Iranzo-García, P., Camarero-Figuerola, M., Tierno-García, J.M. & Barrios-Arós, Ch. (2018). Formación para la función directiva en la escuela: El caso de Tarragona (Cataluña). Bordón. Revista de Pedagogía, 70(2), 57-72.
The professionalization of School Heads and their training occupy the international agendas because they have a critical influence on educational success, from pedagogical and distributed leadership. In this context, we ask ourselves the following research questions: How is the training (pre-service and in-service) of School Heads being organized? And, what training needs do they express? To answer these questions, we review the state of the art and the Spanish-Catalan legislative development in order to contrast it with the assessment made by primary School Heads on the training for the directive function received, as well as their training needs. The results show that the legal advances would be promoting a progressive professionalization of School Heads and models of training aligned with the pedagogical leadership. In opinion of the newcomer School Heads, the preeminent training needs are school management, legislation and personnel management besides the instructional methodologies. Nevertheless, in more advanced stages of professional development, training needs of School Heads are diversified and more orientated towards distributed leadership. It concludes that the training should address both administrative and managerial needs as well as those inherent in each professional stage and the various leadership models through collaborative training methodologies based on experience sharing, mentoring and coaching.
