The Impact of Professional Practice Standards in the Professional Development and Performance Assessment of School Directors

Abstract

Professional practice standards for school directors serve as a strategic tool to train and prepare school directors, and to improve the quality of education in institutions they lead. Over the last two decades, the education sector in Kosovo has been experiencing continuous changes so that a higher quality and genuine education of new generations is achieved, and having in mind that a school director is a key factor in coordinating the processes within school institutions, there are requirements for their professional development. To verify the usage and the impact of professional practice standards in professional development practice and performance assessment of school directors, a theoretical and empirical research has been carried out with primary and lower secondary school directors (N=26) and upper secondary school directors (N=11) in Prishtina and its suburb. From data analysis resulting from the quantitative approach (N = 37) it has been confirmed that, in Kosovo, the professional practice standards are used in average by school directors. These standards are not used to the extent required as an instrument for school directors’ performance assessment, neither by themselves through self-assessment, nor by the relevant institutions responsible for evaluating the performance of directors