Abstract

This paper explored leadership metaphors used by novice school principals from three Latin American countries: Chile, Colombia and Mexico. When school principals used metaphors is possible to understand beliefs, values, theories and paradigms related to their visions and leadership practices. This is useful to comprehend principal's self-concept, relationship with the system and also with other educational actors. Based on a qualitative approach, and using semi-structured interviews, results indicate that the novice school principals use metaphors to symbolize complex relationships with teaching staff, parents and the school community. The metaphors employed are associated with control and survival stages that are typical of newly appointed leaders. Despite recent attention to education leadership in Latin America, cross-country comparative studies are scarce. This study is the first one to provide insights about novice principal leadership in Latin America based on the comparison of three different contexts.