Liderança nas organizações escolares

: os estilos de liderança dos diretores do Ensino Secundário em Timor-Leste

Abstract

The school leadership is an actual theme which attracted many researchers (investigators) of this area. In Timor-Leste, the interest for this subject doesn´t exists yet. There are just some legislation made by the State which remains as pattern of reference for the school guidance and the directors. By deepening this theme, we were brought to understand better the importance of school leadership in the life of the school organization and at the same time enriches our professional and personal life. In this perspective, we carry out an empirical investigation, with the objective to identify what kind of the director leadership are needed for the senior high schools in Timor-Leste, particularly in Dili. We also pretend to analyze what type of the organizations that are adopted in the school context through the organizational metaphors of the school. Taking into account of the objective above mentioned, in the theoretical foundation, we approach the theories of leadership in general and make explicit the specificities of school leadership and the functions that the directors perform in the school organizations. We also carry out an analysis to the organizational models that are closer to the actual reality of the school organization in Timor-Leste. In the empirical study, we adopt the qualitative or descriptive approach to the multiple study case. The results revealed that the applied methodology was able to identify the styles of leadership in the school organizations. The predominant leadership style discovered in the senior high schools of Timor-Leste is a transformational leadership, although it doesn’t show yet a great visibility, as some authors in this area revealed. So, the behaviors of the leaders in performing their functions still remain the bureaucratic model.

Date of Award	2014
Original language	Portuguese
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Rodrigo Queiroz e Melo (Supervisor)