School community leadership: The perspective of primary school principal

This article focuses on the principal’s role in school community leadership. In doing so it provides an account of a study that explores this issue in the context of Catholic primary schooling within one rural diocese in Australia. The impetus for this study was a realisation that while there is a policy expectation within the diocese that the principal nurture the school as community, meeting this expectation was proving to be challenging. Consequently, this study sought to document principals’ perspectives on the Catholic primary school as community and their role as school community leaders. Here the intention was to develop a more informed and sophisticated understanding of this dimension of school leadership leading to recommendations for further policy and practice for primary schools within this diocese.