Conflict is certain to show up in any school, so how do you as the leader know how to respond or when to intervene? Disagreements, friction, and even outright hostility are a common and unavoidable result of people working together, and not all conflict is necessarily bad; it can also provide an opportunity to learn and grow. Whether the situation…

Examining the disputes that arise between parents, teachers, and students is the goal of this study. The study, which was carried out at the primary school level, where parent-child interaction is high, employed the critical incident analysis method. The typical sampling method was used to select participants for the study, and school principals…

Conflict management is one of the most stressful and frustrating aspects of a school leader's job. An inability to overcome conflicting viewpoints, ever more palpable in today's polarized climate, stymies innumerable school reform efforts. Yet, the subject is rarely examined in graduate-level leadership preparation programs or in-service…

Principals are critical for disrupting systems that bar racially diverse students from learning opportunities and belonging in schools. Issues of inequity due to systemic racism have been ongoing and politically heightened in the United States as the nation navigates racial tensions within school systems. Research on antiracist school leadership…

Leaders have three classic responses to discord. Authors Robert Feirsen and Seth Weitzman call them the 3 "A's"--avoidance, attack, and addressing. They make the case that the third one--addressing conflict--is the healthiest way for leaders to solve problems and promote a positive school culture.

In societies emerging from conflict, education plays an important part in instituting peace and reconciliation, and school leaders are key to this. This paper examines the complexity of school leadership in Northern Ireland. Despite the peace agreement of 1998, Northern Ireland's communities are still deeply divided, and this is reflected in…

A principal's skills, knowledge, and experience are important when it comes to leading schools. But whether interacting with staff, students, or parents, principals also need empathy--a key social-emotional skill--to be effective and drive continuous improvement. In this book, veteran school leader Thomas R. Hoerr makes the case for why schools…

The basic aim of the research at hand was to investigate the effects of conflict management styles of school principals on teachers' job performance. To meet the major objective of the study, the targeted population was comprised of public sector secondary schools in the Punjab province. As the population was most scattered so the researchers used…

Drawing on data from a year-long multi-case ethnography of three secondary urban public schools implementing restorative practices, the current piece examines how principals negotiate restorative practices despite conflicting pressures to maintain order and compel obedience. I frame my inquiry through Sergiovanni's (2000) concept of…

A handbook that helps educational leaders hone the social and emotional skills essential to promoting positive school culture and navigating their complex jobs. In this profoundly useful work, Janet Patti and Robin Stern make the case for social-emotional learning (SEL) as part of a critical skill set for K-12 school leaders, and they offer…

This article presents some conflict-related issues that school leaders encounter in resolving disagreements and misunderstandings between parents of students with disabilities and school representatives. Two examples of special education service disagreements are employed to illustrate how a trained and impartial education liaison representative…

The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study was to examine how high school instructional educators (teachers, curriculum development leaders), support staff members (guidance counselors, coaches, social workers, deans), and two principals employed within a U.S. northeastern urban city charter high school network described how an effective…

A principal's conflict management strategies are indispensable in the attainment of the school's goals and objectives. Accordingly, this study was conducted to determine the conflict management styles used by principals in selected campuses of a private educational system which were assessed by 129 teacher-respondents using the adapted ROCI-II…

This article discusses a qualitative case study that investigated the micropolitical processes inside an Arab junior high school in Israel during the enactment of the New Horizon reform. Our analysis focuses on how the school's educational staff interprets and translates the reform into practice, how their professional identities have developed…

This qualitative case study assessed the need for a Catholic Education Center (CEC) for Catholic school principals within the United States. The research questions that were addressed were: 1) How have Catholic school principals experienced support around complex and controversial issues when conflicting viewpoints exist between school and Church…