Research has shown principals have the second highest impact on student achievement, only surpassed by the level of instruction. This being the case, it is critical to have the most effective leaders serving in the principal role who are committed to continuing to grow and evolve to meet the needs of their students. This case study was designed to…

Through this study, we examined a university-district sponsored leadership academy to explore the perceptions of assistant principals, who participated in a yearlong professional development and coaching program, on how the program supported them in improving their leadership capacity and advancing their career. Using a single qualitative case…

This qualitative case study explores the impact of job-embedded principal preparation residency programs through the lens of a school district's administrator. The school-university partnership provided an innovative way to prepare aspiring school leaders. The job-embedded structure provided an authentic, contextual base experience where aspiring…

Though scholars agree that professional development (PD) is a key mechanism for implementing education policies that call for teacher change, and that PD generally needs to be content-focused, active, collaborative, coherent, and sustained, the application of this framework has yielded mixed results. In this qualitative study, we employed…

This study investigated the direct impact of team cohesiveness and student-athletes' perceptions of coaching behavior/leadership functions on the success of NCAA Division I Women's basketball, based on the teams' win/loss records. The research collection was quantitative in nature. Statistical design and analysis provided justification for the use…

In Part III of the feature, physical educators and adapted physical educators offer current best practices as models of implementation for readers. Contributions included are: (1) Answer to the Dear Colleague Letter from the Anchorage School District's Adapted Sport Program (David Poulin); (2) Georgia's Adapted Physical Educators Response to the…

Recently developed Professional Development School standards underscore the importance of professional learning community, inquiry, shared decision-making and a focus on student learning. These standards closely mirror the goals of "Critical Friends Groups," a significant movement in education to improve student achievement through…