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Educational Administration: Concepts and Practices, Fifth Edition

Fred C. Lunenburg and Allan C. Ornstein

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Development of Administrative Theory

FOCUSING QUESTIONS

1 To what extent is educational administration characterized by the use of theory?

2 What is theory?

3 How do theories function in educational administration?

4 What are the major components of classical organizational theory, the human relations

approach, the behavioral science approach, and the post–behavioral science era?

5 Why is contingency theory popular today in administering schools?

6 Why is systems theory important for preventing organizational failures?

7 How have emergent nontraditional perspectives infl uenced the study and practice of

educational administration?

In this chapter, we attempt to answer these questions concerning theoretical and historical developments in administration. We begin our discussion by exploring the nature of theory in administration and discuss six functions of theory in educational administration. Then we identify and explain major developments in the history of administrative thought: classical, human relations, behavioral science, and post–behavioral science approaches to administra-tion. Finally, we examine contingency theory and open systems theory, and we conclude the chapter with a discussion of emergent perspectives in educational administration.

Theory

Educational administrators are professionals who have a code of ethics and are licensed by state boards of education.1 Thus, their behavior is guided by acceptable standards of prac-tice. One of the best criteria of a profession, however, is that it has matured as a science; that is, it has developed a solid theoretical base — a body of organized and tested knowledge. Such is the case with educational administration as a social science.2 Theory in educational

1American Association of School Administrators, Code of Ethics for School Administrators (Arlington, VA: The Association, 2008).2It may be more accurate to refer to educational administration as an applied science.

1■

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2 Part I ■ Fundamental Principles and Concepts

administration has been evolving since the 1950s. To an increasing degree, educational administration is characterized by using theory to explain and predict phenomena in educational organizations.3

What are theories? Fred Kerlinger defi nes theory as “a set of interrelated constructs (concepts), defi ni-tions, and propositions that present a systematic view of phenomena by specifying relations among variables with the purpose of explaining and predicting phenom-ena.”4 Daniel Griffi ths includes many of the same ideas in his discussion of theory. He adds that a theory is a deductively connected set of empirical laws and that all statements in a theory are generalizations that ex-plain the empirical laws and unify the areas of subject matter.5

A theory, then, is a statement (generalization) that explains some phenomena in a systematic way. Theories may range from a simple generalization to a complex set of laws, from philosophical to scientifi c. Some theories deal with simple generalizations such as results of edu-cational polls or school surveys undertaken by state ac-crediting associations. Such studies involve measures of the nature of some condition at a particular time. They explain what is. More sophisticated theories may seek to explain why particular phenomena occur; examples are Einstein’s theory of relativity and Newton’s theory of universal gravitation. Most theories in the social sci-ences require a process of refi nement through revision and extension.6

Several such efforts to refi ne and extend the scien-tifi c theory movement deserve mention. To begin with, Griffi ths proposes “theoretical pluralism” that is linked to problems of practice.7 Willower suggests philosoph-

ical naturalism and pragmatism, variously called sci-entifi c methods, inquiry, or refl ective methods.8 These philosophies rely on logic and evidence, consistent with such defi nitions of truth as Dewey’s warranted assert-ibility.9 Hoy provides a pragmatic perspective on sci-ence and theory in the practice of educational adminis-tration. He suggests the heuristic value of social science research and theory. He argues that research and the-ory building can serve as useful frames of reference for practitioners as they engage in real-world problem solv-ing.10 Evers and Lakomski provide a postpositivist con-ception of science in educational administration that they call “naturalistic coherentism.” This view con-tends that knowledge generation should be assessed on the basis of its testability, simplicity, consistency, com-prehensiveness, fecundity, familiarity of principle, and explanatory power.11 Bridges and Hallinger espouse a problem-based learning model, which simulates the world of practice. Educational administration trainees focus on a problem likely to be encountered by practi-tioners. Self-directed teams of trainees defi ne the prob-lem, gather data from a variety of disciplines, and apply new knowledge as they solve the problem. The teams present their solutions in the form of a fi nal project.12 Donmoyer introduces the concept of “utilitarianism” as a potential way to bridge the theory–practice gap. This approach takes the form of expanding the defi -nition of knowledge to include nontraditional along with traditional methods of inquiry. He sees the re-sulting fusion of quantitative and qualitative methods of inquiry as valuable to both the researcher and the

3See, for example, Daniel E. Griffi ths, “Administrative The ory,” in N. J. Boyan (ed.), Handbook of Research on Educational Administration (New York: Longman, 1988), pp. 27–51.4Fred N. Kerlinger, Foundations of Behavioral Research, 3rd ed. (San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace, 1986), p. 9.5Griffi ths, “Administrative Theory.”6William Wiersma et al., Research Methods in Education, 8th ed. (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2004).7Daniel E. Griffi ths, “Theoretical Pluralism in Educational Administration,” in R. Donmoyer, M. Imber, & J. J. Scheu-rich (eds.), The Knowledge Base in Educational Administra-tion: Multiple Perspectives (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), pp. 300–309; Daniel E. Griffi ths, “The Case for Theoretical Pluralism,” Educational Management and Administration, 25 (1997): 371–380.

