
==== Front
Heliyon
Heliyon
Heliyon
2405-8440
Elsevier

S2405-8440(24)12056-7
10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e36025
e36025
Research Article
Identity positioning of experienced school principals when facing critical incidents
Mollá Núria nuriamt@blanquerna.url.edu
⁎
Castelló Montserrat
Faculty of Psychology, Educational Sciences and Sports, Blanquerna, Universitat Ramon Llull, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
⁎ Corresponding author. nuriamt@blanquerna.url.edu
14 8 2024
30 8 2024
14 8 2024
10 16 e3602514 5 2023
24 7 2024
8 8 2024
© 2024 The Authors
2024
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
The study focused on experienced school principals' identity positions when facing critical incidents that arise over the course of a school year with the aim of better understanding their identity positioning. Ultimately, we intended results to inform on training proposals and school principals’ professional identity development. We used a dialogic framework and a longitudinal design to analyze the positioning processes that allowed four experienced school principals to solve the incidents they faced during their regular activity. Results confirm the dynamic nature of identity and suggest that the positive resolution of critical incidents involved interventions from main positions (core positions, promotor positions, and meta-positions) coalitions with prominent secondary positions, and creation of new positions. Such results indicate to what extent dialogue helped principals deal consciously and strategically with the incidents that configure their professional practice and ultimately contribute to the construction of their identities.

Keywords

School principals' identity
Identity positioning
Identity positioning mechanism
Critical incidents
==== Body
pmc1 Introduction

The complex challenges contemporary educational institutions have been facing in the last twenty years have evolved in parallel with an outstanding growth of studies focusing on school principals as responsible for managing schools and leading educational processes and their impact on school organization, atmosphere, and teachers and teaching development or student achievement [[1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8]]. There is a consensus among researchers that school principals1 tend to achieve better results when focusing on teaching and learning processes while the more bureaucratic aspects of school management take a back seat [5,9,10]. Consistently, research has highlighted the need for school principals to focus on improving teaching and learning through a widely distributed and shared leadership [11,12]. These results emphasized the school principals’ role as drivers of the collective task of transforming educational practices, featuring the participation of the teachers themselves [1,[13], [14], [15]]. Several researchers have helped shed light on how this type of school management can impact educational practices, especially when it comes to improving learning and increasing equity [[16], [17], [18], [19]]. To a lesser extent, research in the field has also sought to analyze the individual traits and personal resources that school principals need to successfully adopt this leadership style [12,17,20]. However, individual variability among professionals who take on the role of school principals has received little attention from researchers, even though some are much more effective than others at performing their functions and achieving the desired effects mentioned above.

In recent years, results have indicated that much of what we view as professional success can be explained by professionals’ particular stances and ways of identity positioning when facing everyday challenges [21]. Thus, describing the positions adopted daily by the school principals in their professional environment is crucial to understand how they can develop their professional identify to run their schools in an effective way.

Despite the growing evidence supporting this hypothesis, no studies look at how school principals interpret their daily experiences when they exercise their role and make sense of their actions. Instead, research has mainly addressed the roles, functions and outcomes of different leadership approaches and styles [17,[22], [23], [24], [25], [26], [27]]. However, school principals' voices have been surprisingly absent from the debate, and our knowledge regarding their professional identity positioning is almost inexistent when compared to the existing knowledge about other professionals in education [[20], [28], [29], [30], [31]]. In this study, we focus on the school principals' identity positioning by identifying the situations that they interpreted as critical over a school year and explaining the identity positions that they adopted. We hope that understanding school principals' interpretations of the incidents that destabilize them and actions to resolve these challenges [29,32] may help us shed light on how their professional positioning unfolds and accounts for success in school management. Such knowledge might be helpful to rethink educational proposals and programs addressed to help professionals transition from teachers to school principals and to, ultimately, promote effective leading practices.

To accomplish such a goal, we relied on the Dialogical Self Theory [33,34], which has proven to be a useful conceptual and methodological framework when it comes to investigating teachers' identities and positioning [28,30,35,36].

