Discusses recent trends in professional education that incorporate administrator mentoring. Explores the use of mentoring at the preservice preparation level by the Danforth Principals' Program and its use in the process of professional induction by the Ohio LEAD Center. Discusses selection and training of mentors. Explores characteristics of…

Results are reported from a study which sought to identify factors that faculty (particularly research-oriented faculty) use in evaluating a dean of an education unit. The study specifically examined whether the ability to foster collaboration is an attribute that faculty use in their assessments of a dean. (IAH)

Discusses the difficulties and usefulness of perceiving the interface between communication and instruction. Details the interface, and outlines three overall advantages for communication department chairs who view instructional situations as communication situations: improved instructional environment; more effective campus rhetoric; and enhanced…

Examines the perceptions of 3,067 teachers of the effectiveness of successors to 73 prior principals. Effective successors inspired teacher confidence early. Results further indicate that teachers assess succession in terms of its effect on organizational factors that allow teachers to maintain predictability and control over their work. (SLD)

Today's administrator must realize that being a leader, not a manager, is the norm for successful organizations. Leadership at all organizational levels is imperative to achieving organizational objectives. Managers exercise leadership by establishing a vision, accepting responsibility, taking initiative, and empowering others. Empowerment is the…

Uses two theoretical frameworks to examine principal effectiveness: a taxonomy of necessary people-management skills and the professional socialization process. Surveys 450 principals and 208 superintendents in California who had been appointed to their present position in 1989 or later. Results show strong agreement regarding critical skills for…

Proposes the development and use of school leadership profiles to support administrators' cognitive-apprenticeship experiences in both formal and informal leadership development applications. Links the cognitive-apprenticeship theoretical process to outcomes in three role-profiling action research projects conducted in Canada and Western…

Pete Gameros's recent study examined effective principals' roles and attitudes toward providing services to students with disabilities. As inclusive principals, study participants accepted the ownership of all students, supported inclusive placement decisions, promoted a policy specifying all school personnel's responsibility for disabled…

The growing importance of shared decision making and decentralization is causing a reevaluation of skills required for the principalship. This study examined teacher and principal perceptions of skills required for principal effectiveness, using Katz's widely used taxonomy that classifies managerial skills as technical, human, and conceptual. Both…

Focuses on a cognitively based reflection process (in a graduate educational leadership program) for developing administrators' expertise in problem solving, decision making, and complex thinking. Quantitative and qualitative analysis of student journal entries around critical incidents during the year-long set of experiences revealed that changes…

The principal's role must change to meet the challenges of the 21st century. Administrative thinking must shift from efficiency to effectiveness. This article presents an Iceberg Model to enable the administrator to become an instructional leader by building a knowledge base, developing a philosophy and vision, and modifying observable behavior.…

During 1988 and 1989, a university education lecturer in New Zealand organized and directed a 2-year professional development program (the School Leaders Project) for 67 secondary school principals and assistants. Although the program's organization, content, and delivery initially facilitated participants' professional development, the…

Discrepancies between what a school board wants and what a superintendent thinks it wants contribute to turmoil in many school districts. In a study of evaluation procedures in 36 Wisconsin school districts, superintendents ranked determining their salary as the third most important purpose of the evaluation whereas the board presidents ranked it…

Describes how technical communicators can learn to write capital equipment requests that specify the needed new equipment, show the benefits to the company from buying it, and recommend the way to account for it. Shows that to do so, they must learn some business basics and make friends outside their own departments. (SR)

Explores several dilemmas facing those interested in developing processes for principal evaluation and, drawing from program evaluation practices, suggests a consumer-oriented, outcomes-based approach for evaluating principals. The article concludes with a set of criteria for assessing any principal evaluation program. (GLR)