This study explores the potential of virtual communities of practice (vCoPs) in fostering leadership growth that aligns with the diverse needs and challenges faced by school principals. The study employs a qualitative research design, and conducts semi-structured interviews with 16 school principals from K-12 schools belonging to the Gulf…

In a previous book entitled "Zapp! The Lightening of Empowerment", a new system for motivating employees and improving productivity in a corporate setting was presented. This book adapts that empowerment guide to the classroom with workable, hands-on suggestions to help educators motivate their students and themselves. Empowerment in…

The School Effectiveness Training Program (SET) and the Secondary School Development Program (SSDP) were school-improvement programs developed by the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA), a state teachers' organization, and Research for Better Schools (RBS), a regional educational laboratory. Coordinating councils played pivotal roles in both…

This book provides useful guidelines for implementing collaborative decision making in the public educational system. The prologue presents the historical background of educational reform in the United States and offers a rationale for radical school reform at the individual school level. The nine chapters that follow are divided into three parts.…

A staff development process that uses group-building activities to foster staff collegiality is described in this paper. As schools become involved in restructuring, cooperation and positive working relationships become more crucial for effective school teams involved in participative decision making. Five characteristics of group-building…

Site-based management is a concept whose time has come. This book was designed to introduce the concept of teaming, elaborate the decision-making process, and describe the skills and processes needed for a variety of decision-making situations. Chapter 1 introduces the concept of teaming and discusses the decision-making process in depth. Chapters…

Ways to apply the concepts and processes of Total Quality Management (TQM) to education are discussed in this document. Following the introduction and the preface, chapter 1 provides a historical overview and describes the four cornerstones of TQM--an understanding of systems, psychology, knowledge, and statistics. Chapter 2 describes some of the…

A democracy must tolerate many points of view without becoming divided. Therefore, public educators and the communities they serve are challenged to help students understand political and religious issues without proselytizing. This handbook provides guidelines for beginning the journey toward common ground, for moving from a climate of antagonism…

Findings of a study that examined teachers' perceptions of and experiences in shared-governance schools are presented in this paper. Data were collected from interviews with over 21 teachers and students in 4 schools that are members of the Georgia-based League of Professional Schools, the impetus of which was the Program for School Improvement,…

This paper presents findings of a study that examined how teachers restructuring schools came to understand the meaning of the term "unity of purpose." Fourteen Louisiana schools, comprised primarily of high-risk student populations, implemented the accelerated-schools model of restructuring. The accelerated school model is based on…