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ture, I will discuss the following key areas: the principal’s role as an instructional leader and learner, creating a learning environment, assessing of professional development outcomes, getting the right professional development to close the achievement gap, following-up of professional development programmes and measures to be taken to change the attitude and classroom practice of teachers through professional development programmes.
Role of school principal

In the beginning of my profession as a principal, I had a notion that the principal’s primary role is as a manager of the school and related matters as is the case with other principals I know. I was happy with the way I handled my management responsibilities. However, the policy changes at the government level and the competition from neighbouring schools in academic achievements forced me to think about my role more significantly as an instructional leader. My first initiations to achieve higher learning of students were mainly focused on the direct learning strategies of students. Some of the decisions we made to implement improvements were remedial classes and learning clinics where individual students were given personal care, parents were motivated to see their children learning at home and the frequency of class tests was increased.

However, I could remember only very insignificant improvements were brought about, especially among the low achieving students. Of course, a small group of high achievers did show remarkable improvement under this programme. But it was not the solution when viewing from the school as a whole. Therefore, I started to investigate what should be done effectively to bring a better change in the students’ learning in general so as to reduce the achievement gap. One of the main reasons for choosing this topic for this dissertation was also influenced by this inquiry. Towards this purpose, I started discussing various ways for improving students’ achievements with other principals and teachers. At the same time, I directed my lead teachers to make frequent classroom observations of the teachers and report on them. This manner of enquiry led to a realization that the problem of achievement of students partially lay in the teachers’ classroom practices. Until then we were focusing more attention on the student side to improve the academic achievement. Thus I started to think upon the improvement of the instructional skills of teachers so as to cater to the needs of individual students in diverse classrooms like ours. As Villegas-Reimers (2003) states,

Successful professional development experiences have a noticeable impact on teachers’ work, both in and out of the classroom, especially considering that a significant number of teachers throughout the world are under-prepared for their profession (p. 17)

So, I started to find research works and journals which talked about professional development and its various aspects. As Bredeson (1999) states, “Professional development refers to learning opportunities that engage teachers’ creative and reflective capacities to strengthen their practice” (p. 4).

Most of the published works on professional development reveal that the school principal’s role is quite significant in making the professional development more effective and practical. This encourages my looking into my capability as a leader to lead