ABSTRACT
Management is a practical activity: learning about management and learning to be an effective manager are therefore very different issues, a fact not always appreciated by teachers and lecturers. In many school and college courses, the dominant concern is knowledge transfer. Even without formal preparation either before or after selection, anyone appointed to a managerial post in a school arrives with a certain knowledge-base about performing the tasks which constitute the job. The methodology for producing such listings relies on a mix of prescription and observation. Even the most comprehensive catalogue of skills runs the risk of omission because of some contingency in the prevailing circumstances. In most situations the appropriate deployment of a collection of skills is much more important than the capacity to use one particular skill. What skill classifications provide in the context of management is a framework for the individual, the skill-base widened. Teachers as learners have the same needs as all other adult students.
