Cultural competence is the knowledge, behaviors, and dispositions necessary to effectively interact with other cultural groups. Two case studies are presented which illustrate the cultural competence of administrators in urban settings. Theories are reviewed to investigate the themes of cultural competence that emerged from the professional…

Many individuals enter administration not fully prepared for their roles. This is because many preparatory programs have persistent weaknesses in the linkage between theory and practice, are irrelevant and grossly inadequate for the current responsibilities of the principalship, and overlook teaching the social realities of administrative roles.…

The objective of this article is to examine the rhetoric of educational leadership within a Scandinavian context, as it occurs within the framework of New Public Management. The study asks questions about new demands on leadership expressed in policy documents. Local culture and distinctive aspects of national life tend to modify external…

School improvement and school reform are about organizational learning and renewal. In successful efforts at organizational renewal, especially in business, leaders often play two related roles: critic/provocateur and learning advocate/innovation coach. Using examples from business corporations, the Army, and a college basketball team, this…

This paper draws attention to a knowledge gap in leadership models regarding bullying, particularly cyberbullying, an emergent form of student harassment. Given that parents are suing schools for failing to protect victims of bullying, educators need guidance in addressing harassment and discriminatory discourse in popular youth culture. The focus…

Student achievement of the curriculum is the school's reason for being. This research, however, suggests that the behavior of school leaders is not effective in accomplishing four critical outcomes of curriculum development: (1) the creation of well-written documents that use a common framework; (2) curriculum that is aligned with state and…

This article describes a comparative framework for identifying, analyzing, and practicing acts of leadership. The triadic framework identifies transactional, transformational, and critical domains of leadership, and argues that teachers, heretofore ignored or neglected in discussions of school management, are pivotal leaders in school reform…

This paper reports on an ethnographic study of 25 teacher leaders in five schools within a large midwestern city school district. Data was collected through unstructured interviews and observations of teachers. Three central themes appeared repeatedly, and explain the presence of and support for teachers as leaders, including: (1) specific school…

What are the ingredients of successful educational leadership? One possible answer is the WICS model. According to this paradigm, to be a highly effective leader, an individual must possess three key attributes: Wisdom, Intelligence, and Creativity--working in harmony or Synthesized. (Sternberg 2003; Sternberg and Vroom 2002). The skills…