1.1 Principals’ identities based on dialogical self-theory

According to the dialogical self-theory, the self (or the mind) is populated by a multiplicity of potential voices driven by individuals' representation of a given situation, actors involved, social expectations, aims and related actions. These voices constitute potential positions of the self, that is I-positions. Among the I-positions, Internal Positions (IP) refer to personal representations built through experience, and External Positions (EP) relate to voices from other significant people that are included in individuals' own thoughts, actions, and attitudes [21,37]. Identity results from intra-psychological dialogue between the IPs, associated with individuals' personal and professional history, and the EPs, which usually echo other significant people and represent socially expected roles. Such dialogue allows individuals to internalize and personalize their professional role distinctively and uniquely, depending on the quotidian situations they must face in their professional lives [37,35,38,39]. As a result of this intra-psychological dialogue and its predominant voices, individuals position themselves in particular situations. Such a positioning, in turn, accounts for their actions, emotions and thoughts related to those situations and others perceived as similar. The repertoire of positions of the self, valued as potentially relevant in socially-situated scenarios, is what defines identity.

This intra-psychological dialogue between positions usually unfolds with tensions among different I-positions when they reflect conflicting, contradictory or incompatible voices. Tensions among discordant voices and positions are successfully reconciled when individuals reposition themselves and build new I-positions, especially when dealing with events and situations perceived as particularly critical. On the contrary, non-resolved tensions can risk disorganization, confusion, and fragmentation of the self [21,40].

According to this perspective, the identity of a school principal does not consist of an unchanging set of personality traits. Instead, it is defined by a continuous and highly context-specific process of positioning and repositioning. Within this process, principals not only adopt positions toward others or toward themselves, but they are also positioned by others [21]. Some of these positions, referred to here as core positions, promoter positions and meta-positions, play a special role in the overall organization of the self and in the development of professional identity.

Core positions occupy the center of the self and, thus, organize and structure it. According to their central role, they exert a significant influence on other positions, and on identity dynamics.

Promoter positions act as boosters for dialogue among positions and help the self to evolve in a democratic way [41,42]. They function as internal leaders of the self and are responsible for innovation through the transformation of existing positions, and creation of new ones. Research has shown that an usual way to solve a conflict between two positions is by creating a third position [43] that reconciles, brings together or moves beyond the prior ones.

Counter-positions emerge as a way to differentiate from or oppose a current position. At the same time, over-positions appear when individuals adopt an excessive position in the absence of other opposing positions, sometimes leading to imbalances in the self.

Finally, meta-positions provide a snapshot, a general overview, of the multiple, coexisting positions that make up the self and the relations between them. Adopting a meta-position helps individuals assess the functioning and organization of their self and can contribute to more thoughtful decision-making [33,40].

Within the dialogical dynamic, it is possible to identify the mechanisms involved in identity positioning [30]. We define identity positioning mechanism as the mechanism responsible for the dynamics resulting from the internal and external positions’ dialogue in a particular situation. Such mechanisms promote the identify development in terms of individuals adopting new positions (positioning), and changing their functions to deal with and adjust to situational constraints (repositioning).

Another identity positioning mechanisms [34] are the coalitions of positions and the adoption of meta-positions as precursors of the creation of third-positions relevant to solve conflicts. In addition, coalitions of positions have been identified as mechanisms of cooperation and support within the self to reach a shared goal. During dialogic negotiation, when there is buy-in between positions, various positions can be combined and integrated into new coalitions as a basis for creative decision-making. Coalitions of positions help strengthen the individual positions that form them, and this phenomenon sometimes boosters the role of some positions that, until then, had a secondary role in the self [43]. This process prevents certain positions from being silenced, suppressed, or neglected in developing the professional identity [40].

1.2 Critical incidents and school principals’ identity positioning

Challenges and difficulties school principals must handle in their everyday tasks are usually emotionally destabilizing. When the emotional impact is perceived as high, the challenge is conceptualized as a Critical Incident (CI) [44]. These incidents can prompt a crisis or mark an identity turning point because, to gain control of the situation, professionals must often reassess how they think, feel and act when facing these challenges. This process generates opportunities for change [29]. Indeed, some studies provided evidence of how the resolution of a CI favors the revision of one's positions and related actions, which, in turn, contributes to the rethinking and rebuilding of one's own identity, precisely because of the high emotional impact it entails. Moreover, this process may happen even among very experienced professionals, as positioning, and, thus, identity development is a never-ending process that occurs in the context of the innumerable everyday situations to which a professional is exposed [32,45,46].

Research has shown that when a CI goes unresolved, it is often accompanied by positions that deny the problem or counter-positions that minimize it. Some authors [47,48] claim the subject's awareness is relevant to recognize the variety of positions -ways of interpreting the situation and related emotions and actions-that are in play when facing a CI and their relation to its resolution. The different introspective, awareness-raising approaches that have been proven helpful in this regard involve interpreting the CI in context, identifying the stakeholders involved and their positions before deciding on one's own response, and moving toward a potential resolution [28,30,31]. However, these studies have focused on teachers rather than school principals; therefore, research is yet to provide evidence regarding the CIs that principals usually face, how they solve them, and the mechanisms that contribute to their identity positioning. A better empirical understanding of these mechanisms might inform evidence-based training programs to promote the construction of principals' professional identity.

