Principals as educational leaders should constantly absorb new educational knowledge with the trend of the times, enhance self professional competence, and lead the school curriculum reform with the educational profession to promote school reform. The goal of principal professional development is to enhance principals’ professional knowledge and professional ethics. Through in-service professional development, every principal can keep pace with the times, enhance the necessary professional skills, and have the ability to face the challenge of school reform and the change of times.
The aims of this study are to analyze the senior high school principals’ professional development in Taiwan, and to construct the content and implementation types of the professional development curriculum for senior high school principals in Taiwan. The main research methods include focused interviews, questionnaire surveys and the importance-performance analysis (IPA). The study findings conclude: (1) The importance of the content of senior high school principals’ professional development, including 6 dimensions and 33 indicators, reaches middle-high level. (2) The performance of senior high school principals’ recognition of self professional development reaches middle-high level. (3) Senior high school principals with different backgrounds and experiences have difference in the importance and performance of the recognition of professional development. (4) To development senior high school principals’ profession, they need to improve the “curriculum teaching leadership and teachers professional development dimension” and the “students’ learning and adaptive development dimension” first. (5) In the implementation types of training courses, senior high school principals prefer “outdoor visits (characteristic schools, enterprises, etc.)”, “group discussion and practices”, “mentor principal internship”, “blended courses(combine digital courses with in class courses)” and “special lectures”.
