With the exception of teachers, most educators are convinced that principals can have a powerful leadership role in curriculum and instruction. Achieving lasting educational change requires specific strategies, such as adaptive problem solving, school-level focus, compatibility, administrative leadership, teacher involvement, top-down or bottom-up…

Overviews the 20-year history of the English Composition Board at the University of Michigan, an independent unit directed by a policy board until it was effectively ended by being placed under the English Department in 1997. Describes its early cooperative and later collaborative approach to management style. Argues efforts to institutionalize…

Discusses findings from interviews with 19 committed principals and places them within the context of new research on principals as lifelong learners who publicly model intellectual curiosity. Conditions for continuous learning exemplified by these principals comprise three categories: professional identity, influence of the liberal arts, and…

A study was conducted to explore the relationship between the interpersonal behavior of community college department chairs and the assessment of their leadership effectiveness by department faculty. The study population consisted of 30 humanities and social science chairs at 15 Mississippi community colleges, as well as 171 faculty members at the…

This paper focuses on the role of the school leader as motivator. In particular, attention is given to what those in school leadership roles can do to enhance the personal investment of students in learning. A conceptual model is outlined which suggests that school leaders affect not only the degree, but also the quality of student motivation by…

Representatives from seven education policy centers housed in universities teamed up with policy analysts from each of their respective state governments to study how state policy influences who becomes a principal and how these leaders perform. This report represents a critical summary of case studies conducted in seven states: California,…

Following a thorough review of current studies and literature on women in leadership, this document examines the results of a study conducted to determine the significance of female gender in educational leadership, and how attitudes, values, perceptions, and life experiences of women differ from those of men and are reflected in female leadership…

The Indicators of Quality Schools is a series of checklists of schoolwide practices or conditions found in schools known to have an effective instructional program. The instrument is designed to help schools identify areas of strength and areas where improvement is needed. The instrument consists of three parts: (1) the environment for learning,…

The comparison of principals' self-perceptions of social control communication with teacher perceptions, and the characterization of principals' communication patterns are the goals of this paper. Structural functionalist and symbolic interactionist theories are integrated with the Leader As Social Control (LASC) model to develop an instrument to…

Identification of principals' instructional leadership behaviors and the time they spend involved in the process of school improvement is the purpose of this study. A second focus is on the ways in which principals build school cultures. The Principals Instructional Management Rating Scale (PIMRS) (Hallinger 1983), the National Task-Time Survey…

Two Connecticut programs designed to support beginning teachers, the Beginning Educator Support and Training Program (BEST) and the Cooperating Teacher Program (CT), are grounded in the collaborative leadership concept. A working partnership between principals and mentor teachers shares responsibility with a state assessment team to support and…

Which practices set award-winning principals apart from their equally hard-working peers? Using survey results and contributions from 35 award-winning elementary school principals nationwide, this essential text examines over 100 field-based practices recognized as the best for the elementary school principalship. Organized around seven themes…

This report describes a program for administrator and lead teacher professional development based on revised standards of the National Staff Development Council. The program acted as a catalyst for improving professional development practices at school sites. The report also presents a preliminary evaluation of the process, which involved…

This book identifies 26 essential traits and behaviors of effective principals to show how they achieve success as instructional leaders. The contents and conclusions are based on 81 key research articles from the last 20 years. The book also reviews differences in instructional leadership between elementary and secondary principals; male and…

This paper describes the vital role that human-resources management plays as a contributing factor to excellent schools and student learning. Nationwide, it is the norm for human-resources practices to be mismanaged in ways that create inequities in the quality of teaching and school leadership. Examples include hiring constrained by limits…