Le leadership : la fin d’un tabou et le début d’un mythe. Évolution des métiers de l’encadrement scolaire et de leur formation en Suisse romande

Abstract

School leaders are now expected to take up many challenges: to embody change; to guarantee transformations, including pedagogical ones; to implement an inclusive school; to convince and mobilize all actors and partners in the framework of self-evaluation processes. In this context, we investigate how leadership expectations have evolved and impacted on the school principals in French-speaking Switzerland. This analysis highlights the fact that – mainly as a result of training – school principals no longer consider leadership to be a taboo word, whereas this has long been the case. They now include it in their speeches when they express themselves on how they embody their role. Leadership can, in fact, represent one of the ways of taking into account the New Public Management while contributing to the construction of a myth both in the collective imagination and within the educational systems.

Keywords

• organization and functioning of the establishments
• Switzerland
• education policies