This study offers an in-depth examination of the identity positioning of school principals via an analysis of how these professionals interpret incidents they view as critical and how they position themselves regarding these incidents when they arise and while dealing with them over a school year. We aim to fill this research gap by answering the following research questions.RQ1 What incidents do experienced school principals perceive as critical during a school year?

RQ2 How do experienced school principals position themselves to deal with the critical incidents they experience over a school year? That is, what is their repertoire of positions?

RQ3 What are the mechanisms involved in the identity positioning of experienced school principals when they face critical incidents?

1.3 Method

This is a longitudinal multiple-case study with an explanatory and interpretive approach [49,50]). The object of study are participants' narrations and interpretations of their own professional activity during one academic year [51]. Adopting a longitudinal approach was necessary to capture the evolving nature of the experiences and incidents that appear over the academic year. Moreover, to understand how principals interpreted and reacted to these incidents, the cross-case analysis approach in multiple case-studies [52] allowed the comparison of commonalities and difference in the events, activities, and processes [53,54]. Through the multiple-case approach, we first characterized each participant's identity positioning when facing critical incidents. Then, we performed a cross-case analysis, looking for differences and commonalities through an inter-case system of validated categories. Such a design allowed for an in-depth case understanding and comprehensive qualitative cross-case analysis according to the theoretical framework we adopted [55,56].

1.4 Participants

Four school principals with proven experience participated in the study. To select them, we first listed all the schools in the Barcelona region involved in educational innovation initiatives. We selected the school principals from this list who met the following criteria: (1) more than 15 academic years of teaching experience and more than three academic years of experience as school principals; (2) across-participant variation of publicly funded schools including different educational stages (e.g., primary, secondary or vocational among others) and of different sizes, depending on number of teachers and students (e.g., large, medium and small). The four principals2 chosen were all experienced teachers with different levels of expertise as principals. Andreu, a 52-year-old man, who, after 29 years in the same school holding different positions (teacher, head of the curriculum department), was promoted to the principal position three years before the study was conducted. Bernat was a 50-year-old man who also had an extensive career as a teacher (23 years), and had been carrying out the role of principal at the same school for the last 12 years. Cesc, aged 60, had been elected principal in different centers for the last 22 years, after being a teacher for another 22 years. Finally, Dolors, the only woman, 50 years old, had undertaken different roles in the same school for 26 years (head of the department, curriculum innovations coordinator), where she was elected principal seven years before the study (see Table 1). After being informed of the study's objectives, all the principals voluntarily agreed to participate and signed an informed consent document.3Table 1 Participants.

Table 1Participant	Age	Professional experience as principals	Educational stagesa	Size of school	
Andreu	52	3 years	Pre, Prim, Sec, Bac, Voc	Large (140 teachers and 1700 students)	
Bernat	50	12 years	Pre, Pri, Sec	Medium (52 teachers and 720 students)	
Cesc	60	23 years	Pre, Prim, Sec, Bac, Voc	Large (180 teachers and 1100 students)	
Dolors	58	7 years	Pre, Prim,	Small (37 teachers and 490 students)	
a Preschool (Pre), Primary (Prim), Secondary (Sec), Baccalaureate (Bac), and Vocation (Voc).

1.5 Instruments

Data were collected through semi-structured multimodal interviews [47] designed to elicit detailed information about how the participants interpreted the critical incidents -Cis-they experienced, and how they dealt with them. The interview protocol was partially adapted from Refs. [47,57] (see Annex 1). Two instruments were included in the multimodal interview.(1) Journal of significant experiences. Principals wrote weekly entries into this log describing the incidents and significant experiences they faced, how they interpreted them, who was involved, and why and how they acted to solve them. They were also encouraged to describe their emotions, thoughts, and lessons learnt from the situation. Data collected in these journals were the basis for planning the interviews.

(2) Journey Plot. A Journey Plot is a graphical representation featuring two axes. The horizontal axis represents time, while the vertical axis indicates the degree of the emotional intensity of the positive and negative incidents. The participants completed their Journey Plots immediately before each of the interview sessions. During the interviews, we used the Journey Plots as a starting point to delve more deeply into the meaning, relevance, evolution, and impact of particular CIs in the participants' identity positioning over the school year [58,59].