8Donald J. Willower, “Fighting the Fog: A Criticism of Post modernism,” Journal of School Leadership, 8 (1998): 448–463.9John Dewey, Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (New York: Henry Holt, 1938).10Wayne K. Hoy, “Science and Theory in the Practice of Edu-cational Administration: A Pragmatic Perspective,” Educa-tional Administration Quarterly, 32 (1996): 366–378.11Colin W. Evers and Gabriele Lakomski, “Science in Educa-tional Administration: A Postpositivist Conception,” Educa-tional Administration Quarterly, 32 (1996): 379–402.12Edwin M. Bridges and Philip Hallinger, Problem-Based Learning for Administrators (Eugene: University of Oregon, ERIC Clearinghouse on Educational Management, 1992); Edwin M. Bridges and Philip Hallinger, Implementing Problem-Based Learning in Leadership Development (Eu-gene: University of Oregon, ERIC Clearinghouse on Educa-tional Management, 1995).

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Chapter 1 ■ Development of Administrative Theory 3

practitioner.13 Finally, Murphy discusses a “dialectic” strategy to bridge the theory–practice gap14 and later offers some unifying concepts—a “synthesizing para-digm”—to aid in the preparation and practice of school administrators.15

Functions of Theories

Many school administrators feel uncomfortable with theories. They prefer that social scientists provide them with practical prescriptions for administering their schools. Upon closer examination, however, almost ev-ery action a school administrator takes is based to some degree on a theory. For example, a school administrator may include others in a decision involving an issue that is relevant to them and that they have the expertise to make, instead of making the decision unilaterally. Such action is referred to in the research literature as partici-patory decision making. Participatory decision making, also referred to as shared, collaborative, or group deci-sion making, focuses on decision processes that involve others. In education, participatory decision making is based on the idea that active involvement of teachers, parents, or community members in school decisions will lead to improved school performance.16 It is believed that those closest to teaching and learning, namely teachers, and those with the most knowledge about the children, namely parents, should be involved in decisions because they have expertise that is crucial to improving school performance. Furthermore, it is believed that when teachers and parents are involved in decision making, they will be more committed to implementing and sup-

porting the decision, and a sense of ownership in the school will result.17 Without knowing it, the school administrator made the choice to involve others in the decision-making process on the basis of a theory. Educational administrators would most likely fl oun-der without theories to guide them in making choices. Thus, theories provide a guiding framework for under-standing, predicting, and controlling behavior in or-ganizations. Theories also contribute to the advance-ment of knowledge in the fi eld.18 Deobold Van Dalen has suggested six functions of theories, and we follow his categorization in this discussion.19

Identifying Relevant Phenomena Theories deter-mine the number and kinds of phenomena that are rel-evant to a study. A theory tells a social scientist what to observe and to ignore. For example, social scientists may study school administration from the open systems perspective. (Open systems theory is discussed later in this chapter.) A relevant component in the open systems approach is the external environment that impacts the organization. Several subsystems exist within this en-vironment. Among the more important are economic, political, productive, distributive, and resource systems. Social scientists may study the external environment from within all these frameworks. Multiple phenomena are associated with each subsystem. Social scientists will not know precisely what phenomena to observe un-til they construct theoretical solutions for each problem area under investigation.

Classifying Phenomena Scientists rarely work effi -ciently with masses of phenomena; therefore, they con-struct theoretical frameworks for classifi cation. The physical sciences have been successful in developing such conceptual schemes. Geologists have developed schemes for classifying rocks, and botanists have de-vised systems for classifying plants.

17Ellen Goldring and William Greenfi eld, “Understanding the Involving Concept of Leadership in Education: Roles, Ex-pectations, and Dilemmas,” in J. Murphy (ed.), The Educa-tional Leadership Challenge: Redefi ning Leadership for the 21st Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), pp. 1–19.18Donmoyer, “The Continuing Quest for a Knowledge Base.”19Deobold B. Van Dalen, Understanding Educational Re-search, 4th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979).

13Robert Donmoyer, “The Continuing Quest for a Knowledge Base: 1976–1998,” in J. Murphy and K. S. Louis (eds.), Hand-book of Research on Educational Administration, 2nd ed. (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1999), pp. 25–43.14Joseph Murphy, The Landscape of Leadership Preparation: Reframing the Education of School Administrators (New-bury Park, CA: Corwin Press, 1992).15Joseph Murphy, “Reculturing the Profession of Educational Leadership: New Blueprints,” Educational Administration Quarterly, 39 (2002): 176–191.16Kenneth Leithwood and Daniel L. Duke, “A Century’s Quest to Understand School Leadership,” in J. Murphy and K. S. Louis (eds.), Handbook of Research on Educational Administration, 2nd ed. (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1999), pp. 45–72.

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An example of a classifi cation scheme in educational administration is the study of organizational climate by Andrew Halpin and Don Croft.20 Using factor analysis, they developed eight dimensions of organizational cli-mate and classifi ed them into six categories: open, au-tonomous, controlled, familiar, paternal, and closed. Another example comes from the work of Henry Mintz-berg. After extensive, structured observation of fi ve ex-ecutives (one a school superintendent), Mintzberg clas-sifi ed managerial activities into ten administrative roles: fi gurehead, leader, liaison (interpersonal); monitor, dis-seminator, spokesperson (informational); and entrepre-neur, disturbance-handler, resource-allocator, negotia-tor (decisional).21 If educational administrators fail to develop theoretical frameworks for classifying phenom-ena, they will limit the advancement of knowledge in the fi eld.

