Education Resources : Educational Leadership

"Now what should I do?" This is a question academic leaders ask themselves with great regularity. As ironic as it may seem, very few academic leaders have had any formal training in academic administration, or in any kind of administration at all. For the most part, academic administrators learn on the job. They also seek advice wherever they can get it. The purpose of this book is to offer such advice. The book is written both for academic administrators at all levels as well as for those who aspire to academic administration.

This is a practical, bold, no-holds barred look at challenges facing educational leaders and the university programs that prepare them through mid-century. It examines key continuities and discontinuities of current times for school, education, and society. Both practice and preparation occur in contested social space, the implications of which are explored in a post industrial, digital age.The stark warning signs of the conflict roiling educational leadership includes the re-segregation and marketization of the public schools; the demonization of teacher unions; attempts to de-professionalize professional preparation; the continuing achievement gap which ignores larger social inequalities; the debasement of education degrees by online diploma mills; the escalating culture of numbers and cheating scandals; and the erosion of full-time, seasoned faculty providing leadership to university preparation programs. The promise of social justice leadership anchored in a fast-changing demographic portrait of increasing national diversity is encapsulated in the construct of leadership accoutrement's which awakens the art and science of leadership.. Finally, the authors propose the pedagogically centered leadership for creating a functional bridge between leadership and learning in preparation and practice.

Leaders and aspiring leaders are constantly searching for role models who are successful in placing leadership theory into effective practice. This book identifies ten such role models whose heroic leadership behavior is analyzed in order to reveal what particular abilities and skills made them successful and how those attributes can be applied to one's own leadership practice, whether that be as a classroom teacher, a principal or a superintendent of schools . They are juxtaposed with ten leaders who were effective, but certainly not heroic. Dr. Palestini points out that effective leaders have been utilizing the same leadership behavior for centuries. He uses this evidence to support the perennial and lasting impact of situational leadership theory which posits that no single way of leading works in all situations. Rather, appropriate leadership behavior depends on the circumstances at a given time. For decades effective managers have been diagnosing the situation, identifying the leadership style or behavior that will be most effective, and then determining whether they can implement the required style. The leadership behavior of ten heroic leaders ranging from Jane Addams to Warren Buffett, and from Abraham Lincoln to Joe Paterno is examined in this book. The lesson learned from these heroic leaders being that if one wishes to hone one's current leadership skills or become a future leader, one can learn to do so by reflectively looking to those who have established themselves in history as both effective and heroic leaders, that is, leaders who lead with both mind and conscience.

Guiding schools through significant change is one of the toughest challenges educational leaders face, but learning from the examples of those who have succeeded can make it less daunting. In Leading Change in Your School, distinguished author and researcher Douglas B. Reeves offers lessons learned through his work with educators in thousands of schools around the world and presents real-life examples of leaders who have met the challenge of change head-on--with impressive results for their schools and districts. Readers will also find practical resources for engaging their colleagues in change initiatives. Expanding on a number of his columns in the journal Educational Leadership, Reeves offers insights ad recommendations in four areas: * Creating conditions for change, including assessments to determine personal and organizational readiness for change; * Planning change, including cautionary notes about strategic planning; * Implementing change, including the importance of moving from rhetoric to day-to-day reality; and * Sustaining change, including the need to reorient priorities and values so that individual convenience gives way to a shared sense of the greater good. The change leaders--both teachers and administrators--whose stories Reeves tells come from varied districts, but they share a passion for creating schools that work for all students. They are, Reeves says, "people like you, sharing similar challenges but perhaps with different results."