The National Academy for Educational Research (NAER) has long been responsible for training k-9 school candidate and in-service principals, and also has future plans to train senior high school principals. In the current complex and ever-changing educational environment, there is indeed a need to precede a research project to improve NAER’s courses for offering the trained school principals professional and sustainable growths. This study is mainly divided into three parts, namely, blended learning courses design, digital situational assessment construction, and professional learning community development. The research purposes include: (1) Design and assess blended learning courses; (2) Construct digital situational assessment, and evaluate its reliability and validity. (3) Develop an appropriate workshop for in-service principal professional training in order to learn the mode of community operations. Questionnaire survey, focus group, and interview are employed in this research.
The main findings are as follows: (1) The blended learning courses have been proven to be effective in terms of candidate principals’ professional growth. (2) The blended learning courses are ranked high on rating of satisfaction by the candidate principals. (3) Although the candidate principals are satisfied with the blended learning courses, but they also think the implementation needs to be improved. (4) Some of the blended learning courses’ teaching methods need to be adjusted due to the relative complexity of basic procedures and related regulations. (5)The candidate principals’ quality of speaking in class and their learning outcome show a close relationship. (6) The video scenario assessment practice is innovative, but detail has to be noted during execution to achieve effectiveness. (7) The two scenario questions have a high correlation in terms of their scores, but they have a low correlation with constructive speech questions on paper. (8) The degree of operative process and result of principals’ professional learning communities and in-service workshops of primary and junior high schools is at medium high level.(9) To promote multiple thinking and learning through principals’ discussion in professional learning communities and in-service workshops.(10) In the future, National Academy for Educational Research shall carry out the related learning activities of principals’ professional learning communities. (11) In the learning process, and after the learning of in-service workshops, the establishment of line group will help the communication and sharing of principals of primary and junior high schools.
