Developing and pursuing a "vision" for school success is a crucial part of effective educational leadership. This document explores theoretical models of vision for school success and leadership forces in education; discusses principals as visionary leaders; offers practical advice on developing, implementing, and maintaining a vision for one's…

The role of principal as supervisor and evaluator of teachers is central to instructional leadership, and this means direct involvement through classroom observation and interaction with each teacher. Principals often neglect this role, with lack of time usually given as the reason. There are other reasons: Interacting with teachers about their…

School-reform efforts in recent years have stressed, and expanded, the leadership role of the principal. But in the view of many analysts, the task of transforming a school is too complex for one person to accomplish alone. Consequently, a new model of leadership is developing: distributed leadership. This Research Roundup summarizes five…

Factors that can powerfully affect an educator's ability to manage school change are culture, leadership, and readiness. Movement from bureaucracy to community, from isolation to collaboration, involves cultural changes. Managing the change process within a cultural context is influenced by the structural, human resources, political, and symbolic…

Now that there are enough school-restructuring experiments to evaluate, one can examine what has been learned about transforming the restructuring concept into reality. Although principals recognize that restructuring will reshape their leadership role, studies show these administrators are pivotal to school-improvement efforts. Fred Newmann…

Chief academic officers at 1,053 institutions of higher education across the United States were surveyed about the barriers to improving teaching and learning. Using factor analysis, responses were reduced to nine general problem areas. In order of importance from most important to least important, the problems identified were: financial support,…

To overcome teacher isolation and help make teaching a more attractive profession, educators might consider a peer support system based on the Stanford Collegial Evaluation Program. This paper describes the program's background, functioning, barriers to successful implementation, and how to neutralize them. The Stanford program uses a peer…

This pamphlet discusses group problem solving in schools. Its point of departure is that teachers go at problems from a number of different directions and that principals need to capitalize on those differences and bring a whole range of skills and perceptions to the problem-solving process. Rather than trying to get everyone to think alike,…

Collaboration as a strategy to improve the instructional effectiveness of a school's faculty is examined in this bulletin. The first of four chapters provides a brief discussion of teacher isolation and its consequences and the positive effects of collaboration on school renewal, teacher satisfaction, teacher learning, cooperation among students,…

Educational research suggests several ways that principals can affect teachers' curriculum choices. Although some researchers maintain that the use of extrinsic rewards (such as praise or allocation of resources) has some effect on teachers, others have found that teachers are much more apt to be influenced by intrinsic rewards such as student…

This document consists of the four 2001 issues of a quarterly newsletter for Illinois early childhood program directors, providing information on current issues in early childhood education. Regular features in each issue include: "The Director's Toolbox," delineating practical suggestions for directors related to program policies and…

The school-reform movement has not as yet helped to relieve teachers of their nonteaching duties. One result of shared decision making is that some principals have replaced student-supervisory duties with that of committee work. These duties can take as much time as many of the traditional nonteaching duties. One way to improve teacher morale and…

This report discusses the governing bodies in United Kingdom schools of higher education which were restructured after the Education Act of 1988, and examines how they can best meet the demands which will be put upon them by the reforms announced in the White Paper "Education and Training for the 21st Century" and the Further and Higher…

One of a series of practitioner-oriented newsletters, the document provides elementary school principals with information about school discipline and Public Law 94-142 (The Education for All Handicapped Children Act and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973). Focusing on the impact of this law on general education classroom teachers and…

Suggestions from the National Distinguished Principals of 1989 are presented in this newsletter. This issue includes a description of techniques related to staff involvement and morale, school safety, public relations, time management, student interest, and vandalism. (LMI)