In rural Oklahoma, the role of the superintendent is often vastly different than that of superintendents in large cities. The superintendent is the leader of the school district, which is typically the community's largest employer. There are a few examples of superintendents who embrace this sometimes overwhelming responsibility and who are often…

Discourse, especially dialogic communication between students in collaborative problem-solving groups, plays a central role in educational reforms informed by learning science. This study examined the quality of discourse in problem-based learning groups in a university course. The study found a low incidence of high quality dialogue (dialogic…

Many distance training case studies identify distance training leadership as bottom-up, whereas much of the literature suggests a need for strategic, top-down approaches. With change management as an overarching framework, approaches to sustaining distance training that originate at different levels of the organization are explored. Special…

This yearlong ethnographic study of principals' leadership in Papua New Guinea high schools describes influences of imposing a bureaucratic school organization on principals' decision making in a communal society. Communal values of kinship relationships, "wantok" system, and "big men" leadership challenged principals'…

Achieving lasting and deep-seated change in schools through the embedding of a new set of practices with associated values is a familiar goal. This paper draws upon interviews with school coordinators and head teachers participating in the Learning How to Learn Project to explore the nature of embedding and the related challenges for leadership.…

After 41 years of a varied and exciting career in Miami-Dade County (Florida) Public Schools, the author recently retired as a middle level principal. Although he also served as a teacher and a counselor, more than half of his career was spent as an administrator in more than a dozen schools. As he reflects on his role as a school leader and…

This book is designed to help administrators broaden their skills to create new and exciting learning organizations. Chapter 1 describes six visionary leaders who shared three attributes--the ability to communicate clearly, the capacity of caring for others, and a commitment to persistence. Chapter 2 presents an overview of futurism as a field of…

This paper presents findings of a case-study analysis of the first year of a superintendent, with a focus on the relationship between school-district context and individual characteristics. The case study was conducted as part of a larger, national study comprised of 13 case studies of the superintendency across the United States. The case study…

This paper presents a conceptual model to help school leaders manage change effectively. The model was developed from a literature review of theory development and model construction. Specifically, the paper identifies the major components that inhibit organizational change, and synthesizes the most salient features of these components through a…

This paper reviews a number of studies that have tested Fiedler's (1964) Contingency Model and Least Preferred Co-Worker Scale of leadership style and effectiveness, focusing on studies that have examined the characteristics and stability of this scale across age, ethnicity, and gender. The Contingency Model is based on three determinants of…

This manual, which is designed to assist potential users of the Leader Attributes Inventory (LAI) and individuals studying leadership and its measurement, presents the rationale and psychometric characteristics of the LAI and guidelines for using it. Described in chapter 1 are the context in which the LAI was developed and the conceptualization of…

This paper presents findings of a case study that explored the micropolitical strategies used by a principal to influence teachers in a school-based decision making context. The selected suburban school was located in the south-central area of Texas and had utilized school-based management for five months. The principal was recommended as…

Epistemic thought is a process that focuses on the origin of human knowledge. This paper describes inquiry-based leadership, a viewpoint that integrates epistemic thought with the realities of school administration. The paper examines the art of teacher inquiry and its link to Inquiry-Based Leadership (IBL), and presents a school-university…

The community college professoriate is characterized by a large reliance on part-time faculty, faculty unionization, a drive for educational technology, and the tendency to become part of a practitioner's culture and undervalue intellectual exchange. College administrators and governing boards, for their part, may see themselves as making…

This paper asserts that the demographic changes of the 21st century promise a different arena for the practice of democratic leadership in United States social and educational institutions. The challenge for democratic leadership is to establish a positive and lasting relationship among all peoples who make up their local cooperative. The paper…