School librarians are educators no less than teachers and administrators, and their roles grow ever more important. In most schools, however, there is a gap between the ideal influential role of the school librarian and the actual role of the practicing librarian. The book addresses overcoming this gap for secondary school librarians, not from the…

By state law, many educators are being forced to move from a traditional norm of autonomy to one of collaboration. This paper presents findings of a study that identified the changing role of the 21st century superintendent and described the way one female superintendent promoted state-mandated collaboration in a rural school district with very…

Mentoring programs designed to assist beginning teachers have become commonplace in today's public school. However, little has been voiced about the necessity of considering the self-esteem of the mentor and the part it plays in developing a sucessful mentor/beginning teacher relationship. The mentor's self-concept directly affects the teaching…

The mentoring model described in this paper assumes teachers to be self-directing professionals, and adopts the formalized mentor-protege relationship as the starting point and the individual teacher's professional development as the organizing principle for the induction of teachers into the profession. The essential elements of a mentor's…

This paper describes the development and implementation of a collaborative, interdisciplinary curriculum program, the Quest program. Implemented at a suburban New England high school, the program was loosely based on the tenets of the Coalition of Essential Schools. Ethnographical methodology included document analysis, participant observation,…

This paper presents findings of case studies that applied social exchange theory to examine the instructional leadership roles of four exemplary high school department chairs. Data were gathered at four suburban high schools in a large metropolitan area of the midwestern United States using the methods of observation and interviews with the…

This guide for doctoral students (especially those from minority groups) and their mentors examines the alliance between the doctoral student and his major professor (dissertation advisor). Mentoring is examined as an element of the doctoral process, including discussion of the roles of the mentor/protege in the alliance, the choosing of a mentor,…

Noting a recent trend in scholarship of using narratives to warn teachers of the possible dangers of un-theorized and uncritical utilization of technology in the writing classroom, this paper offers a story that does not involve students, anonymous messages, or private files that inadvertently become public, but instead concerns a series of…

Focusing on the staff development process, a study examined the use of research in teaching reading comprehension by six teachers at two Tucson, Arizona middle schools. The schools employed both individual and group staff development, but while one school was considered to have a positive school culture, the other school was predicted to have a…

This case study presents findings of a year-long ethnographic study of a principal of a suburban elementary school. It concludes one of seven studies conducted in elementary and intermediate schools in urban, suburban, and rural settings that investigated the instructional management role of principals. Data collection involved hundreds of hours…

This guide assembles examples of staff development used by one large school district, Los Angeles Unified School District, to prepare teachers for the new role of mentor. In an effort to help mentors get off to a good start, the district's Professional Development Center assembled a 30-hour program of discussion panels, skill training, and problem…

Principals can influence instruction by working through the linkages that govern teacher behavior. What these linkages are, how they affect instruction, and the impact of the principal on them are the focus of this paper. Two kinds of linkages are distinguished: bureaucratic and cultural. An explantation of both, with particular attention to…

The knowledge structure of nursing, nursing concepts, and interaction patterns were studied at three nursing schools in Sweden. Attention was focused on six classification systems: communication pattern; personally directed content of talks; interaction structure and role behavior; content of instrumental versus emotional nature; disciplinary…

An annual foreign language festival established by McNeese State University and the Calcasieu Parish School System (Louisiana) was designed to motivate students, inform them of employment opportunities, help them understand their own and other heritages, and illustrate the international and intercultural opportunities and challenges of the modern…

Adversarial collective bargaining often leads to lingering resentments. Collaborative bargaining, conversely, is a problem-solving approach to contract negotiations based on common interests and mutual respect. It is estimated that at least 500 school districts nationwide incorporate major elements of the collaborative approach in their collective…