1.6 Procedure

Data collection took place throughout the 2018–2019 school year. The principals were asked to fill in their journals from October to May weekly. We conducted quarterly interviews with each participant in November, February, and May. Before any of these interviews, each participant was asked to draw a quarterly Journey Plot. Information from the weekly logs was used to prepare the interview and focus on the experiences and incidents reported by participants. The Journey Plot graphics were the starting point for the interviews that usually lasted 60′ to 90’. All the interviews (n = 12; 3 per participant) were video recorded and fully transcribed. All data from each participant using the various instruments were saved in a file in chronological order.

The analysis comprised three phases corresponding to the study's research questions. To address research question one, we followed a five-step procedure to qualitatively create and validate the final system of CI categories (see Fig. 1). After the iterative reading of each participant's complete information, we segmented the utterances referred to the CIs thematically. Each CI described by participants was considered a thematic unit, including five dimensions: who reported the CI, who else was involved in it (main and secondary actors), what it was about (type), how it unfolded (description), and when it occurred. Then, we created primary codes with a low inferential level for each thematic unit and dimension, which, through discussion, were progressively grouped into higher inferential levels. This process was iteratively repeated through consensus until the final system of categories was agreed on. Finally, we established the frequency and prevalence of each type of CI.Fig. 1 Analysis procedure for research question 1.

Fig. 1

We followed a similar process to answer research question 2 and to create and validate the system of categories regarding the positions adopted by the principals when facing the categorized CIs. The categorization of the IP and EP allowed us to identify the repertoire of positions that characterized the dialogical self of each participant. To do so, we followed a two-step process: (a) classification of each IP based on their self-reflection and self-evaluation interview utterances; (b) classification of each EP based on the utterances in which they referred to how they faced the CIs (Fig. 2).Fig. 2 Analysis procedure for research questions 2 and 3.

Fig. 2

To address research question 3, we relied on Hermans' proposal [34] to identify the mechanisms involved in the participants' identity positioning. Thus, for each participant we categorized each IP and EP ‘s functions and whether they changed when facing each of the CIs. Finally, the analysis concluded with a description of the frequencies of prevalence (Fig. 2).

The two authors discussed the codes, which were refined over three successive rounds of analysis until they reached a consensus on the final system of categories. To guarantee the reliability, once the categories system had been established, two researchers independently analyzed a third of the data (4 interviews). The degree of agreement in the categorization ranged from 90 to 96 %, a high rate that made it possible to move forward with the rest of the analysis independently. All the analyses were done using the MaxQda (v12; 2018) software.

2 Results

First, we will present the results about the critical incidents (RQ1). Then, we will go on to the results regarding the principal's positioning (RQ2). Finally, we will focus on the mechanisms involved in principals' identity positioning when facing the identified incidents (RQ3).

2.1 Critical incidents faced by the principals

The first research question enquired onto the CIs that school principals faced over a school year. We identified a total of 99 critical incidents belonging to four thematic topics: school activities; standards, organization, and functioning; relationships with external agents; and relationships and well-being within the school (Table 2).Table 2 Topics of critical incidents faced by principals.

Table 2Topics	Description	Examples of CI	
School activities	Incidents related to everyday teaching and learning tasks that are connected to the school's objectives and included in the school's overall educational plan.	School activities and celebrations, teacher training activities, innovation projects, strategy meetings, school open house days.	
Standards, organization, and functioning	Incidents related to the creation of a shared frame of reference (educational principles and norms) to ensure a positive school atmosphere and effective organization.	Organization of teachers' functions, tasks and timetables, management of complaints, conflicts, and student discipline.	
Relationships with external agents	Incidents related to collaboration with people outside the school itself.	Institutional events, participation in networks of schools.	
Relationships and well-being within the school	Incidents related to the social and emotional factors that can alter or destabilize school environment or the relations and collaboration among school staff.	Personal situations such as staff illnesses and divorces, conflicts among teachers, stressful situations.	

