PERSONAL QUALITIES OF THE SCHOOL'S PRINCIPAL IN THE KNOWLEDGE-BASED SOCIETY

Knowledge-based Society has challenged schools. Educating people able to transform information into knowledge and then, produce new ideas requires visionary leaders that know how to articulate the elements of the institution. The school's management is far from being a simple task and it becomes even more convoluted in this ephemeral word. For this reason, the principal must be able to preserve the essence of the school, but at the same time he must push the school towards innovation to respond to the present needs. Consequently, he requires specific training, understanding that he is a leader and a learner in a community of people that seek for the perfection of the human being. He amalgamates the technical and the pedagogical aspects; he is a guide that inspires the ethical behavior; he plans, organizes, empowers, trusts, motivates, supervises and gives feedback to ensure the school's educational quality and to adapt it to today's Knowledge-based Society, the new economical and political order where technology has changed the patterns of production, and where globalization is imminent. Schools must become institutions fit for the Knowledge-based Society by encouraging innovation, problem solving and research, but in order to achieve that, the principal has to be the first one to develop and to promote them among the community. Hence, for this research, the personal qualities of 8 principals of different institutions, the characteristics of the Knowledge-based Society, and the theories of school management were studied to conclude about the personal and professional characteristics of the school's principal. Defining the profile in advance, by studying the tasks of management and the characteristics of the Knowledge-based Society, allows the institutions to be more assertive while choosing a principal, and on the other hand, to identify strengths and weaknesses of current principals