Principals' perceptions of assessment leadership: a study of the assessment practices of school principals in Saskatchewan (Canada)

The purpose of this paper is to explore the assessment leadership practices of principals. We define the term assessment leadership and provide an overview of the literature pertaining to the topic. We explain the research method and survey instrument used to collect data for this quantitative study, which was conducted in Saskatchewan (Canada). Data were analysed via Bolman and Deal's (2008) theoretical description of four leadership frames - structural, human resource, political and symbolic. Pertaining to student assessment, principals indicated that most of their effort was devoted to developing a positive school culture with regard to student assessment, using student assessment data to gauge process of school goals, and encouraging staff to use student assessment to identify strengths and weaknesses of students. Through studies such as this one, leadership training programmes and principals, themselves, are provided with pertinent data upon which continuous improvement of assessment leadership is enabled.