Principals’ transformational leadership in school improvement

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to contribute experience of and ideas for transformational leadership, not only for the principal who wants to improve leadership himself or herself, but also for the school at critical periods of improvement, through summarizing the forming process and problems during the course, and key factors that affect the course. Design/methodology/approach – Using the case study method, the paper draws some conclusions from the improvement of principal leadership skills, by choosing two typical cases that show transformational leadership of principals in primary schools, and rethinking the practice of school improvement profoundly. Findings – There were three periods: embryonic stage, basically forming stage and mature stage. Discovering problems, understanding the relationship between the problems and finding solutions are the major considerations in the process. The transformational leadership skills of a principal can be seen in forming ideas, building a shared vision, power sharing, gaining credence and experiencing success. Practical implications – This paper provides references for the principal to recognize the importance of transformational leadership during the school improvement so as to force the principal to improve their transformational leadership in practice. Originality/value – At first, the paper puts forward that transformational leadership is the core of leadership; proves that the principal's transformational leadership is very important in school development through the fact of a home-school cooperation study and emphasizes that the principal's transformational leadership should play a key role during the critical period of school improvement. Principal transformational leadership work should be based on different school members’ actual situations and the fact of different school periods, and then find different solutions.