A university education professor invited an urban middle school principal to "give me 50 of your most academically challenged students who need additional support to be educationally successful." What followed is an ongoing lesson in how achieving educational success is a family and community affair. One community-based middle school's attempt…

This article investigates issues of teacher authority and student initiations in a classroom-based social action curriculum project. A teacher (the first author of this article) and his fifth-grade, African-American students conceptualized, designed, and carried out a seven-month-long integrated curriculum and campaign to lobby for a sorely needed…

The role of the superintendent has changed dramatically, from community leader to school manager to education leader to scapegoat, and it is anyone's guess where the job is headed. What is clear, however, is that today's educational climate calls for a new way of doing business. With the formal powers of their position stripped away by bargaining…

Transformational, charismatic leadership occurs in a conflict-ridden situation, where attendant emotional travail is so uncomfortable that macro and micro structures will admit to change in efforts to relieve the tension. An inspirational message that redefines and reprioritizes deeply cherished values and the leader's role-modeling influence…

This paper reviews recent collaborative action research studies by experienced teachers who have assumed complex new roles. Collaborative action research, under certain conditions, can become an effective way to promote the good and the moral through the personal and professional (cognitive-structural) growth of teachers. In learning…

School performance is as closely tied to competent administration, effective supervision, and dynamic management as it is to aggressive leadership. Transformational leadership arises when leaders are more concerned about gaining staff cooperation and energetic participation than accomplishing particular tasks. (MLH)

Reviews contemporary theorizing on school leadership, highlighting transformational styles, and overviews (British) governmental policies for school leadership and improvement. Reviews current research on primary heads' views of the headship. Although the primary headship is being transformed, it is not becoming transformational. Policymakers have…

Uses survey data from an achieved sample of 1,762 teachers and 9,941 students in a large Canadian school district to explore influences of transformational leadership practices on selected organizational conditions and student engagement with school. Transformational leadership strongly influenced organizational conditions and moderately but…

Develops a theoretical account of how teachers' perceptions of transformational leadership are formed. Provides an empirical test of this theory, which explains formation of teachers' leader perceptions as a function of alterable school-context conditions and unalterable characteristics of leaders and followers. Survey results from 423 schools…

Explores the extent to which the five basic impression management strategies of ingratiation, self-promotion, intimidation, exemplification, and supplication were associated with transformational leadership by undergraduate students who read biographies of world-class leaders. Finds exemplification and ingratiation were positively related (and…

Uses meta-ethnography to analyze the literature on transformational leadership, including sources specifically related to community colleges. Identifies the following themes, patterns, and connections that define transformational leadership: Creating a shared vision, communicating that vision, building relationships, developing a culture, guiding…

This chapter addresses the contradictions inherent to working at the confluence of human resource development and adult education, as well as the opportunity for transformation in the workplace.

In this article, I draw on current scholarship about leadership for social justice, my own (and others') empirical research in schools, and my previous experience as a K-12 educator to develop a framework intended to help educational leaders think about leading for social justice. I critically examine some ways in which the status quo marginalizes…

Transformational approaches to leadership have increasingly been advocated for schools. Research evidence suggests that the effect of leadership on student learning outcomes is mediated by school conditions such as goals, structure, people, and school culture. Using the combined approach of multilevel analysis and structural modeling, this study…

Teacher leadership has been shackled by archaic definitions of leadership and timeworn assumptions about who can lead. Such ideas have situated leadership in the hands of a few formal leaders. Teachers have not seen themselves reflected in these prevailing notions, nor invited into the process. This article argues that a new definition of…