Purpose: This study aims to analyze a school's crisis management and explore emerging aspects of its response to a school crisis. Traditional linear modes of analysis often fail to address complex crisis situations. The present study applied a dynamic crisis life cycle model that draws on chaos and complexity theory to a crisis management case,…

Purpose: At a time when school leadership takes on great import, we must ask how leadership can move beyond a focus on individual- and school-level changes to collective leadership that relies on the strength of relationships between schools and the communities in which they reside to foster and sustain change. Such leadership is termed…

Purpose: This article examines the history of three management concepts that originated in the business sector and progressed to the K-12 education sector. Framework: We propose a new conceptual model intended to help illuminate how ideas and strategies originally created for business leadership gain influence in the realm of K-12 school…

Purpose: Studies show that there are far greater numbers of individuals certified to be educational administrators than of positions requiring such certification. Yet concerns regarding shortages abound, in part because of widespread perceptions of a lack of interest by teachers and administrative certificate holders in administrative work. This…

Purpose: The past decade has seen considerable debate about how to best evaluate the efficacy of educational improvement initiatives, and members of the educational leadership research community have entered the debate with great energy. Throughout this debate, the use of randomized experiments has been a particularly contentious subject. This…

Purpose: This article proposes a model that provides one means of making instructional leadership the central focus of leadership preparation. It draws from conceptualizations of teaching and learning as well as organizational and leadership theory to advocate for greater coherence in education leadership programs. Conceptual Argument: We begin…

Purpose: The public expects school leaders to be moral exemplars, yet prior research indicates that teachers and, more recently, school principals may score lower than other career groups on a widely used measure of moral reasoning, the Defining Issues Test. Moreover, little empirical research has been conducted on educators during leadership…

Purpose: District effectiveness research (DER) is an emerging field concerned with identifying the organizational structures, administration, and leadership practices at the school district level that help districts find success with all of their students across the schools within the system. This work has mirrored much of the early school…

The increasing emergence of participation in decision making (PDM) in schools reflects the widely shared belief that flatter management and decentralized authority structures carry the potential for promoting school effectiveness. However, the literature indicates a discrepancy between the intuitive appeal of PDM and empirical evidence in respect…

Purpose: The objective of this article is to provide an analysis of articles in "Education Administration Quarterly (EAQ)" over the 25-year period 1979-2003. Approach: The approach is document analysis. Findings: Information is presented on four key themes: (a) types of articles published; (b) methodologies employed; (c) topic areas emphasized;…

Responds to an earlier comment by R. Jean Hills regarding the correct use of Parsonian concepts. Notes the difficulty of presenting Parsons' theory and quotes several sources supporting his interpretation of the functions of a system's managerial level. (RW)

The administrative process research of four prominent sets of researchers of the 1950's is examined in light of the mode of scientific inquiry that prevailed. Analysis of four currently prominent sets of researchers in terms of present multiple ideologies reveals that researchers still work within a logical positivist framework. (MJL)

Summarizes three approaches to work motivation and six current or emerging motivational theories, involving need hierarchies, work satisfaction and dissatisfaction, expectancy, behaviorism, goals, and job characteristics. Discusses research based on each theory, critiques of the models, and implications for research on educational administrator…

Discusses current controversies on the nature of theory and research in educational administration and how these relate to similar debates within the philosophy and sociology of science. Ideas from the new sociology of education allow an understanding of the importance of educational administration in the management of knowledge. (Author/IRT)

Describes how school administrators operating from an ethic of care conduct their practice and how this practice differs from that of administrators operating solely from traditional leadership models. Shows how the work of certain career assistant principals did not fit traditional administrative theories and how professional and organizational…