Formulating Constructs Reliable information can be obtained through direct observation and measurement. However, many aspects of behavior cannot be directly observed. Intelligence is not an observable entity; it is inferred from using instruments that sample subject be-havior. Affective predispositions such as attitudes, in-terests, and opinions cannot be observed directly; they are observed indirectly as they manifest themselves in behavior. Consequently, social scientists have developed constructs to explain why certain types of behavior oc-cur. These constructs are often referred to as hypotheti-cal constructs to imply that they are a construction of the social scientist’s imagination. Kurt Lewin’s force-fi eld analysis is an example of a theoretical construct.22

Summarizing Phenomena Theories summarize iso-lated lists of data into a broader conceptual scheme of wider applicability. These summaries can be stated with varying degrees of comprehensiveness and preci-sion. They may range from simple generalizations to complex theoretical relationships. A school superin-tendent making a generalization about granting cer-tifi cates of achievement to outstanding teachers in the school district is an example of low-level summarizing. This type of summary is not usually referred to as a

theory. But the superintendent might construct a more complex generalization, one that describes the relation-ship between phenomena. For example, after observing the granting of certifi cates of achievement to deserving teachers, the superintendent may note a relationship: Public recognition is a means of motivating teachers. Summarizing and explaining phenomena permit deeper understanding of data and translate empirical fi ndings into a more comprehensive, theoretical framework. In the natural sciences, for instance, the theory of oxidation brings many of the chemical reactions com-mon to everyday life into focus. The more comprehen-sive the theory, which is supported by verifi ed observa-tions, the more mature the science becomes.

Predicting Phenomena A theory permits social sci-entists to predict the existence of unobserved instances conforming to it. For example, Abraham Maslow made the following generalization: People at work seek to sat-isfy sequentially fi ve levels of needs arranged in a pre-potency hierarchy.23 A deprived need dominates the person’s attention and determines behavior. Once this defi cit is satisfi ed, the next higher-level need is activated, and the individual progesses up the hierarchy. When the level of self-actualization is reached, progression ceases. The more this need is satisfi ed, the stronger it grows. On the basis of this theory, one can expect to fi nd a similar pattern of behavior in a variety of work settings where no statistics have been generated. That is, theory en-ables one to predict what should be observable where no data are available.

Revealing Needed Research Theories generalize about phenomena and predict phenomena. They also pinpoint crucial areas to be investigated and crucial questions to be answered. Earlier we noted that theo-ries in the social sciences may lack supporting evidence and therefore require a refi ning process. Such refi ne-ment through revision and extension is necessary to provide the maturity required for continually expand-ing the knowledge base in educational administration.

Classical Organizational Theory

Classical organizational theory emerged during the early years of the twentieth century. It includes two dif-ferent management perspectives: scientifi c management

20Andrew W. Halpin and Don B. Croft, The Organizational Climate of Schools (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963).21Henry Mintzberg, The Nature of Managerial Work (New York: HarperCollins, 1990).22Kurt Lewin, Field Theory in Social Science (New York: Harper & Row, 1951).

23Abraham Maslow, Motivation and Personality, rev. ed. (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1970).

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and administrative management. Historically, scien-tifi c management focused on the management of work and workers. Administrative management addressed is-sues concerning how an overall organization should be structured.

Scientifi c Management

Prior to the turn of the twentieth century, there was al-most no systematic study of management. The practice of management was based on experience and common sense. Frederick W. Taylor tried to change that view. An engineer, he pursued the idea that through care-ful scientifi c analysis the effi ciency of work could be improved. His basic theme was that managers should study work scientifi cally to identify the “one best way” to perform a task. Taylor’s scientifi c management consists of four principles:24

1. Scientifi c Job Analysis. Through observation, data gathering, and careful measurement, manage-ment determines the “one best way” of performing each job. Such job analysis replaces the old rule-of-thumb method.

2. Selection of Personnel. Once the job is analyzed, the next step is to scientifi cally select and then train, teach, and develop workers. In the past, workers chose their own work and trained themselves.

3. Management Cooperation. Managers should cooperate with workers to ensure that all work be-ing done is in accordance with the principles of the science that has been developed.

4. Functional Supervising. Managers assume plan-ning, organizing, and decision-making activities, whereas workers perform their jobs. In the past, al-most all work and the greater part of the responsi-bility were thrust on workers.

Taylor's four principles of scientifi c management were designed to maximize worker productivity. In his early career as a laborer in the steel industry, he ob-served fi rsthand how workers performed well below their capacities. He referred to this activity as soldier-ing. Taylor felt that scientifi c management — time study

for setting standards, separation of managerial and em-ployee duties, and incentive systems — would correct the problem. Rather than relying on past practice or rules of thumb, he provided managers with explicit guide-lines for improving production management, based on proven research and experimentation.

Administrative Management

Whereas scientifi c management focuses on jobs of in-dividual workers, administrative management concen-trates on the management of an entire organization. The primary contributors to administrative management were Henri Fayol, Luther Gulick, and Max Weber. Henri Fayol was an engineer and French industrial-ist. For many years, he served as managing director of a large coal-mining fi rm in France. He attributed his suc-cess as a manager not to any personal qualities he may have possessed but, rather, to a set of management prin-ciples that he used. Fayol claimed that all managers per-form fi ve basic functions: planning, organizing, com-manding, coordinating, and controlling. Besides the fi ve basic management functions, Fayol identifi ed fourteen principles that he felt should guide the management of organizations and that he found useful during his experience as a manager (Table 1–1). Fayol’s fourteen principles of management empha-size chain of command, allocation of authority, order, effi ciency, equity, and stability. Max Weber also recog-nized the importance of these factors. But Fayol was the fi rst to recognize management as a continuous process. Luther Gulick, another classical theorist, augmented Fayol’s fi ve basic management functions while serving on Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Committee on Government Administration. He coined the acronym POSDCoRB, which identifi ed seven functions of management: plan-ning, organizing, staffi ng, directing, coordinating, re-porting, and budgeting.25

1. Planning involves developing an outline of the things that must be accomplished and the methods for accomplishing them. It attempts to forecast future actions and directions of the organization.

