Leadership in Empowered Schools Themes from Innovative Efforts

The last two decades have produced a sustained effort to restructure public education. Site-based management, charter schools, learner-centered communities, and teacher empowerment have been the focus of much of the reform effort. The call for change has advanced notions about roles, culture, and norms within school organizations. Ideas about leadership have expanded as schools attempt to build learning organizations with empowered participants. While much has been written about school restructuring, there is a need for a better understanding about how to build empowering environments in schools based on empirical findings rather than rhetoric or opinion. This book addresses that need by using two large national studies conducted over six years in 26 schools, as well as other research, to provide an empirical base for drawing conclusions about leadership in schools that are restructuring and striving to provide empowering environments for faculty and students. Professors and students of educational leadership should find the material in this book useful in the study of leadership and organizational change. Practitioners should find key dimensions of leadership useful in their application to the real world of practice. This new edition builds on the historical view of restructuring and empowerment as a context for understanding the two national studies and describes the current landscape of school restructuring. It presents the key dimensions of empowering leadership gleaned from research as well as an in-depth discussion of the leadership dimension. Leadership assessment instruments have been added to this new edition, as well as a chapter on leader reflection, critical to leadership understanding and development. New case studies from the schools that participated in the studies have been added to illustrate the leadership dimension. Not all cases show success; some are included to illustrate how the principal's failure to exercise particular leadership dimensions created less-than-desired results in the school's effort to create an empowering organization. Some cases are more in-depth than others, encouraging the reader to spend time reflecting and problem solving around the case scenario. The shorter cases give the reader the opportunity to pick up ideas quickly. Also new are "Voices from the Field," a series of descriptions of empowerment efforts in the voices of those who experienced them firsthand. Questions for discussion follow each of the in-depth case studies and should be useful in focusing discourse and debate regarding the leadership dimension and the particular school context described in the case. Finally, each chapter concludes with helpful references. This new edition should be useful to students as well as practitioners who have a commitment to the constant search for better ways to build schools that meet the needs of all students. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The research reported in this book was supported with a grant from the Danforth Foundation of St. Louis, Missouri. I greatly appreciate the support of the foundation in efforts to better understand leadership in empowered schools. I also want to thank Linda Greer, Jack Greer's wonderful wife, for her interest and support in the publication of this second edition. In addition, I would like to acknowledge the contributions of those educators who wrote case studies and shared their "Voices from the Field" for the second edition of this book. Those individuals are Amy Miller, Pandora Gilboa Elementary School, Pandora, OH; James K. Walter, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi; Michael L. Supley, Education Study Center, Kingsville, TX; Betty Chong, Cape Girardeau School District; Rose Talent, Southeast Missouri State University; Cynthia MacGregor; Southwest Missouri State University; James Machell, Central Missouri State University; Carol Maher, University of Missouri-Columbia; Nancy Colbaugh, Weller Elementary School; Barbara CrosShort, Paula M. is the author of 'Leadership in Empowered Schools Themes from Innovative Efforts', published 2001 under ISBN 9780130199454 and ISBN 0130199451.