Professional Certification for School Principals: Approach of a Competence Based Profile for Education Quality Improvement

Abstract Educational decentralization has transformed the roles and responsibilities of all education actors. Particularly, the role of principals and school leadership has become lately a focus of attention for their direct and indirect effects on educational outcomes. From the perspective of competence development, professional certification has become an authentication tool for the actual professional capacity to respond to a job or a set of tasks verifying the level of capacity in terms of knowledge and skills of a worker. This trend is no stranger to education, with a strong emphasis on the effects of these elements in the teaching profession and into an educational project affecting the results of the quality of education received by children and youth. Considering this scenario, and based on international experience and literature reviews, authors propose a competence-based model that aim to define the professional profile that would allow improving school performance and educational outcomes. The proposed model, considers a holistic approach with 16 technical, behavioral and contextual competences that are defined in this document, defining the expected actions that should be carried out in order to develop these abilities, and therefore influence school management and performance.