This article proposes Hackman and Oldham's (1980) model of work group design to structure parent groups for involvement in school activities and decision making. Parent interviews from three studies of parental involvement provide examples to support this proposal. Participants in these studies described experiences working in groups. Parents'…

In 2000, the author took over the leadership of a large elementary school located in a small community in western Pinellas County, Florida. During her first year, the student population was around 950 students in kindergarten through fifth grade. Today the school population is around 750 students, with 93 percent being white students who live in…

Many authors (Kezar, 2005; Duke, 2002; Keeling, Underhile, and Wall, 2007; Matier, Sidle, and Hurst, 1994) propose a new model of higher education organizations or a style of decision making whose central component is collaboration. This key characteristic helps make full use of all of the institution's resources to increase the likelihood that it…

In the 2007 edition of the NCPEA Yearbook, Zigler and Allen allude to the principalship and its associated training as being at a "tipping point," a reference to Malcom Gladwell's (2000) book, "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Difference" (2007, p. 139). Zigler and Allen contend the current principal paradigm is…

While there is a growing body of literature promoting a new paradigm of differentiated professional development in which teachers' voices shape learning opportunities, the reality is that much professional development continues in an outdated, top-down mode. Teacher input is rarely solicited to determine the perceptions of teachers regarding their…

Museum leaders around the country are in the midst of examining and changing their business models in response to new economic realities. Museum educators have an opportunity to play a leading role in this endeavor. To do so educators must understand the relationship between money and mission. For too long there has been a belief that the…

Over a three-year period educators at an urban elementary school were interviewed about a Response to Intervention model from development to implementation supported by professional development within a university-school partnership. While the model was initially viewed as an administrative directive, in Year 2 educators began to assume…

The increasing emergence of participation in decision making (PDM) in schools reflects the widely shared belief that flatter management and decentralized authority structures carry the potential for promoting school effectiveness. However, the literature indicates a discrepancy between the intuitive appeal of PDM and empirical evidence in respect…

This article focuses on whether people have the resolve to integrate spiritual development into youth worker preparation. Once an organization is convinced that attentiveness to spiritual development has the potential to enrich and improve youth work practice, equipping youth workers with the necessary skills and capacities can proceed. A model…

This mixed-methods case study analyzes the perceptions of participants in a year-long collaborative leadership initiative conducted at a small school district situated between larger urban districts and multiple suburban districts in a midwestern state. The initiative was facilitated by the Galileo Institute for Teacher Leadership in cooperation…

There is currently much discussion about distributed leadership, both as a model of reality in many schools and as an alternative to focused leadership. One model in practice is co-principalship. This paper offers a preliminary investigation into a unique form emerging in a small body of international schools in China. The Yew Chung model,…

School-based learning depends on teachers' capacity to engage with each other around central issues of teaching and learning. While such collaboration is readily welcomed by some educators, others remain wedded to an "independent contractor" concept of teaching. Supporting teachers to view themselves as team members and to perform effectively as a…

A co-principal leadership model, where two individuals serve in one leadership position, is considered a special case of distributing leadership (Gronn & Hamilton, 2004). The co-principal leadership model has been suggested as an alternative organizational form that re-structures the role of the principal by enhancing the positive aspects of…

Background: Teacher Participation in decision-making is one of the recommendations of school-based management and one of the key characteristics of an effective school. Although teacher participation in decision making is claimed to be correlated with their affective outcome, few researchers have been attempted to verify the predictive…

Unlike conventional models of software development, the open source model is based on the collaborative efforts of users who are also co-developers of the software. Interest in open source software has grown exponentially in recent years. A "Google" search for the phrase open source in early 2005 returned 28.8 million webpage hits, while…