2. Organizing establishes the formal structure of authority through which work subdivisions are

25Luther Gulick and Lyndall Urwick (eds.), Papers on the Science of Administration (New York: Columbia University Press, 1937).

24Frederick W. Taylor, Principles of Scientifi c Management (New York: Harper, 1911).

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arranged, defi ned, and coordinated to implement the plan.

3. Staffi ng involves the whole personnel function of selecting, training, and developing the staff and maintaining favorable working conditions.

4. Directing, closely related to leading, includes the continuous task of making decisions, communicat-ing and implementing decisions, and evaluating subordinates properly.

5. Coordinating involves all activities and efforts needed to bind together the organization in order to achieve a common goal.

6. Reporting verifi es progress through records, research, and inspection; ensures that things hap-pen according to plan; takes any corrective action when necessary; and keeps those to whom the chief executive is responsible informed.

7. Budgeting concerns all activities that accompany budgeting, including fi scal planning, accounting, and control.

One of the most infl uential contributors to classi-cal organizational theory was German sociologist Max Weber, who fi rst described the concept of bureaucracy. Weber’s contributions were not recognized until years after his death.26 Weber’s concept of bureaucracy is based on a comprehensive set of rational guidelines. Similar in concept to many of Fayol’s fourteen princi-ples, Weber’s guidelines were believed to constitute an ideal structure for organizational effectiveness. Weber’s ideal bureaucracy and Fayol’s fourteen principles of

26Max Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organi-zation, trans. Talcott Parsons (New York: Oxford University Press, 1947).

Table 1–1 Fayol’s Fourteen Principles of Management

Component Description

Division of work The object of division of work is improved effi ciency through a reduction of waste, increased output, and a simplifi cation of job training.

Authority Authority is the right to give orders and the power to extract obedience. Responsibility, a corollary of authority, is the obligation to carry out assigned duties.

Discipline Discipline implies respect for the rules that govern the organization. Clear statements of agreements between the organization and its employees are necessary, and the state of discipline of any group depends on the quality of leadership.

Unity of An employee should receive orders from only one superior. Adherence to this principle avoids breakdowns in command authority and discipline.

Unity of Similar activities that are directed toward a singular goal should be grouped together under one manager.direction

Subordination of The interests of individuals and groups within an organization should not take precedence over the interests of individual interest the organization as a whole.

Remuneration Compensation should be fair and satisfactory to both employees and the organization.

Centralization Managers must retain fi nal responsibility, but they should give subordinates enough authority to do the task successfully. The appropriate degree of centralization will vary depending on circumstances. It becomes a question of the proper amount of centralizing to use in each case.

Scalar chain The scalar chain, or chain of command, is the chain of supervisors ranging from the ultimate authority to the lowest ranks. The exact lines of authority should be clear and followed at all times.

Order Human and material resources should be coordinated to be in the right place at the right time.

Equity A desire for equity and equality of treatment are aspirations managers should take into account in dealing with employees.

Stability of Successful organizations need a stable workforce. Managerial practices should encourage long-term personnel commitment of employees to the organization.

Initiative Employees should be encouraged to develop and carry out plans for improvement.

Esprit de corps Managers should foster and maintain teamwork, team spirit, and a sense of unity and togetherness among employees.

Source: Adapted from Henri Fayol, General and Industrial Administration (New York: Pitman, 1949), pp. 20–41. (Originally published in French in 1916 with the title Administration Industrielle et Generale.)

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management laid the foundation for contemporary or-ganizational theory.27

Classical organizational theories and their derived principles have many critics. An emphasis on effi ciency characterized the classical approach to management. To these theorists, an effi ciently designed job and or-ganization were of prime importance. Psychological and social factors in the workplace were ignored. The critics claim that when managers ignore the social and psychological needs of workers, organizations do not provide adequate motivation to their employees. The classicists assumed that fi nancial incentives would en-sure worker motivation. In short, the focus of classi-cal organizational theory was on the task, with little attention given to the individual or group in the work-place. This fl aw was primarily responsible for the emer-gence of the second approach to management thought: the human relations approach.

Human Relations Approach

The human relations approach is considered to have started with a series of studies conducted at the Haw-thorne Plant of Western Electric near Chicago by Elton Mayo and his associates between 1927 and 1933.28 These studies, widely known as the Hawthorne studies, have strongly infl uenced administrative theory.

The Hawthorne Studies

The Hawthorne studies consisted of several experi-ments. They included the fi rst Relay Assembly Test Room, the second Relay Assembly Group, the Mica-Splitting Group, the Typewriting Group, and the Bank Wiring Observation Room experiments. In addition, an interview program involving 21,126 employees was conducted to learn what workers liked and disliked about their work environment.

