For over 7 years, the Wilderness Education Association (WEA) and three universities have been using a systematic approach to leadership training in the outdoors: the experiential leadership education (ELE) method. The effectiveness of this approach was investigated by an aerospace expert interested in leadership training for isolated groups. A…

Since the 1980s, shared decision making (SDM) has become a significant part of school-reform efforts. Advocates say that SDM will improve student learning, create teacher satisfaction, and develop new forms of leadership. This digest presents an overview of research that investigated whether SDM delivers on these promises. Studies indicate that so…

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…

This paper presents a transformational philosophy of educational leadership, with a focus on the practice of supervision. The paper defines and outlines the purposes of both leadership and supervision. It discusses multilevel social forces that affect leadership for K-8 schools and examines four dimensions of leadership--knowing oneself, the…

Graduate programs in educational administration often do not accurately portray the realities of the job. This paper describes an approach by which administrators and those in training interviewed experienced educational administrators and then used the interview transcripts to write a story of leadership. Ten administrators were interviewed. The…

Principals encourage student academic gain by the ways in which they govern the school, build strong collaborative relationships, and organize and allocate professional work time. Because these activities are important predictors of academic achievement, along with quality teacher activities, further information is also provided about how…

Some evidence from the school-restructuring literature indicates that traditional school leadership behaviors and school-based management (SBM) are incongruent. Collaborative relationships between teachers and school leaders are problematic when teachers' duties and performance appraisals are hierarchically decided by school leaders. This paper…

Given the advent of new forms of schooling in American education, specifically, integrated social-service schools (ISS), a radical rethinking of traditional leadership models is needed. This paper suggests a new role for K-12 public school leaders--that of the school president. Data were derived from a review of the job descriptions of the…

This paper examines the changing role of school leaders, in light of the current trend toward participative decision making. Executive Order 12871 mandates the formation of a partnership between unions and management, which will result in teachers playing an active role in decision making. Leaders, particularly leaders of Department of Defense…

This paper presents findings of a study that examined faculty/staff perceptions of their principals' leadership styles, with a focus on their use of shared-governance approach. Data were gathered through a survey of 32 faculty and 20 staff members in four county schools in Tennessee and North Carolina. A majority of the sample reported that their…

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…

This paper presents findings from one in a series of four case studies that examined leadership in schools committed to reform. Methodology included onsite observation, interviews with stakeholders, and informal discussions. Hollibrook Elementary School, which serves a primarily minority population in Spring Branch, Texas, ascended from a low…

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 examined higher education, women's education, and feminist leadership literature to determine the definitions of power they suggest and the implications of such definitions as they apply to leadership. A textual discourse analysis of five works was conducted; these included works by Clark Kerr, Cryss Brunner, Leslie Bloom and Petra…