Despite the key role that principals play in leading schoolwide change, districts' efforts to support principals are often limited, particularly in rural settings. In this article, we report the preliminary findings of a cross-district mentoring program for nine midcareer rural school principals. The collaboratively developed human resource…

Because of increased emphasis on accountability, program evaluations today must go beyond measures of change in program participants to consider the effects, either direct or indirect, of staff development on students and their learning. A model is presented illustrating the relationship between staff development for teachers and student learning…

Describes a model for exploring the multidimensional relationship between staff development and improvements in student learning. The model is based on the premise that the quality of staff development is influenced by many factors, including content characteristics, process variables, and context characteristics. (SM)