The purpose of this quantitative study was to investigate instructional leadership practices and the degree to which these practices predict the leadership self-efficacy of school leaders while controlling for years of experience as a school leader. With educational reform focused on school accountability, principals must attend to tasks that lead…

Through the literature review, the study aims to explore the relationship between the emotional intelligence (EI) of principals and the turnarounds of low-performing schools and generate some hypotheses regarding this issue. Rigorous, empirical studies published in the last 15 years are selected and reviewed around three relevant topics: the…

This article addresses an issue that has not been well explored in empirical research, namely whether local education agencies (districts) have an impact on student learning. We assumed that local district effects on learning would be largely indirect, mediated by how teachers work together in schools (in professional communities) and the quality…

This quantitative survey-design research study examined elementary school principals' perceptions regarding the effect of No Child Left Behind (NCLB). A primary focus of the study was to determine how elementary school principals feel about the influence of NCLB on their role as instructional leader. A sample of 133 elementary school principals…

This Wallace "Perspective" summarizes a decade of foundation research and work in school leadership to identify what it is that effective school principals do. It concludes that they carry out five key actions particularly well, including shaping a vision of academic success for all students and cultivating leadership in others. The…

Teachers' perceptions of their school leaders influence student achievement in their schools. The extent of this influence is examined in this study. This quantitative study examined teachers' perceptions of the leadership style of their principals as transformational, transactional or passive-avoidant in improving and non-improving schools in…

The two-fold purpose of the study was to determine whether or not the Arkansas Leadership Academy's Master Principal Institute's (MPI) five curriculum content standards were aligned with the literature of effective educational leadership practices, and to ascertain if there were significant relationships among the principals' leadership practices…

This study examines fourth grade student achievement in relation to teacher perceptions of principal leadership and other selected variables in a large urban school district in Georgia. Student achievement was measured by performance on the Georgia Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests (CRCT) during the 2004-05 and 2005-06 school years. The…

This paper is based on a cross-sectional survey comparison of preparation experiences and outcomes using a sample of principals who completed one of five innovative leadership preparation programs between 2000-2005 and a national comparison sample of principals. The primary questions are: (1) How do innovatively-prepared principals and other…