Purpose: Research on educational leadership underscores the importance of principals operating as instructional leaders and intensive job-embedded supports for such work; this research also identifies central office staff as key support providers. However, it teaches little about what central office staff do when they provide such support and how…

Purpose: This study examines the feasibility and utility of a daily log for measuring principal leadership practice. Setting and Sample: The study was conducted in an urban district with approximately 50 principals. Approach: The log was assessed against two criteria: (a) Is it feasible to induce strong cooperation and high response rates among…

Purpose: This article describes and reports the results of testing a new conception of how leadership influences student learning ("The Four Paths"). Framework: Leadership influence is conceptualized as flowing along four paths (Rational, Emotions, Organizational, and Family) toward student learning. Each path is populated by multiple…

The administrative process research of four prominent sets of researchers of the 1950's is examined in light of the mode of scientific inquiry that prevailed. Analysis of four currently prominent sets of researchers in terms of present multiple ideologies reveals that researchers still work within a logical positivist framework. (MJL)

A recent study, based on a national sample, examined the relationship between use of time management techniques to control time wasters and stress levels experienced by high school principals. Singular and composite correlations (using regression analysis) indicated a negligible relationship between the use of time management techniques and…

The commentary on this special issue on leadership summarizes the articles and claims that they take a different stance from previous research by legitimizing the subjective realities of practice, emphasizing meaning, and acknowledging the moral as a source of authority for what happens in school. (12 references) (MLF)

Offers a systematic critical response to the values-oriented, nonpositivist conception of administration and philosophy of administration recently advanced by Christopher Hodgkinson. Argues that Hodgkinson's theory is much closer to the positivism espoused by H. A. Simon. An alternative, nonpositivist basis for values in administrative theory is…

This essay examines the growth of professionalism in educational administration and concludes that early promise was not fulfilled, mainly because social and political factors influenced training programs and practice more than did research and theory. Areas in which educational administration still falls short of professionalism are discussed.…

This article examines the problem of maintaining an effective balance between the bureaucratic and professional models of school management in the context of teachers as constrained decision-makers. (TE)

Conditions of administrative practice in 1959 are summarized and influences shaping the transformation of schools and administrators' roles since then examined. The thesis is that basic assumptions of practice have been revised and that present administrators must be more political and advocative while functioning under more stress. (MJL)