Purpose: Teachers unions in the United States are increasingly taking up issues of equity and justice. While there is a growing and robust body of scholarship on leading for equity, unions are rarely included as sources of education leadership. This creates an opportunity to not only consider unions in these equity efforts, but also re-shape our…

Background and Purpose: District school improvement efforts have increasingly focused on improving the quality of support principals receive from the central office. This study uses the theoretical lens of recoupling to examines efforts by one urban district in the midst of change to revise the role of principal supervisors. Analysis focuses on…

Although cross-national evidence suggests that decentralization of educational governance is positively related to student achievement, related research often fails to recognize the separate roles and influences of governments, school boards, principals, and teachers. We use data from the 2015 Programme for International Student Assessment to…

Purpose: This study builds on research scrutinizing school autonomy in policy and school governance by shifting the focus from a formal structural view of autonomy to examining how principals negotiate autonomy in their daily work. Drawing on multiple dimensions of autonomy and street-level bureaucracy, this study examined how principals, as both…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine teachers and school leaders' experiences using data in the state of Arkansas. Research Design: Initially, an exploratory pilot study was conducted to examine educators' experiences using data within one Arkansas district. This involved focus groups with 24 participants from 10 schools. Data were…

Purpose: The current literature's call for a more ecological approach to violence theory, research, and practice stimulated the current study. This model postulates that teachers' willingness to engage in behaviors intended to tackle violence in school as part of their in-role duties (role breadth) will affect school violence. Specifically, the…

Purpose: This From the Field article describes an emerging model of boundary spanning leadership in homeless education. Drawing from the pilot program that is being implemented in conjunction with the Homeless Children's Education Fund in Pittsburgh, the article identifies areas of promise and potential limits to university faculty involvement…

Purpose: Schools necessarily employ elements of a bureaucratic structure to organize the complex task of educating large and diverse groups of students--elements such as a hierarchy of authority, a division of labor, policies, rules, and regulations. Although such a structure is useful, there is a danger that school leaders will overemphasize…

Purpose: A factor largely overlooked amid the press for greater security in schools is the extent to which law enforcement participates in search and seizure and the implications such actions carry for student civil liberties. As case law suggests, police engaged in school searches may be held to the probable cause standard or the more flexible…

Background: Throughout the Western world, the fallout from the standards/standardization agenda has resulted in potential leaders questioning educational leadership as a career path. Moreover, the aging of the baby boom generation has created a shortage of qualified principals in many educational jurisdictions. Policy makers have responded to…

Case study of two urban high schools explores how, paradoxically, professional autonomy and attention to individual needs are necessary and salient conditions of strong professional communities. Focuses on the important role that principals play in balancing individual and organizational needs and fostering professional community. Reinterprets…

Explores whether and how teachers' communication behavior varies within and between schools, based on a sample of eight Dutch primary schools. Also examines how teachers' network participation is related to their perception of different types of tasks. Teacher isolation at least partly results from individual teachers' behavior. (42 references)…

Argues that, to maintain professional identity, staff members resist challenges to the "sacred" norms of their school's culture and subsequently create a culture of opposition if the threat continues. Data from three case studies of high schools support the argument and provide examples of what is meant by sacred norms. (CJH)

Explores the resilient normative order in schools and reformers' attempts to alter an order that centers on teachers' interactions with students. For teachers, legitimate authority consented to by students is essential. By treating teachers as passive receivers of advice, reforms undermine teachers' authority and create teacher resistance and…

Explores teacher-centered instruction in higher and precollegiate education, a common practice despite professors' freedom from the precollegiate classroom's structural limits. Considers organizational incentives, the cultural traditions of schooling, and socialization as explanations. Suggests that reformers understand why teacher-centeredness…