Purpose: Attention is drawn in this article to the presence and dysfunctional nature of a disconnection between professional preparation programs for administrators and for teachers. Findings: A case is made for achieving greater alignment between the work going on in these areas, particularly in light of the growing efforts to hold schools…

Purpose: In light of the excessively broad conceptions and nonobservable terms generally characterizing discussions of organizational learning, this study explores the notion of organizational learning in schools through the conceptual framework of organizational learning mechanisms (OLM) and develops a measure of OLM at the elementary school…

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to suggest the structure and content of an educational leadership program whose aim is to prepare principals for social justice work. Research Design: The authors have conceptualized foundational components for a comprehensive principalship program focused on social justice. They assert that educational…

Purpose: This research examined whether the removal of certification and other requirements led to larger or more diverse applicant pools for superintendent positions in Michigan. Michigan has not had any degree or certification requirements for educational administrators for many years and provided an empirical test of whether deregulation…

Background: Despite access for women administrators in educational leadership departments, the longevity of their service within them is tenuous. Women administrators are caught in the social constructions of gender and leadership. Purpose: To explore how some women administrators in educational leadership programs have sustained their…

Purpose: This study sought to deepen current understandings of collaboration and leadership in the context of partnerships between diverse universities, schools, and communities. Using a critical epistemological perspective, the project specifically attempted to learn more about the processes employed by one particular partnership in the Western…

Purpose: Intermittent attention to the district as the unit of study has left a void in our understanding of the complexities associated with the ability of district-level leaders to contribute to successful, systemic educational reform. In this article, the authors address this void by providing a narrative synthesis of previous findings,…

Background: The term "distributed leadership" is now widely used among scholars and practitioners in the field of educational leadership. Major actors in the nonprofit sector promote and financially support the development of distributed leadership. Unfortunately, there is confusion and ambiguity about what "distributed leadership" means, and…

Purpose: Although conflict has traditionally been considered destructive, recent studies have indicated that conflict management can contribute to effective teamwork. The present study explores conflict management as a team phenomenon in schools. The author examined how the contextual variables (task interdependence, goal interdependence) are…

Overview: This article presents findings from a study that examined faculty perspectives on how individual faculty members and institutions support graduate students of color in educational administration preparation programs. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to identify strategies that faculty members and institutions employ to support…

Background: Pay is an important human resource function that has attracted considerable interest within the professional literature and this study addresses pay discrimination. Purpose(s): To address pay for a particular protected group unaddressed in existing literature (Hispanic-surnamed principals). Setting: The setting for this study is public…

Background: A growing literature is questioning the appropriateness of a research dissertation for practitioners in education doctoral programs. Although this literature persuasively critiques the prevailing theory-research orientation of most programs and theses, it goes little beyond exhorting change and describing extant alternatives in a few…

Background: Accountability demands are increasingly pushing school leaders to explore more data and do more sophisticated analyses. Data-driven decision making (DDDM) has become an emerging field of practice for school leadership and a central focus of education policy and practice. Purpose: This study examined principals' DDDM practices and…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the relative impact of different types of leadership on students' academic and nonacademic outcomes. Research Design: The methodology involved an analysis of findings from 27 published studies of the relationship between leadership and student outcomes. The first meta-analysis, including 22 of the…

Purpose: This study aimed to estimate the impact of collective, or shared, leadership on key teacher variables and on student achievement. As well, it inquired about the relative contribution of different sources of such leadership and whether differences among patterns of collective leadership were related to differences in student achievement.…