The National Staff Development Council recommends that principals devote 10% of the school budget and 25% of teacher time to professional development (PD). While PD requires time, it is crucial that the time be organized, carefully structured, and purposefully led to avoid the waste of human and financial resources. Despite the millions of dollars…

The purpose of this study was to explore novice teachers' perceptions of professional agency in facilitating their development of a teacher leadership stance during the initial years of their work. Participants were thirteen novice teachers who had less than three years of teaching experience in Qatari government schools. Analysis of interview…

Cognitive complexity (CC)--the ability to differentiate and integrate in a dynamic environment--has been shown to be essential to understanding complex and uncertain environments. However, educational leaders' CC has not been examined. In the current exploratory research, we examine the effect of school middle leaders' CC in relation to their Big…

Instructional leadership can be defined as an educational leadership approach whereby the school principal is involved in a wide range of activities aiming to improve teaching and learning for all students. Surprisingly, the literature about instructional leadership practices has not mentioned school leaders' practices for hiring appropriate…

The passage of ESSA in 2015 created a novel mandate for States to develop school accountability systems that use alternative measures of school quality beyond test scores. This created an opportunity for States to be innovative and make new forms of data available that could potentially lead to new strategies for improving schools. This study…

This study explores the perceptions of elementary school principals on the Compass teacher evaluation system in a Southern Louisiana school district in the United States. There were seven themes that emerged from the qualitative data analysis: compliance, subjectivity, accountability, expectation, confinement, inconsistency, and helpfulness. Data…

Drawing on Bauman's (1995) conceptualization of various "forms of togetherness" and Giroux (2005) and Anzaldúa (2007) explication of border theory, this paper presents findings of a research study that investigates how students of color come to know leaders and authority figures. Findings suggest that students identified…

This study examines the relationship between two first-year teachers and how organizational behavior influences their socialization when implementing an external mandate. The primary interests of this qualitative study are the organization behavior related to socializing newcomers, the manner in which new teaching roles and behaviors are realized,…

Increasing numbers of states have incorporated measures of students' academic growth into their data and accountability policies. Measuring growth is a statistically complicated task and complex growth measures can be easy to misinterpret. This paper reports on a survey of 317 Massachusetts principals' understanding of the Student Growth…

This study addressed the problem of job satisfaction of new teachers in large urban school districts. Understanding what contributes to job satisfaction of new teachers has implications for retention strategies supporting cost-effective human capital management as well as for improving working conditions and performance in the educational…

The potential benefits of teacher leadership are widely acknowledged; however, the conceptualization of this construct is in need of theoretical development and analytic clarification. The purpose of this mixed methodology study was to operationalize distinct types of teacher leadership into an organized typology, based on case studies of teacher…

A multifaceted conceptual framework of principals' technology leadership informed the design of a mixed methods case study exploring leadership practices across three school jurisdictions in Alberta, Canada. Leadership practices of K-12 school principals involved in making school-wide improvements integrating technology were examined. The intent…

As new assistant principals, our participants spoke of the importance of gaining experience. In this qualitative study, four years later, they admit that professional expertise must be a combination of challenging experiences and honest feedback from mentors. Furthermore, they present that this expertise is contingent upon identity. Transitioning…

The purpose of this study was to determine what stressors face practicing school principals, with an interest in determining whether they perceived that teacher leaders could relieve some of their stress. This descriptive study used quantitative and qualitative measures that revealed differences in the stressors identified by principals.…

This article is based on a case study to explore a model of teacher governance and illustrate the distinct challenges of entrepreneurship in public education. In the Sedona Charter School, each classroom principal educator serves as instructional leader and resource leader. Principal educators adjust curricula, hire their teachers, determine…