Traditional leadership development programs for higher education staff are challenged to blend theory with a real-world context that is meaningful to participants' work. Standard student leadership curriculum is strong on theory, but often thin on providing this real-world context. Both HR training departments and academic units charged with…

Professional development opportunities are common for teachers and principals who operate on the front lines of education. But they are rarer for public education's top leaders--state chiefs, superintendents, board members and others--who are further from classrooms but whose policies and practices nonetheless profoundly affect student…

The recruitment and retention of senior school leaders is high on the UK Government's agenda with much attention currently being given to succession planning. Future Leaders and other fast track leadership development programmes are, in part, a response to this "crisis" brought about by demographic change--many headteachers are due to…

This account describes action learning in a small to medium-size enterprise (SME) that operates as a local power utility on an established market that is currently going through a process of radical transformation. The task of the action learning set was to improve the flow of information to employees about the evolving framework in which the…

There has been a significant increase in interest in the development of educational leadership in recent years, not least in the school sector. However, little research exists on how leaders in higher education have learnt to lead, particularly those in "middle-leadership" positions such as heads of faculties and departments. This study…

Doctoral education in the UK embraces both independent self-directed study and collective shared learning. The extent to which individual doctoral students remain isolated, or become integrated into a network of doctoral students, is a function of the attributes of the individual and the nature of the doctorate and its mode of delivery. Using the…

Why would anyone want to become a superintendent? Those who seek the job do so for the same reason they became educators in the first place--they care about kids and they want to help students achieve. Beyond that, the profession attracts individuals who see themselves, or are seen by others, as leaders. A similar rationale applies to why…

We explain in this article the need for board training in rural America irrespective of industry or government sector. We discuss how an assessment of training needs has led to the launch of a new project called the National Board Basics Curriculum (NBBC) project. In this project, we have identified four key core competencies that every board…

In June 2009, The New Teacher Project's study, "The Widget Effect: Our National Failure to Acknowledge and Act on Differences in Teacher Effectiveness", drew national attention to the issue of ineffective teacher evaluation systems. The study documents how teacher evaluation systems ignore variations in performance, giving virtually all…

Over the next five years, schools will be expected to replace more than 60% of key leadership in independent schools. This is just one example of the growing evidence of shortages of persons filling key leadership positions. Based on this increasing concern, there is a need to develop a strategy to ensure the efficacy of prospective heads and…

Experts and leaders within most fields possess knowledge that is largely tacit and unconscious in nature. The leaders of most organizations do not "know what they know" and cannot share their knowledge with others. The loss of this essential knowledge is of major concern to organizations. This study tested an innovative method of tacit…

Purpose: The paper aims to show how professional identity is constructed at a very early stage of initial management education. In so doing, it questions the notion of "le metier" in management. Design/methodology/approach: The paper is based on a study of the experiences of six French management apprentices (or apprentis) who…

In this article, the author discusses the importance of child care directors. Paula Jorde Bloom (1992) refers to the director as the "gatekeeper to quality" and Gwen Morgan (2000) writes of the director as the "key to quality." The child care director is responsible for every aspect of the early care and education program. Emerging from the…

A primary aim of the Chicago School Readiness Project was to improve teachers' emotionally supportive classroom practices in Head Start-funded preschool settings. Using a clustered randomized controlled trial (RCT) design, the Chicago School Readiness Project randomly assigned a treatment versus control condition to 18 Head Start sites, which…

This paper investigates the influence of the English language on the work of management academics. They are seen as knowledge workers in the context of business and management, who have to be able to use the English language in such ways to pursue successfully and competently the main purpose of their work--the generation, dissemination and…