Purpose: The increasing complexity of principals' roles, including focusing both on learning outcomes and equity issues, requires having the flexibility to view novel problems through multiple lenses. In this article, we draw on institutional theory and social network research to understand the factors enabling and constraining the cognitive…

Purpose: The COVID pandemic brought heightened attention to students' socioemotional needs and wellbeing in school, sparking a wide variety of changes from individual teachers' innovations to district-wide initiatives. This study uses the context of SEL-related changes post-pandemic to explore the ways teachers and leaders engaged in sensemaking…

Purpose: The public expects school leaders to be moral exemplars, yet prior research indicates that teachers and, more recently, school principals may score lower than other career groups on a widely used measure of moral reasoning, the Defining Issues Test. Moreover, little empirical research has been conducted on educators during leadership…

Gives definition to the problem-solving process as a cycle of events. The cycle contains numerous stages at which the problem can be deflected in any number of directions depending on the various contingencies surrounding the situation. As a result, problem solving is often an unpredictable process. (Author/IRT)

To identify the cultural elements in school principals' problem-solving processes and the differences between experts and their more typical colleagues, this study interviewed 22 elementary principals. From their responses to brief, hypothetical case problems, a problem-solving model was constructed. Differences were most evident in responses to…

Cognitive perspectives offer important, unique insights about the nature of expert administrative practice, how it develops, and what can be done to assist that development. The five articles making up this issue address cognitive perspectives on educational administration based on three areas of inquiry: human thought and problem-solving…

Studies the problem-solving processes of seven effective superintendents during regular meetings with senior administrative staff, using a stimulated-recall technique. Results describe superintendents' processes for interpreting problems and setting solution goals. Also described are superintendents' processes for dealing with constraints, the…

Examines the relationship between levels of satisfaction experienced by teachers and the status of their decisional participation. (Author)

Develops a conceptual framework for applying schema theory to the appraisal of expertise in school administration and reports the results of a study conducted to investigate relevant variables. Results showed that attention to detail and abstraction level were both positively related to judged expertise. Professional experience in schools was also…

Harold D. Lasswell's concept of the decision seminar and its associated idea sets have been successfully applied to educational problems, desegregation cases, and research. Lasswell's idea sets include decision phase analysis, a social process model, five intellectual tasks, and eight value/institution categories. (RW)

Investigates the way individuals seek to resolve role conflict (the resolution-oriented decisions they make), the reasons they ascribe to specific role conflict resolution decisions, and why these reasons differ depending on the role actors, organizational level, and specific nature of the conflict issue. (Author/IRT)

Recent research on wildland fire fighting supports educational administrators' use of the fire-fighting metaphor to describe the nature of their work. Fire-fighting nuances illuminate subtle conditions in educational organizations that increase their vulnerability to failure. These parallels suggest five management conditions that determine…

The subjects using either the consensus model or the participative decisionmaking model had more correct decisions on the assigned task than did the same individuals deciding alone. (Author)

Presents a model relating the adequacy of an organization's problem-solving to its resources and to the appropriateness of its structures. Describes a test of the model, on 25 public elementary and secondary schools in southeastern Michigan, which found that different organizational structures use money differently and produce different outputs.…

Focuses on a cognitively based reflection process (in a graduate educational leadership program) for developing administrators' expertise in problem solving, decision making, and complex thinking. Quantitative and qualitative analysis of student journal entries around critical incidents during the year-long set of experiences revealed that changes…