Purpose: This study explored a theoretical model proposing direct and mediated effects for principals' characteristics--principals' information-processing mechanisms (PIPMs) and instructional leadership (IL)--with organizational learning mechanisms (OLMs), for schools' OLMs with teachers' characteristics--teachers' affective commitment (TAC),…

Purpose: School leaders are central to the development of work-related ties among school staff. Although prior work has examined the predictors of the presence of work-related ties, little is known about the breakup or dissolution of ties among school staff. This study examines the extent of tie dissolution among school staff, as well as both the…

Background: Using meta-analytic review techniques, this study synthesized the results of 79 unpublished studies about the nature of transformational school leadership (TSL) and its impact on the school organization, teachers, and students. This corpus of research associates TSL with 11 specific leadership practices. These practices, as a whole,…

Purpose: After reviewing previous research, this study found that few school or educational studies have simultaneously explored both internal marketing and organizational commitment, and of those that have, only direct effects were examined. This study clarifies the relationship between school organization's internal marketing and teachers'…

Purpose: The aim of this study was to examine the means by which principals achieve an impact on student achievement. Research Design: Through the application of structural equation modeling, a mediated-effects model for school leadership was tested, using data from 97 secondary schools in the Netherlands. Findings: The results showed a small…

Previous qualitative studies show that when the formal organization of a school and patterns of informal interaction are aligned, faculty and leaders in a school are better able to coordinate instructional change. This article combines social network analysis with interview data to analyze how well the formal and informal aspects of a school's…

Develops a framework for analyzing the politics of school organizations, affirming a Weberian perspective as most appropriate. Develops "logic of action" (the implicit relationship between means and goals) as the focal point of organizational politics. Underlines the importance of analyzing interest groups and their strategies. Political…

Explores the role of academic departments within contemporary comprehensive high schools. Argues for further research acknowledging secondary schools as fundamentally different from elementary schools. Department specialization and differentiation are key elements in understanding differences. A two-stage exploratory study shows that departments…

Presents findings of a study exploring teacher leadership roles in a metropolitan K-8 school district. Results show that the development and performance of these roles are mediated by their organizational contexts. Teacher leadership should be approached as an organizational development issue rather than solely as an individual empowerment issue.…

The theory-driven Organizational Health Inventory was compared to the empirically derived Organizational Climate Description Questionnaire in predicting student achievement and teachers' commitment to the school. After controlling for the socioeconomic status of the sampled 58 schools, only academic emphasis contributed significantly to student…

Educational administration must abandon its focus on organization, based on hierarchy, legitimacy, and self-interest and develop its own identity. Families, communities, and friendship networks constitute alternative collections of people. To understand schools as communities, educational administration would need to address new questions,…

Four contiguous chapters in the new "Handbook of Research on Educational Administration" examine evolving views of school organizations. Schools are conceived as facing certain enduring dilemmas or viewed as cultures, polities, or communities. Authors describe rumblings (debates, rhetoric, and prescriptions) in the cracks of conventional…

The author criticizes as inadequate the study of educational organizations based on theories that do not analyze schools themselves and proposes the development of organizational models of schools. The argument builds on Kenneth Boulding's typology of knowledge, which offers neutral middle ground in the debate between phenomenological and…

Develops a theoretical model of the salient organizational variables related to mathematics achievement in high school. The model is composed of three variables: socioeconomic status, academic press, and collective efficacy. Finds, for example, that collective efficacy is the significant variable in the model in influencing mathematics…

Understanding facilitative aspects of power is necessary for analyzing processes and outcomes in today's schools. Facilitative, interactive power has become commonplace when no single individual or role commands decision-making control without dependence on expert knowledge and collegial cooperation. Examples include individualized educational…