Leadership is about transformation. It is the opportunity to transform people, places, and possibilities. The purpose of the study reported in this article was to identify means to assess leadership development and performance. Although leadership development and performance can be assessed, school systems often lack consistent methods,…

Distance education might be a viable alternative to preparing principal candidates amid a national shortage of qualified applicants. Distance education has the potential of preparing more candidates in less time than the traditional method of face-to-face instruction. Distance education allows institutions to reach candidates in rural areas that…

If one "googles" the term "professional development" on the Web, he/she gets definitions such as "the development of skills both tangential and essential to one's current occupation." Digging a little deeper does not yield a common definition, just distinctions among education, training, and credentialing. Despite the…

This article describes a framework for the design and implementation of a competency-based curriculum for graduate management education. The article also outlines how this model has been implemented at one university in the context of a graduate degree in human resource management. Among the significant challenges discussed are the identification…

An action research project, managed by a graduate student, resulted in the development of an academic website as an effective internal and external communication tool. The main focus of the investigation was to uncover the tacit knowledge held by staff in the Department of Management Communication through a series of in-depth interviews, a focus…

In qualification programmes based on action learning, there has hitherto been little articulation of what is particular to research dissertations undertaken in an action learning mode. This article addresses the questions of what such a dissertation entails and how it can be undertaken, supervised and examined. It discusses some of the foundations…

Competency is defined as a set of related knowledge, skills, and attitudes that enables an individual to effectively perform the activities of a given occupation or job function to the standards expected in employment. Competencies for professionals in the performance improvement field have received considerable attention in recent years. For…

South Africa has unique challenges. Thirteen years since becoming democratic, it is still going through its own unprecedented change in joining the global economic network and moving from Apartheid to democracy and from a closed to an open community. These political and sociological changes have also infiltrated business and therefore management…

This document describes research which investigated the effectiveness of the Cities in Schools (CIS) hypermedia training course for senior executives of that national dropout prevention program. The study employed a hybrid methodology of qualitative techniques and computer tracking tools, in order to provide a complete picture of how the…

In education, women are outnumbered by men four to one at the administrative level. This paper presents findings of a study that sought to determine the association between advanced degrees in educational administration and the careers of those holding such degrees. Data were obtained from questionnaires that were mailed to a total of 210 former…

Some organizational theorists argue that current approaches to management are not going to work in the 21st century. The book explores this modern dilemma and presents two premises underlying the design of organizations capable of responding to an increasingly complex and challenging business and social environment. The first premise is that the…

These four papers are from a symposium that was facilitated by Nancy Dixon at the 1995 conference of the Academy of Human Resource Development (HRD). "Reliability Testing of Multirater Feedback" (Wim J. Nijhof, Anne Jager) focuses on testing the reliability and validity of the multirater feedback system. Findings are reported that conclude that…

This book describes change in the nature of school leadership as required by the nature of future schools. Two chapters in part 1 develop the perspective for leadership, based on problem solving, for the future. Chapter 1 argues that the problem for future leadership has three components: (1) developing a shared, defensible vision of a future…

This paper compares two Australian educational administration texts published in 1963 to reflect critically on the radical changes that have occurred in educational administration in Australia since then. The books are "Headmasters for Better Schools," by Bassett, Crane, and Walker; and "Training the Administrator," by…

The theoretical implications of management assessment centers for evaluating headteachers in Great Britain are examined in this paper. Issues in developing informed, objective management assessment are discussed, which involve the following: the educational system's permeable boundaries; the context in which management assessment and development…