In an effort to determine the necessary components of an effective higher education administration program, an exploratory study was conducted of practicing senior-level academic administrators regarding their perceptions of the knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary for effective community college academic administration. An open-ended survey…

Team building and delegation are two of the most important tools available to division chairs or academic officers for increasing productivity and allowing employees to grow, but they are both often misunderstood, misused, or unused. Teams are small groups with the authority and technical, interpersonal, and managerial skills to carry out…

Leaders need to be forceful--to assert themselves and push others to action. They must also be enabling--to discover and bring out the capabilities of others. The problem is that many executives see forceful leadership and enabling leadership as mutually exclusive or strongly favor one approach over the other, thus lacking the versatility they…

In many schools, the assistant principal is poorly trained to assume administrative responsibilities. This paper presents an overview of research that has examined the assistant principal's role. It argues that assistant principals will be expected to take on the new roles of team management and public relations, necessitating their effective use…

"Vision" is one of the most frequently used buzzwords in the education literature of the 1990s. This digest presents an overview of visionary leadership, which many education experts consider to be a make-or-break task for the school leader. It discusses various definitions of vision, the significance of vision for organizations, the…

Findings of a study that determined the extent to which participants in the Nebraska NASSP Assessment Center Project followed up on the recommendations of assessor teams are presented in this paper. The study compared the developmental pursuits of volunteers with nonvolunteers (program participation was done at request of a school district…

Findings of a study that determined the benefits of mentoring as part of an administrator preparation program are discussed in this paper. In-depth interviews were conducted with nine practicing administrators, who worked directly with aspiring administrators who served as candidates in one cycle of the Danforth Foundation Program for the…

This study sought to understand the roles and characteristics of individuals identified as effective academic deans at public research universities. The study used an inductive grounded theory approach guided by a broad conceptual framework and was guided by the broad constructs of quality/culture, teamwork/governance, and analysis/knowledge. In…

Findings of a study that examined the relationship between variations in patterns of school leadership and group problem-solving process are presented in this paper. Interviews were conducted at the beginning and end of the school year with 12 principals in British Columbia who had implemented the Primary Program. The initiative was designed to…

This paper offers suggestions to help principals create a support system within their schools as an effective management technique. Based on the experiences of a new principal at Prairie Rock Elementary School in College Station, Texas, guidelines are offered for dealing with the faculty and staff, the new principal's first focus. Key issues…

Communication is often identified as an essential aspect of leadership, an argument that is strongly supported by research on organizational change and leader effectiveness. This paper reviews that research and argues that this area of study should be formally addressed in teacher- and administrator-preparation programs. The paper also describes a…

Leadership may come from many different sources in a school. This paper examines the relative effects of leadership provided by principals, teachers, and those in other roles. A study based on surveys of 2,727 teachers and 9,025 students in 110 elementary and secondary schools (Ontario, Canada) analyzed the effects of "total leadership," including…

Findings of a study that investigated the effect of administrative stressors on administrators' coping responses and the consequences of those responses are presented in this paper. Based on the managerial stress cycle model (Gmelch 1982), the study uses the transactional perspective, which views stress as an individual's physiological or…

Findings of a study that examined the effectiveness of a collaborative administrative training program are presented in this paper. The Academy Program, cosponsored by Pepperdine University and the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), was approved in 1974 as a joint district-university program for the preparation of future administrators.…

To help principals improve as reading leaders, teachers should first provide them with feedback. Although informal comments are important to administrators, teachers' formal feedback in a survey or questionnaire helps to objectify the evaluation process and to provide principals with a more complete picture. Specifically, teachers can call to…