Purpose: This paper aims to describe, explain and evaluate a graduate education program that provides international project experiences and builds competencies related to collaborative problem-solving, cultural capacity to work globally and sustainable development. Design/methodology/approach: Qualitative analysis of survey data from 28 students…

Prompted by the need for leaders able to turn around chronically low-performing schools, states, universities, education groups, and school districts in the US have initiated a variety of principal development programs. Some programs focus on enhancing the skills of experienced administrators, while others target talented teachers and even…

The professional expertise of educational leaders has been defined through the lens of problem-solving processes. Problem-based learning has therefore become an increasingly popular instructional approach in principal preparatory programs. As such, this study represents an initial attempt to explore learning from success (i.e., success-based…

The Personal Leadership Conundrum leadership development project is a semester-long, personal leadership inquiry that provides students with a self-directed learning opportunity. The guiding framework for this leadership inquiry is a personal leadership conundrum developed by students based on their experience. Students engage in problem-based…

This comprehensive guide explores Problem-Based Learning (PBL), an innovative approach to leadership training. PBL has been adapted from its original use in medical school training into a tool for administrator preparation. In PBL, a real-life scenario with an open-ended problem or question for which there is no single right solution is presented.…

This paper proposes that problem-based learning (PBL) can serve as a cognitive apprenticeship in administrator-preparation programs. The paper presents an overview of PBL and its application in the administrator-preparation program at the University of Connecticut. The initial training in group processing for students enrolled in the program is…

When the University of Georgia's Department of Educational Leadership was formed from the merger of two earlier departments, the new entity developed an innovative doctoral program in educational leadership that incorporated principles of problem-based and student-based learning. The program was designed to promote the values, knowledge, and…

Since the 1950s some educational researchers have argued for a strong focus on problem solving in administrator-preparation programs. This paper discusses two types of problem-based learning (PBL)--simulated and authentic. It discusses various PBL concepts and presents two vignettes used during the 1995 and 1996 academic years at the University of…

Leadership education is intended to teach strategies for getting results through others. A Stanford University (California) graduate program for prospective public school principals uses complex problem-based learning projects in which students are required to develop a solution and a mode for presenting it as they would in an actual school…

This book examines how a relationship between the University of Vermont and school districts throughout the state enables teachers to earn graduate credits through year-long Problem-Based School Development Institutes. The institutes take participants through a cycle that includes identifying a problem, conducting background and action research,…