapping and logic modelling were used to connect assessment evidence, leadership action, professional-learning mechanisms, observable workplace products and feedback decisions. The resulting model contains six interdependent blocks: goal and methodology; diagnosis and analysis; content and process; collaboration and resources; monitoring and reflection; and outcomes. Five implementation mechanisms operationalise the structure: a multi-source diagnostic profile, data-informed strategic decision-making, workplace professional learning with pedagogical leadership, an organisational data team, and digital monitoring with reflective adjustment. Its distinctive feature is the coupling of an individual competence-development loop and a school-improvement loop through a shared evidence portfolio. Outcomes are defined at individual, enacted-practice and organisational-routine levels; student achievement is treated as a distal indicator rather than a direct measure of principal competence. The model offers a traceable architecture for principal certification and continuing professional development while retaining an invariant core that can be adapted to local conditions. As a theoretical design, it requires subsequent expert review and longitudinal empirical validation.
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