Leading Schools for Gifted Students: Contextual Demands on the Principal and the Case for Creative Competence

Аннотация

Research on school leadership has largely treated the principalship as a generic role, with contextual variation
examined mainly in terms of school size, socio-economic setting or performance level. This article argues that schools
specialising in the education of gifted students constitute a distinct leadership context that has received limited theoretical
attention. Four contextual features of such institutions are identified - a student body selected for high ability and
creative potential, deepened and frequently individualised curricula, a highly qualified and professionally autonomous
teaching staff, and outcomes measured through competition and project results. Each feature is shown to generate a
corresponding demand on the principal, and the four demands are argued to converge on a single professional capacity:
creative competence, understood as the capacity to generate and implement original managerial solutions. The article
further identifies a structural tension characteristic of these institutions, in which creativity is expected of students while
the principal operates within predominantly routine administrative procedures, and considers the implications of this tension
for leadership preparation.