Purpose: Reviews of research play a critical but underappreciated role in knowledge production and accumulation. Yet, until relatively recently, limited attention has been given to the "methodology" of conducting reviews of research. This observation also applies in educational leadership and management where reviews of research have…

Purpose: Across the United States, a large percentage of school districts are in need of facility improvements to provide safe and adequate buildings to facilitate student learning. To finance new construction, school districts traditionally have put proposals before local voters to fund construction through issuing long-term bonds to finance…

Background: Using meta-analytic review techniques, this study synthesized the results of 79 unpublished studies about the nature of transformational school leadership (TSL) and its impact on the school organization, teachers, and students.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,…

Background: This report continues in the lineage of reviews of research in educational leadership and management by examining methodological approaches used by doctoral researchers in studying principal instructional leadership. Research Design: The article reviews the full set of 130 doctoral dissertations completed over the past three decades…

Purpose: Engagement with culture as a facet of the work of schools and colleges has been evident since at least the 1950s. The 21st-century interest in culture remains strong, in part because of the growing sense that education faces a scenario where the scale of technological, economic, and social change is unprecedented. Such change demands…

In recent years, policy makers and researchers once again have embraced the traditional idea that quasi-experimental research designs (or reasonable facsimiles) can provide the sort of valid and generalizable knowledge about "what works" that educational researchers had promised--but never really produced--during the previous century. Although…

Purpose: To fill the gap in theoretical and empirical knowledge on late career in principalship, the aim of this study was to explore the career experiences, needs, and behaviors of principals at this stage. Research method: Life history and semistructured interviews were conducted with 20 late-career principals, 20 schoolteachers, and 10…

Purpose: This article aims to validate the Leadership Daily Practice (LDP) log, an instrument for conducting research on leadership in schools. Research Design: Using a combination of data sources--namely, a daily practice log, observations, and open-ended cognitive interviews--the authors evaluate the validity of the LDP log. Participants: Formal…

Background: The No Child Left Behind legislation creates an increased need for new school-based empirical studies whose implementation will depend largely on researchers' access to various school populations and records. Access decisions are typically made by superintendents, or their designees, functioning as gatekeepers who control right of…

Uses quantitative meta-analysis to examine studies on the direct and indirect effects of principal's leadership on student achievement. (Contains 48 references and 4 tables)(PKP)

Educational administration researchers are currently organized in two ways. They are focused on common topics that change fairly quickly and are coordinating their work both formally and informally. Most frequently published topics include teaching, learning, and testing and professional preparation and certification. Organization around critical…

Explored differences between a sample of highly productive scholars and a random sample of more typical scholars. Few demographic or institutional-responsibility differences emerged. Productive scholars were more oriented toward theory and research; more typical scholars focused on issues in the field. Research challenges were discussed. (Contains…

Discusses an exploratory study of administrators' potential for generating knowledge out of their own practice settings. Describes various topics studied, the methods used, and the practical, epistemological, and political dilemmas encountered. Insider research could be a powerful lever for personal, professional, and organizational…

The four articles in this special issue stress the importance of producing knowledge in educational administration that has high utility and high quality. Five summary principles are discussed, along with recommendations for improving research coordination and making research findings more accessible to policy makers and administrators. (MLH)

Both the 1988 and 1999 editions of "Handbook of Research on Educational Administration" suggest that continuing dialogue about educational administration scholarship is warranted as conditions in schooling and society change. Handbook and "EAQ" editors asked several expert researchers to write articles about one or more chapters. (MLH)