One of the characteristics that the students did mention was fairness. Each of them described scenarios in which they felt as if their educational leaders had not been fair. They perceived that some students were given preferential treatment. The reasons that they cited for this preferential treatment varied, though parental involvement at school and student involvement in athletics seems to be two common reasons that they believed principals might treat some students better than others. They felt like this differential treatment was not beneficial, not only to the students who did not receive the preferential treatment, but also to the students who did. Another characteristic that the students found important was that the leaders be nice to them; they found it difficult to relate to leaders who were short or rude with them. In fact, they said that principals who seemed to dislike students made them not want to attend school.
Parents
All three parents believed that it was critical for an educational leader to have a student-first attitude. However, there seemed to be some disagreement about what it meant to have a student-first attitude. One of the parents seemed to think that this should mean that educational leaders would put children's preferences first, and discourage the teachers from challenging them and assigning a lot of homework. However,...
They seemed to find it very off-putting when educational leaders, particularly those on the administrative level, did not make themselves available to the parents. They wanted to be able to enter into a dialogue with them and feel as if the leaders were paying attention to their issues and concerns, rather than act as if parental concerns were somehow unimportant in the educational context.
Conclusion
There was very little overlap in the qualities that the three groups identified as being critical in an educational leader. Instead, each group of them seemed to focus on the qualities that would permit the educational leader to interact better with them. What this suggests is that an educational leader's effectiveness should not be assessed by a single group of individuals, but by a combination of people from all different areas. Moreover, it suggests that educational leaders need flexibility, so that they can be effective leaders for students, teachers and parents, despite the varying demands of each group.