The results showed that the participants identified the teachers as the actors involved in a greater number of CIs, both as main (n = 43) and secondary (n = 16) actors, especially when it came to situations related to school standards, organization, and functioning and to school activities (n = 28 and n = 9, respectively) (Table 3). Likewise, all the CIs referred to the relationships and well-being within the school involving teachers (n = 6) related to the accompaniment of personal situations outside the school. In comparison, they considered the educational community the most relevant secondary actor (main actors n = 14, secondary actors n = 69). As for students and families, they were involved to a lesser extent (students as main actors n = 16, as secondary actors n = 6; families as main actors n = 15, as secondary actors n = 3). Furthermore, it should be noted that the administration and services staff were involved in only three critical incidents (main actors n = 2, secondary actors n = 1). Finally, we highlight that the school principals identified themselves as actors in 14 CIs out of 99 (main actors n = 9, secondary actors n = 3), usually referring to stressful situations, as exemplified by the following quote:It has been a marathon, of working a lot, after the big blow we took, and I said to myself, ‘Either I recover from this, or it will be the end of me.’ Because it’s true that I was really anxious, and I felt like I couldn’t do it, that I couldn’t make it through the semester, but I forced myself, and I was able to do it.

Table 3 Results regarding CIs’ topics and actors involved.

Table 3Sphere	Main actors	Secondary actors	
Students	Principal	Teachers	Administration and service staff	Families	Educational community	Students	Principal	Teachers	Administration and service staff	Families	Educational community	
School activities	22	5	–	9	–	4	4	1	2	6	–	–	13	
Standards, organization, and functioning	48	9	1	28	1	8	1	4	2	9	1	3	29	
Relationships with external agents	10	–	–	–	–	2	8	–	1	–	–	–	10	
Relationships and well-being within the school	19	2	8	6	1	1	1	1	–	1	–	–	17	
	99	16	9	43	2	15	14	6	5	16	1	3	69	

The principals also mentioned metacognitive processes related to their positioning when facing CIs, thus offering evidence of them being challenged to reorganize their self, as the following quote illustrates:I have to manage this balance between what is urgent and what is important, to reflect on how to find very good ways to manage the responsibilities that come with this position. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not responsible for the prestige of the school, but I am expected to make certain decisions when I’m in this office. I think I haven’t struck the right balance, and I need to reassess some things.

2.2 School principals’ repertoire of positions

To answer research question 2, we set out the repertoire of internal and external positions that the four participating principals adopted as they faced the CIs over the whole year. Nine internal positions were identified among the four principals with different roles and functions.

Five out of these nine internal positions were related to their positioning as individuals, not only as professionals. Thus, principals referred to themselves as a) committed to any activity they engaged in; b) scientists because of the influence of their disciplinary background on their worldview; c) caretakers when they tended to prioritize others' well-being in any situation, not only at the school; d) entrepreneurs when organizing and operating in a managerial way; e) optimists; or f) cooperatives.

The rest of the internal positions were related to their professional activity. Among these, they positioned themselves as a) learning promoters seeking teachers, students and the school community staff's learning and development; b) project managers, responsible for the school project management; or c) regulators of attitudes, values, and norms when they saw themselves as the ones who warranted the schools' well-functioning.

Regarding external positions, four were identified: a) professionals from the same center, referred to those colleagues and teams that worked in the school; b) external professionals related to voices from other centers, colleagues, groups and organizations from outside the school with whom they shared reflections; c) references of superior positions, that is to individuals occupying a superior position in the same institution; d) scientific reference, when they referred to other people voices or disciplinary knowledge to which they relied on to validate their analysis.

Regarding which of these acted as core positions, results were heterogeneous. The core position for both Cesc, and Dolors, was that of learning promoter, while Andreu positioned himself as caretaker of others at the school. Finally, Bernat's core position was that of project manager. Their promoter positions and meta-positions were distributed among scientists, learning promoters, committed, and entrepreneurs or project managers. Results also revealed they assumed the voices of references of superior positions or scientific references, either from the center or external (Table 4).Table 4 Positions adopted by the principals when facing the CIs.

Table 4Participant	Core position	Promotor-position	Meta-position	Secondary internal positions	External positions	
Andreu	Committed Caretaker	Scientist	Scientist	Learning promoter
Project manager
Regulator of attitudes, values, and norms
Cooperative
Optimist	Professionals at the same center
Professionals of external center
Higher position reference
Scientific referent	
Bernat	Project manager	Learning promoter	Learning promoter	Caretaker
Regulator of attitudes, values, and norms
Cooperative	Professionals at the same center
Professionals of external center	
Cesc	Learning promoter	Committed	Committed	Caretaker
Project manager
Regulator of attitudes, values, and norms	Professionals at the same center	
Dolors	Learning promoter	Entrepreneur Project manager	Entrepreneur Project manager	Caretaker
Project manager	Professionals at the same center
Higher position reference	

2.2.1 School principals’ mechanisms involved in identity positioning when facing CIs

Regarding the third research question, results indicated the most relevant mechanisms involved in identity positioning, both in terms of frequency and their role in the positive resolution of incidents, included interventions from a third position (n = 26), a coalition of positions with a secondary position playing a central role (n = 25), and interventions based on more dominant positions such as the core position, the promoter-position, and the meta-position (n = 31). Less frequently (n = 14), we observed mechanisms that involved counter-positions (See Table 5). These four trends in the results are described in more detail below, with examples.Table 5 Results regarding identity positioning mechanisms by type of CI and resolution.

