Catholic high school principals’ experiences with parent-school relationships and perceptions of self-efficacy.

Principals feel overworked in part due to their responsibilities and the demands of the modern educational institution. Furthermore, dynamics between schools and parents are changing in an increasingly polarized climate. Catholic schools face a unique challenge as school choice is more prevalent and client pools become more diverse. Understanding self-efficacy is elemental to building resiliency in principals leading schools in the current climate. Through this mixed-methods phenomenological study, I sought to understand Catholic secondary school principals’ levels of self-efficacy in daily tasks and determine how parent-school relationships explain these perceptions. I used descriptive data and interviews which led to several findings including: Catholic secondary school principals have similar feelings of self-efficacy to principals in previous studies, Catholic secondary school principals have greater self-efficacy in moral leadership, parent-school relationships explain certain aspects of principal self-efficacy, the explanatory nature of parent-school relationships is nuanced, parents can be a catalyst of stress, and Catholic high school principals view parent-school relationships as paramount to maintaining control of their daily schedule.