The contextual leadership theory provides a frame to investigate the leadership phenomenon in a childcare context. According to the contextual leadership theory, leadership is perceived of as a socially constructed, situational and interpretive phenomenon. The purpose of the study was to investigate leadership in a Finnish childcare context based…

In New Zealand, school principals (headteachers), sometimes with a sub-committee of the school board of trustees, interview and hire their own teachers. This research examined whether school principals exhibit different styles in recruiting beginning teachers. A small group of principals was interviewed and items reflecting their views were then…

In management theory, attention to the emotions is increasing, mainly for economic reasons. Within the management of education, so-called transformational leadership is becoming the new orthodoxy, and a central aspect of it is emotional intelligence. This can be interpreted sociologically, from both Durkheimian and Weberian perspectives. It is…

An essential task of school leadership is helping bring students and faculty into the state that will facilitate their working at their best. Positive emotional states help a brain learn efficiently, whereas excess stress and negative emotions shrink the brain's capacity to learn. Goleman describes new findings in neuroscience that reveal how…

This author was once one of those nontraditional candidates who elected to leave a central office post in a metropolitan public school system, with ninety schools and four thousand five hundred teachers serving seventy-five thousand students, to head a six hundred private K-12 boarding/day school in rural Hawaii. While that had been a fulfilling…

This article addresses the philosophical questions of what it means to be a leader and how you perceive yourself as a leader. The author argues that leadership can be viewed from three perspectives: as the exercise of influence, as an expression of your values, and as a statement of your hopes and dreams. Effective leadership embraces a way of…

How school board presidents view the communication behaviors of their superintendents was addressed in a doctoral dissertation by H. Steve Sprunger at Purdue University. His study examined the communication behaviors and perceived leadership strength of superintendents as perceived by board presidents. This study was conducted by sending out the…

Gaining expertise in leadership requires time, commitment, an adequate knowledge base, and a working plan for learning and growth. Without a plan for learning, only tacit or "how-to" expertise is developed. Leaders often know how to solve the problems facing them, but they fail to analyze and act on the underlying causes. This results in…

In this article the author examines the historical significance of the cultural aspect of race on African American females' leadership values and styles that encourage caring in schools. The author focuses her study by asking: What aspects of their (African American female leaders) cultural backgrounds as Africans and as African Americans…

This article examines how high school administrators influence teacher leadership in both positive and negative ways, particularly in an educational reform environment. It specifically looks at how they encourage, discourage, and motivate involvement in teacher leadership activities. Data from two studies were collected from teacher leaders…

Principals in today's schools face a wide range of requests and demands from a variety of sources that are often conflicting. There are government mandates, rules and regulations such as No Child Left Behind (NCLB), and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). There are state rules and regulations for program review, curriculum…

Purpose-driven leadership is a constructive leadership model that challenges an organization to: define its purpose, maintain integrity, encourage character, prevent burnout and sustain vitality. The model incorporates "best practice language" and the tools needed to foster a meaningful discourse. As school leaders strive to define, defend, and…

Victor Vroom provides a revealing and insightful account of a lifetime search for integrating his dual identities as researcher and teacher. He takes us through his early transitions from teaching in the psychology department at the University of Pennsylvania through his ten-year career at Carnegie to his current role at Yale School of Management.…

Virtual teams are an important work structure in global software development. The distributed team structure enables access to a diverse set of expertise which is often not available in one location, to a cheaper labor force, and to a potentially accelerated development process that uses a twenty-four hour work structure. Many software teams…

In this article, Fr. Carl Markelz and Harold Maldonado, two veteran inner-city principals, share how they have learned to use their time more efficiently. Fr. Markelz is the principal of Mount Carmel High School, a 900-student, all-male, parochial school in an area of Chicago, Illinois, that is experiencing regentrification. Maldonado is the…