Table 5	Identity Positioning mechanisms	
	Resolution	Intervention from core position	Intervention from promoter-position	Intervention from meta-position	Coalition centered on 2nd position	Intervention from 3rd position	Counter-position	Over-position	
School activities (n = 22)	Yes	7	5	–	8	2	–	–	
No	–	–	–	–	–	–	–	
Standard, organization, and functioning (n = 48)	Yes	5	3	–	6	6	4	2	
No	1	2	–	3	9	7	–	
Relationships with external (n = 10)	Yes	1	–	4	3	1	1	–	
No	–	–	–	–	–	–	–	
Relationships and well-being within the school (n = 19)	Yes	1	–	–	1	5	–	1	
No	1	–	1	4	3	2	–	
		16	10	5	25	26	14	3	

First, it is worth noting that when principals intervened from dominant positions such as core, promoter, and meta-positions, they were nearly always able to solve the CIs. More specifically, the principals successfully solved 14 of the 16 CIs in which they called upon their core positions, 8 of the 10 CIs in which they intervened from their promoter positions, and 4 of the 5 CIs in which they intervened based on their meta-positions. The quote below illustrates Dolors’ reaction to a challenge she faced at school when she positioned herself as a learning promoter focusing on the professional development of her colleagues.This Saturday, we are giving a presentation at a seminar on innovative schools, and over 70 schools will be there. At another time, I would be finishing up the presentation, but this time I will introduce two other teachers and they will give the talk. I share more so that my colleagues can grow.

Secondly, we found the identity positioning mechanism of creating a coalition of positions where secondary-role positions play a central role to be an effective way to handle CIs (successful in 14 of 23 cases). The mechanism was especially effective when the coalition was among internal positions and involved caretaker and project manager positions or incorporated the external voices of teachers and other school professionals. For example, the following statement illustrates how Andreu, when facing a CI in which he claimed to care for his colleagues, used the coalition between some of his non-dominant positions, such as project manager, regulator of attitudes, values, and norms, and cooperative, to strengthen the team and share the same objective:We have had to suffer through constant changes in regulations by the educational authorities. Sometimes they change conditions in ways that are harmful to us, and sometimes we can’t keep up with everything. [ …] I say to the staff, OK, we’re going to find a solution. Instead of a problem, I see a challenge. We are going to think about how we can improve our planning and organization, because continuing as before and pretending that nothing has changed does not help at all.

Thirdly, results indicated that conflicts among positions often took the form of clashes between the principals’ internal positions and the voices of teachers and other professionals from the school (external positions). The conflict between internal positions was less prevalent that between internal and external positions. When it occurred, it tended to be in situations where principals were positioned as managers or caretakers. In nearly a third of the CIs, conflicts among positions were solved by creating a third position. The following quote illustrates how Cesc used this mechanism to handle a situation connected to supervision at lunchtime:I received a complaint from some parents about the poor supervision during recess after lunch. For me, it was a question of negligence [ …]. From the yearly satisfaction survey, we were already aware that something was not working in the lunchroom. [ …] I can’t allow them to think that we aren’t supervising, that we aren’t doing our job. [ …] I spoke to [the head lunch monitor] because I had already worked with him in September. I told him that I didn’t want to see six monitors talking together in the courtyard, that I wanted the six monitors distributed throughout the space, leading games, present in places where there tends to be conflict like the bathrooms and the water fountain, and available for when the children need them.

The quote illustrates a conflict between Cesc's internal position -as project manager-as the person responsible for the school's lunchtime service (“I can't allow them to think that we aren't doing our job”), and the voices of other school professionals, in this case, the head lunch teacher. The latter had a different view of the functions and tasks of the lunch teachers. To solve the situation, Cesc positioned himself from a third position, that of a regulator of attitudes, values, and norms (“I told him that I didn't want …”). Creating this third position helped Cesc redirect what might have been an unproductive conflict between his core position as promoter of the lunch teachers' learning and his secondary position as caretaker for students and the person responsible for the school's lunchtime service. To do this, Cesc involved his meta-position of a committed director, attentive to students, families, and educational community.