Two experiments in particular are noteworthy. In the Relay Assembly Test Room experiments, the re-search began with the designation of two groups of fe-male workers. Each group performed the same task, and the groups were located in two separate rooms, each of which was equally lighted. One group, desig-nated the control group, was to have no changes made in lighting or other work-environment factors. The other was the experimental group in which lighting and other environmental factors were varied. Changes in the productivity of the two groups was subsequently measured and analyzed. Regardless of the light level or various changes in rest periods and lengths of workdays and workweeks, productivity in both the control and the experimental groups improved; in fact, the worse things got, the higher the productivity rose. In the Bank Wiring Observation Room experiments, a group of nine men were paid on a piecework incentives pay system. That is, their pay increased as their pro-ductivity increased. Researchers expected that worker productivity would rise over time. As in the Relay As-sembly Test Room experiments, researchers found an unexpected pattern of results. They discovered that the group informally established an acceptable level of out-put for its members. Most workers, the “regulars,” ig-nored the incentive system and voluntarily conformed to the group’s standard level of acceptable output, called a group norm. Those who did not conform, the “devi-ants,” were disciplined by the group to bring their out-put in line with the group’s standard output. Workers who produced too much were called “rate-busters” and sometimes were physically threatened to make them conform with the rest of the group. On the other hand, employees who underproduced were labeled “chislers” and were pressured by the group to increase their productivity. To understand the complex and baffl ing pattern of results, Mayo and his associates interviewed over 20,000 employees who had participated in the exper-iments during the six-year study. The interviews and observations during the experiments suggested that a human-social element operated in the workplace. In-creases in productivity were more of an outgrowth of group dynamics and effective management than any set of employer demands or physical factors. In the light-ing experiment, for example, the results were attrib-uted to the fact that the test group began to be noticed and to feel important. Researchers discovered that the improvement in productivity was due to such human- social factors as morale, a feeling of belongingness, and effective management in which such interpersonal skills

27Kenneth Leithwood and Daniel L. Duke, “A Century’s Quest to Understand School Leadership,” in J. Murphy and K. Seashore Louis (eds.), Handbook of Research on Educa-tional Administration, 2nd ed. (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1999), pp. 45–72.28Elton Mayo, The Human Problems of an Industrial Civili-zation (New York: Macmillan, 1933); and Fritz J. Roethlis-berger and William J. Dickson, Management and the Worker (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1939).

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as motivating, leading, participative decision making, and effective communications were used. Research-ers concluded, from the results of the incentive pay-system experiment, that informal work groups emerged with their own norms for appropriate behavior of group members. In short, the importance of understanding human behavior, especially group behavior, from the perspective of management was fi rmly established.

Other Contributors to the

Human Relations Approach

Mayo and his associates were not the only contribu-tors to the human relations approach. There were sev-eral strong intellectual currents, which infl uenced the human relations movement, during this period. Kurt Lewin emphasized fi eld theory and research known as group dynamics.29 Noteworthy is his work on demo-cratic and authoritarian groups. Lewin and his asso-ciates generally concluded that democratic groups, in which members actively participate in decisions, are more productive in terms of both human satisfaction and the achievement of group goals than are authoritar-ian groups.30 Furthermore, much of the current work on individual and organizational approaches to change through group dynamics (sensitivity training, team building, Alcoholics Anonymous, and Weight Watch-ers) and the action-research approach to organizational development is based on Lewin’s pioneering work. Carl Rogers deserves mention here as well. Not only did he develop a procedure for industrial counseling31 while working with Mayo and his associates at West-ern Electric, but the metapsychological assumptions on which his client-centered therapy32 is based also pro-vide the skeletal framework on which the human rela-tions approach is built. For example, according to Rog-ers, the best vantage point for understanding behavior is from the internal frame of reference of the individ-ual, who exists in a continually changing world of ex-perience; who perceives the fi eld of experience as real-

ity for her; and who strives to actualize, maintain, and enhance her own human condition.33

The writings of Jacob Moreno made a substantial contribution to the human relations movement. Like Lewin, Moreno was interested in interpersonal rela-tions within groups. He developed a sociometric tech-nique: People develop selective affi nities for other peo-ple. Groups composed of individuals with similar affi nities for one another will likely perform better than groups lacking such affective preferences.34

Additional contributors to the human relations school of thought include William Whyte and George Homans. Using a fi eld study methodology similar to the one used by Mayo, Whyte studied the nature and func-tioning of work group behavior in the restaurant in-dustry. He examined intergroup confl ict, status within groups, workfl ow, and the like. Consistent with More-no’s sociometric theory, Whyte found that selective preferences among group members are associated with such factors as similarities in age, sex, and outside in-terests.35 His study is signifi cant because the fi ndings are based on observations of real-life situations rather than isolated laboratory conditions. George Homans’s general theory of small groups was a major landmark. Homans conceptualized the totality of group structure and functioning that has received wide attention among organizational theorists and practitioners alike.36

The major assumptions of the human relations ap-proach include the following ideas:

1. Employees are motivated by social and psychologi-cal needs and by economic incentives.

2. These needs, including but not limited to recogni-tion, belongingness, and security, are more im-portant in determining worker morale and pro-ductivity than the physical conditions of the work environment.

3. An individual’s perceptions, beliefs, motivations, cognition, responses to frustration, values, and similar factors may affect behavior in the work setting.

29Kurt Lewin, Field Theory in Social Science.30Kurt Lewin, Ronald Lippitt, and Robert White, “Patterns of Aggressive Behavior in Experimentally Created ‘Social Cli-mates,’” Journal of Social Psychology, 10 (1939): 271–299.31Carl R. Rogers, Counseling and Psychotherapy (Boston: Houghton Miffl in, 1942).32Carl R. Rogers, Client-Centered Therapy (Boston: Hough-ton Miffl in, 1951).

33Ibid., pp. 483–494.34Jacob L. Moreno, Who Shall Survive? rev. ed. (New York: Beacon House, 1953).35William F. Whyte, Human Relations in the Restaurant In-dustry (London: Pittman, 1949).36George C. Homans, The Human Group (New York: Har-court, Brace & World, 1950).

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4. People in all types of organizations tend to develop informal social organizations that work along with the formal organization and can help or hinder management.

