Examines the relationship between management and leadership for school administrators in the United States and in Singapore. In both places, administrators were asked to write accounts of challenging leadership incidents. Analyses of cognitive patterns indicate that national boundaries make a difference, and the patterns for managerial and…

Designed to explain how principals can shape school culture, this book first discusses current pressures for school reform and the different perspectives on school operations reflected in these reforms. Competing reform strategies are described, specifically, the human resources approach and the structural, political, free market, and school…

This book illustrates how principals can simultaneously act as efficient managers and effective leaders. Through a mixture of "knowing about" and "knowing how," the book offers new strategies to help principals integrate the technical management role with the symbolic leadership role. Chapter 1 illustrates the tension between the two approaches in…

The National Center for Educational Leadership, a consortium of Harvard, Vanderbilt, and Chicago universities, was federally funded to develop and disseminate knowledge to improve educational leadership quality. This article summarizes the panel's deliberations, highlighting three issues: leadership effectiveness, administrator preparation, and…

This guidebook presents four decision frames--political, human resource, structural, and symbolic--that can be used by administrators to understand troublesome situations, anticipate trouble before it arises, and develop more comprehensive and effective strategies for leadership. The book is presented in the form of an ongoing dialogue between a…

This document examines the orientations or "frames" that leaders use to guide their understanding of their work. Four distinct frames that characterize ways leaders think about and respond to everyday issues and problems are examined: (1) the structural frame; (2) the human resource frame; (3) the political frame; and (4) the symbolic…

Reforms that strive for educational excellence will fail unless they are meaningfully linked to schools' unique cultures. Chapter 1, "Introduction: The Case for School Culture," discusses the impact of culture on achievement, reform, and learning. Chapter 2, "Schools as Tribes," examines a school that transformed itself through…