Finally, the identity positioning mechanism of using counter-positions mainly emerged when principals dealt with standards, organization, and functioning CIs. However, this mechanism did not contribute to the CIs' resolution in at least half of these cases. The following example shows how Bernat, facing a conflict with a group of families who asked for an extra-curricular activity change, was inflexible and unwilling to engage in dialogue with parents ("I have to say no, and that's all”). He believed it was unnecessary to seek out parents' opinions on this issue, which represented a clash between the parents' voices and Bernat's position as a regulator of attitudes, values, and norms:I feel like parents think that they are the ones who make all the decisions, but in this case, I have to say no, and that’s that. You see, we are very open to participation at the school, but we are the ones who make the pedagogical decisions.

The analysis of identity positioning mechanisms by type of CIs (Table 5) revealed that successful resolution of incidents about school activities was related to the creation of coalitions of positions (n = 8), and the positioning from promoter positions (n = 7), or core positions (n = 5). In addition, relationships with external agents' incidents were satisfactorily solved through principals' re-positioning from meta-positions (n = 4) or, again, via coalitions of positions (n = 3).Meanwhile, identity positioning mechanisms to resolve relationships and well-being within the school were inefficient when creating third positions (5 out of 8) and even less successful when using coalitions of positions (1 out of 4).

Finally, results regarding identity positioning mechanisms to solve organization, and functioning incidents, showed a striking prevalence of conflicts among positions, for example, when principals' positioning consisted of third positions or creation of counter-positions (n = 15, n = 11, respectively). About two-thirds of these identity positioning mechanisms failed to contribute to the effective resolution of the identified CIs. In contrast, in other cases where principal positioned themselves from core positions (n = 5) or when they created coalitions of positions (n = 6), they could resolve the incidents effectively.

3 Discussion

This study aimed to gain a deeper understanding of the identity positioning of school principals via an analysis of how these professionals interpret situations they view as critical and how they position themselves regarding these incidents that arise over a school year. The ultimate goal was to generate valuable knowledge to inform on the design of training programs to improve principals' performance through developing their professional identity. The dialogic approach [33,34] and longitudinal design [55,56] allowed us to identify the characteristics of the incidents that emerge most frequently in the principals' everyday life and examine the positioning processes that help them most effectively resolve these incidents and impact their identities [28,30,31].

Overall, results confirmed the most problematic situations from the principals’ perspective involved teachers and were mainly related to the school atmosphere and organization [29,32,45]. Moreover, the four participants tended to share similar internal and external positions [20]. Regarding the mechanisms involved in the positioning and repositioning processes, a positive resolution of the incidents was often explained by the principals' adopting either dominant positions or coalitions of non-dominant positions. In contrast, the evidence showed that adopting third positions did not always help principals resolve incidents. This means that when a conflict between internal and external positions is triggered, the principal is often forced to build a new positioning, creating a non-existent position in their repertoire and, therefore, feels unprepared.

Moreover, the results provided evidence regarding to what extent experienced principals did not rely on pre-established knowledge or automatized strategies to deal with potential incidents [30]. In contrast, what seems a distinctive trait of their expertise is their ability to negotiate among internal positions, to shift positions, or even to create new ones depending on how they interpreted a specific situation. That evidence constitutes one of the study contributions and confirms the nature of identity as a situated and dynamic process even in experienced professionals [34]. Moreover, the study results also shed light on how internal voices might be internalized through systematic reflection on one's practices, thoughts, and feelings [2,4,13,17] external voices that result from. Such results not only reaffirm the importance of promoting conscious, strategic positioning in challenging situations that emerge within professional practice, but also shed light on how identity positioning is constructed, advancing the suggestions of previous studies on identity in school principals.

Besides the dynamic nature of principals’ identities [21,40], the findings underlined the most effective identity positioning mechanisms to address the variety of incidents they encountered. All participating principals were prompted at one time or another to change their repertoire of positions because of the imbalance brought about by the emotional impact of specific incidents. In these cases, the principals displayed, with varying degrees of success, identity positioning mechanisms that implied flexibly re-positioning and even creating new positions to solve internal tensions and address conflicting situations.

