School management teams in Spain’s professional education: a continuous education proposal

Abstract

Permanent education within the faculty is key in every educational improvement process. Even when the value of initial preparation is acknowledged, it is still nevertheless essential that each teacher continues to further their knowledge along their lives, answering to, for example, the demands for curricular content or methodology updating. Therefore, managing and directing a school centre requires further specialization that allows influencing the skills necessary to motivate, lead and manage the educational community. The changes on the educational requirements for school management team candidates in Spain in the last few years have been essential and have influenced the professionalization of the management team members, especially of stakeholders in education management, secretarial and administration positions. Within this framework, the upgrading course “Tools for the development of teaching training centre management” herein analysed was created as a result of the need evidenced by the faculty themselves.
Teachers holding management positions in high-school centres in the Valencia Community admit that further training and specific preparation for the effective performance of the tasks required by their positions is the right path towards becoming good leaders in their institutions. The diversity of functions and competencies required, adds complexity to their daily work, thus resulting in new skills that need to be developed and which have been attempted to be addressed in the education proposal of the course.