The authors describe how teams of faculty and district leadership development directors used an appreciative organizing in education (AOE) framework using appreciative inquiry (AI) scholarship to promote a more sustainable architecture for the preparation and development of leaders. The AOE framework is introduced and a description is provided of…

The Collaborative Project (CP) began as a pilot project in five North Carolina school districts in 2007 featuring a performance incentive initiative for teachers and administrators. The objective of this study was to document principals' perceptions of the performance incentive initiative to determine challenges encountered during implementation.…

Despite the successful implementation of the Response to Intervention (RtI) framework in many elementary schools, there is little evidence of successful implementation in high school settings. Several themes emerged from the interviews of nine secondary principals, including a lack of knowledge and training for successful implementation, the…

Although research has established links between the principal's instructional leadership and student achievement, there is considerable concern in the literature concerning the capacity of principal preparation programs to prepare instructional leaders. This study interviewed educational leadership faculty as well as expert principals and teacher…

The increasing number of special education-related lawsuits has become costly, time-consuming, and a strain on school-community relations--in short, an issue of growing concern to U. S. school systems. To identify factors associated with this type of litigation, this study analyzed data from one state's 10-year experience with due process special…

Traditionally schools in the past were mostly homogenous, but with demographic shifts, schools are becoming more ethnically diverse, disadvantaged, and multilingual. In contrast, the teaching population still reflects that outdated homogenous template: "predominantly white and female," middle-class, and unilingual. This exploratory study examined…

The transformation of a high school to a learning community is a slow and challenging process. This study tracked the efforts of teacher and administrative leaders from six high schools who worked to develop professional learning communities. Qualitative and quantitative analyses of interviews with school leaders revealed that the early days of…

Effective schools research gave birth to a new role for principals: instructional leader. Recent studies have suggested the relationship between strong school instructional leadership and higher student achievement. Skeptics question whether the principal's job is realistic and reasonable, with its emphasis on instructional leadership, multiple…

United States schools are not providing students with the mathematical background necessary to compete on an international level and become successful adults. Recently, educators and researchers have focused on learning what factors might attribute to this lack of mathematical knowledge. However, few studies have searched for answers from the…

If you've ever wondered what steps to take to institute individualized teaching-learning, here are the answers. The process is explored step-by-step in this conversational format. (Editor)

The techniques of program evaluation parallel the historian's methods, which usually consist of mining both qualitative and quantitative sources. Test scores, questionnaires, and unobtrusive measures provide good quantitative data, whereas interviews supply important qualitative information. Researcher involvement in the project being assessed can…

If you have considered the pro's and con's of an extended secondary school year, this article may pique your interest anew. Its question and answer format gets to the heart of the issues involved. (Editor)