Purpose: This paper aims to describe the levels and type of contingency faced by school principals in Chile and the way certain aspects of the Chilean school system result in a greater or lesser presence of these contingencies. Design/methodology/approach: The results reported here are based on the application of a structured questionnaire to 381…

The purpose of this research was to investigate a formal principal mentoring program and report on perceived learning benefits and the well-being of the participants. The study highlights aspects of the mentoring relationship evidenced in the explicit and intentional development of school leaders. The empirical investigation used…

The aim of this research is to reveal the "safe school" perceptions of secondary class presidents. The sample of the study, which is a qualitative research and figured as "phenomenology design", is constituted by eight class president students in vocational and technical secondary schools. The data were collected with a…

The objective of the study is to analyze the activities of the North Caucasian deputies of the third-convocation State Duma of the Russian Empire in addressing issues of education and national culture. The people's deputies were focusing on the most relevant and vital questions of the Russian reality: democratization of political life, the problem…

"Creating a Successful Leadership Style" gives practical applications supported by real experiences. It presents the actual situations a principal or assistant principal faces on a day-to-day basis and provides strategies to address them. These strategies derive from a leadership style that is people oriented and designed to elicit positive…

Administrators who "lionize" leadership miss important behind-the-scenes aspects of daily management. They depict the grand design without niggling problems and assume that leadership belongs exclusiveley to the heroic boss. Leaders often achieve best results by being skilled listeners, acting like followers, and depending on followers…

Chapter 11 in a volume on school leadership, this chapter draws from the work of many authorities to define and classify conflict and present techniques for its management in schools. Emphasizing that conflict can have positive or creative as well as negative or destructive results, the author notes that all conflict need not be resolved. He…

As middle managers in the educational enterprise, principals are pressured by groups with goals at odds with their own. After attempting to resolve three thorny ethical dilemmas, one female principal realized that conflicts are more often caused by superiors and government agencies than by students, parents, and teachers. The question arises: is…

While many aspects of school design have changed over the years, unfortunately the process to find the best architect is the same in many ways today as it was 20 years ago. Design teams announce how many schools they have designed, show lots of pretty photographs and list what each team member will do on the project. Education is a business and…

There is a lack of empirical evidence describing the actual problems encountered by school leaders and the knowledge that they use to find solutions to those problems. This paper presents findings of a study that explored the problems faced by members of a graduate educational-administration class. The participants, 22 practicing public school…

This study assesses the ability of schema theory to address ill-structured problems without becoming unwieldy. Prior to addressing the study proper, the paper reviews the literature on memory for complex phenomena, ill-structured problems, expert-novice differences, administration as problem solving, and assessment of complex learning outcomes.…

This volume presents several distinctive but related empirical studies and opinion pieces about chief education officers (CEOs). The collection begins with (1) "Introduction: A Framework for Understanding School System Administration" (Kenneth Leithwood and Donald Musella). Section A, "Chief Education Officers' Practices and…

An index to the problems and solutions discussed in the the first 9 volumes of the 10-volume series, Successful Schools: Guidebooks to Effective Educational Leadership, is provided in this handbook. This "troubleshooting guide" lists topics in alphabetical order, describes the issue, and lists the corresponding volume and page number. (LMI)

This paper describes the Detroit Education Task Force and its efforts to develop a problem-solving agenda for the Detroit public schools. The paper describes the background and history of the task force and analyzes its relationship with the Detroit Central Board of Education and with administrators of the Detroit school system. The educational…

Instructional leadership, the essential component of an effective school, does not require inborn talents, but skills that can be learned and applied. A systematically designed and implemented training program positively affects practicing principals regarding the use of time, personnel, and resources in the school. The model training program…