5. Informal social groups within the workplace create and enforce their own norms and codes of behav-ior. Team effort, confl ict between groups, social conformity, group loyalty, communication patterns, and emergent leadership are important concepts for determining individual and group behavior.

6. Employees have higher morale and work harder under supportive management. Increased morale results in increased productivity.

7. Communication, power, infl uence, authority, moti-vation, and manipulation are all important relation-ships within an organization, especially between superior and subordinate. Effective communication channels should be developed between the vari-ous levels in the hierarchy, emphasizing democratic rather than authoritarian leadership.

The human relationists used fi eld study methods ex-tensively as well as laboratory experiments to study the work environment. These social scientists made impor-tant contributions to our understanding of employee behavior in the workplace.

Behavioral Science Approach

Behavioral scientists considered both the classicists’ rational-economic model and the human relationists’ social model to be incomplete representations of em-ployees in the work setting. A number of authors at-tempted to reconcile or show points of confl ict between classical and human relations theory; thus, the behav-ioral science approach was born.

The Individual and the Organization

Behavioral scientists fueled a new interest in individuals and the way in which they relate to the organization.

Effectiveness/Effi ciency Although a contemporary of many human relationists, Chester Barnard was one of the fi rst authors to take the behavioral science ap-proach. For many years, Barnard served as president of the New Jersey Bell Telephone Company. His execu-tive experience and extensive readings in sociology and

organizational psychology resulted in one of manage-ment’s few classic textbooks.37

His best-known idea is the cooperative system, an attempt to integrate, in a single framework, human re-lations and classical management principles. Barnard argues that the executive must meet two conditions if cooperation and fi nancial success are to be attained. First, the executive must emphasize the importance of effectiveness, which is the degree to which the common purpose of the organization is achieved. Second, the ex-ecutive must be aware of effi ciency, which is the sat-isfaction of “individual motives” of employees.38 His major point is that an organization can operate and survive only when both the organization’s goals and the goals of the individuals working for it are kept in equi-librium. Thus, managers must have both human and technical skills.

Fusion Process Another major contributor to the be-havioral science approach was E. Wight Bakke of the Yale University Labor and Management Center. He views the organization as embodying a fusion pro-cess.39 The individual, he argues, attempts to use the organization to further his own goals, whereas the or-ganization uses the individual to further its own goals. In the fusion process, the organization to some degree remakes the individual and the individual to some de-gree remakes the organization. The fusion of the per-sonalizing process of the individual and the socializing process of the organization is accomplished through the bonds of organization, such as the formal organi-zation, the informal organization, the workfl ow, the task(s) to be completed, and the system of rewards and punishments.

Individual/Organization Confl ict Having views simi-lar to Bakke’s, Chris Argyris argues that there is an in-herent confl ict between the individual and the organi-zation.40 This confl ict results from the incompatibility between the growth and development of the individu-al’s maturing personality and the repressive nature of the formal organization. Argyris believes that people

37Chester I. Barnard, The Functions of the Executive (Cam-bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1938).38Ibid.39E. Wight Bakke, The Fusion Process (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1955).40Chris Argyris, The Individual and the Organization (New York: Irvington, 1993).

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progress from a state of psychological immaturity and dependence to maturity and independence and that many modern organizations keep their employees in a dependent state, preventing them from achieving their full potential. Further, Argyris believes that some of the basic principles of management are inconsistent with the mature adult personality. The resulting incongru-ence between individual personality and the organiza-tion causes confl ict, frustration, and failure for people at work. People learn to adapt to the failure, frustration, and confl ict resulting from the incongruency by ascend-ing the organizational hierarchy, by using defense mech-anisms, or by developing apathy toward their work that ultimately leads to the dysfunction of the organization’s goals. This trend to conformity has been espoused in such popular books as The Organization Man41 and Life in the Crystal Palace.42

Nomothetic/Idiographic A useful theoretical formu-lation for studying administrative behavior is the social systems analysis developed for educators by Jacob Get-zels and Egon Guba.43 Getzels and Guba conceive of the social system as involving two classes of phenomena that are independent and interactive. First are institu-tions with certain roles and expectations that together constitute the nomothetic dimension of activity in the social system. Second are the individuals with certain personalities and need-dispositions inhabiting the sys-tem who together constitute the idiographic dimension of activity in the social system. Behavior then in any so-cial system can be seen as a function of the interaction between personal needs and institutional goals. Con-formity to the institution, its roles, and its expectations results in organizational effectiveness, whereas confor-mity to individuals, their personalities, and their need-dispositions results in individual effi ciency. (Note the similarity between Getzels and Guba’s framework and those of Barnard, Bakke, and Argyris.)

Need Hierarchy The behavioral science approach has drawn heavily on the work of Abraham Maslow, who developed a need hierarchy that an individual attempts

to satisfy.44 Maslow’s theory suggests that an admin-istrator’s job is to provide avenues for the satisfaction of an employee’s needs that also support organizational goals and to remove impediments that block need sat-isfaction and cause frustration, negative attitudes, or dysfunctional behavior.

Theory X and Theory Y Based on the work of Maslow, Douglas McGregor formulated two contrast-ing sets of assumptions about people and the manage-ment strategies suggested by each. He called these The-ory X and Theory Y.45 McGregor believed that the classical approach was based on Theory X assumptions about people. He also thought that a modifi ed version of Theory X was consistent with the human relations perspective. That is, human relations concepts did not go far enough in explaining people’s needs and man-agement’s strategies to accommodate them. McGregor viewed Theory Y as a more appropriate foundation for guiding management thinking.

