An Investigation of Factors Impacting the Motivation of German and US Teachers to Become School Principals DAWSON R. HANCOCK Department of Educational Leadership, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA CHRISTINE HARY Swiss Federation for Adult Learning, Zurich, Switzerland ULRICH MÜLLER Institute of Educational Leadership, University of Education, Ludwigsburg, Germanyhttp://dx.doi.org/10.2304/rcie.2012.7.3.352
School principals play a pivotal role in establishing the direction for successful schools. Unfortunately, significant challenges to recruiting and retaining highly qualified school leaders exist in many regions of the world. Extending the findings of a recent quantitative study comparing the influence of motivators and inhibitors that impact German and US teachers’ decisions to become principals, researchers in the current study interviewed selected teachers to determine the reasons for their responses. Similarities and differences in the respondents’ perceptions of factors that influenced their desire to become school leaders are reported. The findings offer important ways in which Germany and the USA may learn from each other’s practices.