This study explored how teachers and school administrators connect large-scale assessment results with school improvement planning. Using a semi-structured format, 20 teachers and 18 administrators were interviewed from two school districts in southern Ontario, Canada. The interview protocol contained a range of questions related to teaching and…

Background: lack of preparation programmes relevant to the job demands of school administrators and a lack of sequence, modern content, and experience in preparation programmes continues to plague educational leadership preparation. Purpose: of this study is to gauge the perspectives of principals on the strengths and weakness in educational…

Due to the difficulties inherent in staffing rural schools it is increasingly common for beginning teachers to fill school leadership roles early in their careers. The accelerated progression of some teachers impacts on the overall nature of leadership in rural schools and creates unique pathways, generally different from those available to…

Cultural anthropology's methods of "emic" and "etic" analysis have potential applications in the theory, research, and practice of educational administration. In "emic" analysis the native informant is made the ultimate judge of the researcher's descriptions and analyses. In "etic" analysis, however, the…

This study examined the ways in which for-profit comprehensive management educational management organizations (EMOs) operating charter schools respond to the need to balance school autonomy and flexibility with the fact that centralized operations require consistency, coordination, and legal constraints. The study focused on the perspective of…

The socio-emotional well-being of foster care youth requires a systemic response from professionals and volunteers in all communities. At best, however, the literature portrays foster care as a phenomenon limited to the medical, criminal, and social work professions. Yet, foster care children attend school and interact with a host of educational…

An interview study in Delaware gathered information about educational administrators' perceptions of effective high schools and existing statewide standards for effective schools. This report describes the design and analysis of this study and demonstrates how the resulting information was used to reformulate the state's policy and program for…

The extent to which National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Executive Summary reports are intelligible to policy makers and educators was studied, and recommendations were offered for improving NAEP reporting practices. Detailed interviews were conducted with 59 policy makers and educators. In general, these two groups had considerable…

This study investigating school administrator career patterns focused on entry, promotion, and position permanency as it affects both men and women and examines factors affecting the careers of women in an attempt to explain the relative absence of women in hierarchical educational administrative positions. Data were collected from historical…

Interviews with university and college department chairs or persons responsible for existing educational administration and higher education programs evaluated the effects of a merged structure (combining the two programs) on the study of administration. Sixteen universities were visited and program heads were interviewed. Identified advantages of…

In the face of declining enrollments, many Iowa rural school districts have begun sharing superintendents. In 1988-89, 88 districts shared 44 superintendents; 42 of these participated in structured interviews for this study. All participants were male. Interviewees indicated that most school boards had undertaken the new arrangement because the…

The policy-making process of the State University System of Florida is described using David Easton's model of a political system as the conceptual framwork. Two models describing the policy-making process were developed from personal interviews with the primary participants in the governance structure and from three case studies of policy…

This study explored the perceptions of students in a cohort based doctoral program in educational leadership at Arkansas State University concerning the impact of the cohort structure on their learning. The cohort groups were structured to move through the coursework as a cohesive group. The data derived from four cohorts--two who had completed…

The principalship was studied from the perspective of newly appointed principals in the highly bureaucratized urban context of New York City. Their attitudes, goals, and role and leadership behaviors and the effects of the school-system context were studied. Interviews were conducted with 12 principals from one Pre-K-1, seven elementary and three…

This study looked at the occupational positions that constitute educational administration and analyzed how they are characterized and structured. Data were collected between September, 1974, and April, 1979, principally from southern California school districts. The method of data collection was ethnographic observation in schools and interviews…