Hygiene–Motivation Extending the work of Maslow, Frederick Herzberg developed a two-factor theory of motivation.46 Herzberg makes a distinction between factors that cause or prevent job dissatisfaction (hy-giene factors) and factors that cause job satisfaction (motivation factors). Only the latter group of factors can lead to motivation. Herzberg’s hygiene factors re-late closely to Maslow’s lower-level needs: physiologi-cal, safety, and social; his motivation factors relate to the needs at the top of Maslow’s hierarchy: esteem and self-actualization. Recognition of motivation factors calls for a different style of management from that pro-posed by the classical or human relations advocates.

Systems 1–4 Another writer concerned with the way in which the goals of individuals and those of the orga-nization can coincide is Rensis Likert. Likert conducted extensive empirical research at the Institute for Social Research—University of Michigan to examine the ef-fect of management systems on employees’ attitudes and behavior. He developed four management systems, ranging from System 1, Exploitive Authoritative, to

41William H. Whyte, The Organization Man (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1956).42Allan Harrington, Life in the Crystal Palace (London: Jonathan Cape, 1960).43Jacob W. Getzels and Egon G. Guba, “Social Behavior and the Administrative Process,” School Review, 65 (1957): 423–441.

44Abraham Maslow, Motivation and Personality, rev. ed. (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1970).45Douglas McGregor, The Human Side of Enterprise (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1960).46Frederick Herzberg, The Motivation to Work (New Bruns-wick, NJ: Transaction, 1993).

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System 4, Participative Group.47 Each system charac-terizes an organizational climate based on several key dimensions of effectiveness, including leadership, mo-tivation, communications, interaction/infl uence, deci-sion making, goal setting, control, and performance goals. Likert posits the participative group system (System 4) as coming closest to the ideal. The essence of System 4 theory is based on three key propositions: supportive relationships, group decision making in an overlapping group structure, which he calls linking-pins,48 and high-performance goals of the leader. (Note the parallel here to McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y dichotomy.) Likert, however, provides more categories and more specifi city. His Systems 1–4 represent four different leadership styles.

Managerial Grid In the area of leadership, Robert Blake and Jane Mouton assess managerial behavior on two dimensions: concern for production and con-cern for people. Managers can plot their scores on an eighty-one-celled managerial grid.49 The grid is de-signed to help managers identify their own leadership styles, to understand how subordinates are affected by their leadership style, and to explore the use of alterna-tive leadership styles consistent with employees’ needs.

Contingency Theory Contingency theories of leader-ship have come into vogue in recent years. Fred Fiedler developed a contingency theory of leadership effec-tiveness.50 The basic premise is that in some situations relationship-motivated leaders perform better, while other conditions make it more likely that task-motivated leaders will be most effective. Three variables deter-mine the situations under which one or the other type of leader will be most effective: leader–member rela-tions (the degree to which leaders feel accepted by their followers), task structure (the degree to which the work to be done is clearly outlined), and position power (the extent to which the leader has control over rewards and punishments the followers receive).

Situational Leadership Another popular leader-ship theory is situational leadership developed by Paul Hersey and Kenneth Blanchard.51 Situational leadership theory is based primarily on the relationship between follower maturity, leader task behavior, and leader re-lationship behavior. In general terms, the theory sug-gests that the style of leadership will be effective only if it is appropriate for the maturity level of the follow-ers. Hersey and Blanchard see two types of maturity as particularly important: job maturity (a person’s matu-rity to perform the job) and psychological maturity (the person’s level of motivation as refl ected in achievement needs and willingness to accept responsibility).

Other Important Contributors The great diversity of perspectives in the behavioral science school makes it impossible to discuss all of its contributors here. Social scientists like Victor Vroom,52 William Reddin,53 and Amitai Etzioni54 did much to assist its development. Warren Bennis, in his best-selling book on leadership, identifi es bureaucracy and other classical management principles as the “unconscious conspiracy” that pre-vents leaders from leading.55 A key contribution of the contingency perspective may best be summarized in the observation that there is no one best way to administer an organization. There are no motivation strategies, organizational structures, decision-making patterns, communication techniques, change approaches, or leadership styles that will fi t all situations. Rather, school administrators must fi nd dif-ferent ways that fi t different situations.

Post–Behavioral Science Era

The behavioral science approach infl uenced the prepa-ration and practice of school administrators for some time, but it has lost much of its original appeal recently

51Paul Hersey and Kenneth Blanchard, Management of Or-ganizational Behavior, 8th ed. (Paramus, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2007).52Victor Vroom and Arthur Jago, The New Leadership: Managing Participation in Organizations (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1988).53William J. Reddin, Managerial Effectiveness (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1970).54Amitai Etzioni, A Comparative Analysis of Complex Or-ganizations, rev. ed. (New York: Free Press, 1975).55Warren G. Bennis, Why Leaders Can’t Lead: The Uncon-scious Conspiracy Continues (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1990).

47Rensis Likert, “From Production and Employee-Centeredness to Systems 1–4,” Journal of Management, 5 (1979): 147–156.48Rensis Likert, New Patterns of Management (New York: Garland, 1987).49Robert R. Blake and Jane S. Mouton, The Managerial Grid: Leadership Styles for Achieving Production Through People (Houston: Gulf, 1994).50Fred E. Fiedler and Martin M. Chemers, Improving Lead-ership Effectiveness, 2nd ed. (New York: Wiley, 1984).

