School Leadership and Diversity: Perceptions of Educational Administrators in Greece

Abstract

The study described here constitutes the second part of a larger project, which concerns the
way school administrators dealt with issues associated with ethnocultural diversity and social
justice in Greek schools. The paper begins with an extended bibliographic review on school
leadership and multiculturalism issues. The second part presents the methodology, a case
study strategy based on 50 semi-structured interviews, through which the authors attempted
to investigate the administrators’ perceptions, attitudes, and management strategies
concerning the issues of pupils’ ethnic variation in a Regional Unity of Northern Greece. The
research focused on how administrators prepare themselves, teachers and schools to address
the diverse needs of pupils; how they negotiate with pupils’ parents and guardians; how
school administrators contribute to the integration of “different” pupils and their families in
the local communities.