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: 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…

Background: Institutional theorists suggest environmental stakeholders in the "organizational field" have a symbiotic relationship with governing agencies, leading to institutional isomorphism. Hence state policy makers copy the work of their colleagues across states to create a sense of legitimacy, certainty, and professionalization…

Purpose: Although conflict has traditionally been considered destructive, recent studies have indicated that conflict management can contribute to effective teamwork. The present study explores conflict management as a team phenomenon in schools. The author examined how the contextual variables (task interdependence, goal interdependence) are…

Study Purpose: This article examines the influence of "Educational Administration Quarterly (EAQ)" on the scholarly literature in education during the 25-year period 1979 to 2003. This article continues part of the first critique of EAQ conducted by Roald Campbell in 1979. Study Methods: Two citation measures are used in this study to assess EAQ…

Purpose: Current demands for school leaders as well as reported administrator shortages have resulted in the implementation of district-based aspiring leaders programs to promote teacher leaders into administration. Because educational administration has, traditionally, been informed by androcentric perspectives, this study was designed to…

Asks why critical approaches to educational administration have rarely moved beyond critique to transformative process. This failure may stem from critical research's incompatibility with motivating and sustaining a complex change process. This article reviews two phases of critical research in education, identifies features enhancing research…