The author's superintendency has been like a good marriage. Both she and the school community feel blessed to have had a true partnership built on mutually held beliefs and convictions, and to have had an opportunity to dream and make their dreams come true. Like most marriages, however, it has been a tremendous amount of work as they have…

This book challenges traditional notions of leadership. It was written to help managers and nonmanagers alike improve their abilities to lead others to get extraordinary things done in organizations. Data were derived from administration of the Personal Best Questionnaire to 550 managers, interviews with 42 managers, and administration of the…

This book for principals or aspiring principals contains a collection of essays about the "human side" of school leadership as experienced by 30 principals during their first year on the job. Two themes emerge from the essays. The first is that leadership requires a whole new set of skills which principals are continuously learning, and…

While there is much disagreement about how to go about reforming schools, one point of agreement is that leadership is critical to this process. Unfortunately, the discussion of leadership has not been sufficiently informed by the voices of those who have been directly involved in reforming old schools and creating new ones. This paper describes…

This paper identifies four models of educational administration--the rational, mechanistic, organic, and bargaining models--and argues that a fifth model of leadership--a caring model--is needed. The ethic of caring (Nodding, 1986) is reciprocal, natural, and ethical and emphasizes connection, responsibilities, and relationships. Creating a model…

The changing role of the local school district superintendent is examined in this paper, which focuses on the link between the local education executive officers and school effectiveness. It is argued that the concept of the superintendency has changed from that of a manager to that of the leader of school district quality and effectiveness. Four…

Leadership styles based on Bass's model of transformational and transactional leadership are explored in this report. Questionnaires were administered to staff and faculty at 45 private secondary schools in the southeast United States to determine the headmasters' leadership qualities. Factors of transformational leadership include charisma,…

The ways in which a Hispanic female superintendent led her school district toward stability and excellence are described in this report, with a focus on four elements that differentiate the work of urban school superintendents from that of others. Four years of data were collected through interviews with the superintendent, observations of group…

Findings from a study investigating and comparing differences in problem-solving approaches between novice and expert elementary school principals are reported in this paper, which focuses on the interview phase of the data collection process. Interview questions were designed to explore and compare the ways in which principals perceived…

This report describes efforts to test a model of leadership effectiveness that centers on "macro variables" and "discretionary leadership." Macro variables were represented by the complexity of the environment, context, and structure of a unit. Discretionary leadership was defined as influence over and above that typically…

This information analysis paper examines (1) the characteristics associated with effective change facilitators and (2) the concept of "style" and its value in describing and understanding leadership performance and the role of change facilitators in particular. Three bodies of literature are highlighted and summarized in pursuit of…

Instructional leadership literature presents two contrasting themes: (1) the school as a loosely coupled system allowing teachers considerable instructional autonomy; and (2) the school as a culture where the effective principal uses symbolic leadership to unite the staff in a common effort to achieve the school's mission. If both themes are…

Principals exhibiting different kinds of administrative behavior tend to be influenced by different kinds of factors, according to the results of two sets of related studies reported in this document. The first set, consisting of three studies of principals and central administrators, explored the factors shaping principals' behaviors when the…

Partial results are reported from a longitudinal study that investigated role learning among teachers seeking and obtaining principalships or assistant principalships. Data were obtained from indepth interviews with 14 administrative candidates. A brief theoretical discussion classifies new administrators' job behavior according to three responses…

This paper describes and analyzes all of the activities of the Berkeley, California school superintendent on September 20, 1973, a fairly typical workday. Included is a chronological log of each event and personal encounter during the day. All incoming and outgoing correspondence and phone calls for the day are also listed. Altogether the…