However, one of the most outstanding contributions of our study's unique contributions is the detailed description of the identity positioning mechanisms operating in authentic situations, a pending issue in previous research on professional identity in educational scenarios from the Dialogical Self Theory [21,28,30,31,[35], [36], [38], [39],47]. Describing the mechanisms that underlie and explain the development of principals' professional identities has at least three implications for future training program design. The first one relates to the role played by critical incidents [28,29,30,31,32,45,46,48]. The second implication relates to promoting self-awareness of one's repertoire of positions and the mechanisms involved in the positioning and repositioning processes in situated scenarios. Such an approach would not only help principals avoid overly rigid responses to common incidents but also facilitate them to understand their identities as dynamic and flexible [21,30].

The final implication has to do with emphasizing the role of inner dialogue. We believe that enhancing dialogue between voices that populate the self (the voices of “others in me” and my voices), enriched through the inclusion of additional external voices (those of other principals or trainers), could help professionals better understand their professional role, develop, and make more conscious decisions. The fact that identity development is context-dependent would also suggest that analyzing situations that are meaningful to the participants might facilitate dialogue and inter-psychological negotiation [33,34] (Hermans, 2015; 2018). Therefore, we suggest training activities based on cooperation among colleagues, either from the same school or from relatively similar contexts.

Finally, we consider both the longitudinal design [[49], [50], [51]] and the designed instruments [48, 58, 59 60] as methodological contributions of the study, given that they allowed us to address the intrinsic complexity of the thinking and actions of school principals in situated scenarios and, thus, shedding light on their professional identity construction. Additionally, let us consider that the instruments used in this research (Journal of significant experiences, Journey Plot and Interview protocol) could be very useful as training instruments, given that they have turned out to be very suitable for activating not only the principals' meta-position when reflecting on what they thought and felt when facing critical incidents, but also the promoter position when they planned their future interventions.

This study is not without limitations. The small sample size of principals who volunteered to participate prevents us from claiming the results representativity. Despite that, we consider that the study of cases methodological approach has provided a first approximation to the characterization of school principals' identity, which contributed to deeper understanding. Similarly, in spite of the great demand on the participants' end due to the longitudinal design of the study, such a design has allowed us to carry out an in-depth analysis of the variability of the principals’ identity positioning when facing critical incidents. In turn, the multimodal approach in which we used data from various instruments to integrate into a category system has guaranteed high internal validity. Given the lack of studies on principals' identity and our focus on their understanding, findings can help to deepen on the identity construction. Future studies could examine how identity positioning mechanisms operate in different contexts and less experienced principals, and how dialogue-based training can promote professional development. We hope the reflective, conscious, and flexible use of positioning and identity positioning mechanisms will help school principals to solve the incidents and challenges they face in their professional lives more strategically and effectively contribute to their development.

Ethics declaration

The study was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the authors’ university (Ref. July 20, 2018).

Data availability statement

Data will be made available on request.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Núria Mollá: Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft, Visualization, Methodology, Investigation, Formal analysis, Data curation, Conceptualization. Montserrat Castelló: Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft, Visualization, Supervision, Methodology, Investigation, Formal analysis, Data curation, Conceptualization.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Annex 1 Semi-structured multimodal interview protocol

Analysis of the CIs recorded in the journal (previously reported).(1) Presentation of Journey Plot:

Use the graph below to draw the highs and lows of the CIs you experienced as a principal from dd/mm/yy to dd/mm/yy. Represent the positive and negative CIs, and draw ascending and descending lines. Summarize each CI by giving it a title.Image 1

(2) Give the participant time to complete the Journey Plot for the period in question based on the information in the journal.

(3) Use these questions to take a closer look at the CIs recorded in the journal and on the graph.

1. What happened here?

2. How long did it last?

3. Why did you find it important?

4. What did you do? What strategies did you employ?

5. What did you tell yourself when you were experiencing it?

6. What were you thinking at the time? What about now?

7. How did you feel at that time? How did these emotions evolve?

8. Who was involved in the incident?

9. Who did you discuss it with? Who influenced the way you dealt with it?

10. What did you learn from the experience?

(4) After the participant has explained all the CIs, ask about the graph as a whole:

11 Does this graph represent the general trajectory of this time period?

12 How would you describe this trajectory? Stable/unstable, positive/negative … ?

13. What do you imagine it will look like going forward?

1 School principals is the term used in this paper to refer to a job position with a leading role in the whole school community, including students, teachers, staff, parents, the education system, and the wider community [60].

2 Pseudonyms were used to protect the anonymity of the participants.

3 The study was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the authors' university (Ref. 20/07/2018).
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