Effective schools research gave birth to a new role for principals: instructional leader. Recent studies have suggested the relationship between strong school instructional leadership and higher student achievement. Skeptics question whether the principal's job is realistic and reasonable, with its emphasis on instructional leadership, multiple…

After 2 years of progress, the literacy initiative at Donaldson Elementary faces challenges because of a disagreement between Principal Joanna Jackson and Literacy Coordinator Loretta Sullivan over whether Sullivan's role should include evaluative classroom observations and whether teachers should be mandated to receive coaching. The case is…

The use of paraprofessionals on the teaching team has helped teachers maximize use of their professional and technical skills, but has also made it easier for several problems to develop. Teachers cite problems in authority and role confusion, personality conflicts, misalignment of instructional priorities, and task inefficiency. These problems…

A nationwide assessment of perceived needs for improvement in smaller schools provided some serendipitous insight into reasons for less than ideal relationships between teachers and administrators. Although rankings within groups varied somewhat, there were seven areas of need recognized by both teachers and administrators. Collaboration and…

School change is inevitable. As a human institution, schools are in a constant state of transformation, and individual teachers adapt or provide the impetus for that transformation all the time. The question, then, is not whether there will be change, but what change there will be--a question complicated by the fact that change means different…

A survey of 248 University of Kentucky medical school faculty investigated attitudes toward American Medical Association policy concerning gifts from the pharmaceutical industry. Faculty generally agreed with the guidelines but felt gifts did not influence prescribing behaviors. PhD faculty favored more prescriptive policy than did MD faculty.…

This manual provides a framework for formulating a game plan for retention of students in vocational training. The information is based on possible conflicts the students may encounter that would hinder the completion of vocational programs. The conflicts are categorized into personal conflicts, school-related conflicts, and other situations.…

This paper examines the degree to which women faculty and administrators are able to engage in connected knowing and interdependent definitions of self and reality within an institutional environment that values and rewards individualism, separateness, competition, and objectivity. The paper notes that connected knowing is essentially the process…

Dynamics in the education policy arena suggest that, despite two generations of researchers extolling democratic leadership styles and consensus building over autocratic techniques, wide participation in policymaking and the broadest possible consensus are not always productive: American society has not yet agreed on what schools should…

Reports on a study of Muslim children in physical education classes in a British secondary school. Finds areas of cultural conflict, such as physical education uniforms and regulations about showering after class. Calls for better preservice and inservice teacher education in a wider educational and societal context. (CFR)