Abstract

The objective of the article is to describe a strategy of accompaniment to ten networks of school leaders and its effect on the development of school principal skills, leadership practices and culture of learning, from the evaluation of their members. It is a mixed study of descriptive scope. The participants are 139 principals belonging to ten networks in La Araucanía, Chile, accompanied for two and a half years by "critical friends" of an Educational Leadership Center. The information collection techniques were a Likert questionnaire (pre and post) and semi-structured interviews. The results show that school principals significantly increase their assessment of networking, recognizing it as a space that allows them to reflect on their leadership practices and to learn collaboratively in environments of trust and professional symmetry. They also value the "critical friend" as an actor that facilitates the transformation of the network into a professional learning community.