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with challenges to modernist views of organizations and leadership. Building on the strengths and short-comings of the past, three powerful, interrelated con-cepts of school improvement, democratic community, and social justice emerge, which form the development of the next era of the profession: the post–behavioral science era. Joseph Murphy reminds us that “persons wishing to affect society as school leaders must be di-rected by a powerful portfolio of beliefs and values an-chored in issues such as justice, community, and schools that function for all children and youth.”56

School Improvement

Accountability for school improvement is a central theme of state policies. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (Public Law 107-110) sets demanding accountabil-ity standards for schools, school districts, and states, in-cluding new state testing requirements designed to im-prove education. For example, the law requires that states develop both content standards in reading and mathematics and tests that are linked to the standards for grades 3 through 8, with science standards and as-sessments to follow. States must identify adequate yearly progress (AYP) objectives and disaggregate test results for all students and subgroups of students based on so-cioeconomic status, race/ethnicity, English language profi ciency, and disability. Moreover, the law mandates that 100 percent of students must score at the profi cient level on state tests by 2014. Furthermore, the No Child Left Behind Act requires states to participate every other year in the National Assessment of Educational Prog-ress (NAEP) in reading and mathematics. Will schools, school districts, and states be able to respond to the demand? In an ideal system, school im-provement efforts focus educational policy, adminis-tration, and practices directly on teaching and learn-ing. This will require districtwide leadership focused directly on learning. School leaders can accomplish this by (1) clarifying purpose, (2) encouraging collec-tive learning, (3) aligning with state standards, (4) pro-viding support, and (5) making data-driven decisions. Taken together, these fi ve dimensions provide a com-pelling framework for accomplishing sustained district-wide success for all children.

Clarifying Purpose The school district and the ad-ministrators and teachers who work in it are account-able for student learning. This assertion has strong eco-nomic, political, and social appeal; its logic is clear. What teachers teach and students learn is a matter of public inspection and subject to direct measurement.57 Superintendents need to develop a practical rationale for school improvement. Clearly and jointly held purposes help give teachers and administrators an increased sense of certainty, security, coherence, and accountability.58 Purposes cannot remain static for all time, however. They must be constantly adapted to changing circum-stances and the needs of the system. Few really success-ful schools lack purpose.59

In their studies of “successful school restructuring” in over 1500 schools, Newmann and Wehlage found that successful schools focused on “authentic” pedagogy (teaching that requires students to think, to develop an in-depth understanding, and to apply academic learning to important realistic problems) and student learning.60 They achieved this in two ways: greater organizational capacity and greater external support. The most suc-cessful schools, according to Newmann and Wehlage, were those that functioned as professional communi-ties. That is, they found a way to channel staff and stu-dent efforts toward a clear, commonly shared purpose for learning. Moreover, they found that external agen-cies helped schools to focus on student learning and to enhance organizational capacity through three strate-gies: setting standards for learning of high intellectual quality; providing sustained schoolwide professional development; and using deregulation to increase school autonomy. In short, dynamic internal learning commu-nities and their relationships with external networks made the difference. Evidence on the critical combina-tion of internal and external learning is mounting.61

56Joseph Murphy, “Reculturing the Profession of Educational Leadership: New Blueprints,” Educational Administration Quarterly, 38 (2002): 186.

57Richard F. Elmore, School Reform from the Inside Out: Policy, Practice, and Performance (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Publishing Group, 2004).58Roland Barth, Learning by Heart (New York: John Wiley, 2004).59Fred C. Lunenburg and Beverly J. Irby, The Principalship: Vi-sion to Action (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/ Thompson, 2006).60Fred Newmann and George Wehlage, Successful School Restructuring (Madison, WI: Center on Organization and Restructuring of Schools, 1995).61Michael G. Fullan, Learning Places: A Field Guide for Improving the Context of Schooling (Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, 2006).

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There are instructional strategies that can help teachers increase student learning. In research recently completed at the Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning (McREL) Institute, Marzano and oth-ers62 identifi ed classroom practices that generally in-crease student achievement: identifying similarities and differences; summarizing and note taking; receiving re-inforcement for effort and recognition for achievement; doing homework and practicing; using nonlinguistic representations; learning cooperatively; setting objec-tives and testing hypotheses; and using cues, questions, and advance organizers. Regardless of whether or not teachers teach to standards, these classroom practices work well.

Encouraging Collective Learning A key task for school administrators is to create a collective expecta-tion among teachers concerning the state’s account-ability criteria. That is, administrators need to raise teachers’ collective sense about state standards. Then administrators must work to ensure that teacher expec-tations are aligned with the state’s accountability cri-teria.63 Furthermore, administrators need to eliminate teacher isolation, so that discussions about state stan-dards become a collective mission of the school and school district. “The key to student growth is educator growth.”64 In a collective learning environment, teachers become generators of professional knowledge rather than simply consumers of innovations. Innovations are built around the system rather than using prepackaged school im-provement models. Changing mental models replaces training educators in new behaviors.65 Continuous in-struction-embedded staff development replaces one-shot non-instruction-specifi c professional development events.66 Single-loop, linear learning that monitors

whether a system is reaching its goals is replaced by double-loop learning where systems are able to revisit whether goals are still appropriate and then recycle as needed.67 School administrators must develop and sustain school structures and cultures that foster individual and group learning. That is, administrators must stimulate an environment in which new information and practices are eagerly incorporated into the system. Teachers are more likely to pursue their group and individual learn-ing when there are supportive conditions in the school and school district, such as particularly effective lead-ership.68 Schools where teachers collaborate in discuss-ing issues related to their school improvement efforts are more likely to be able to take advantage of inter-nally and externally generated information.69 Teach-ers can become willing recipients of research informa-tion if they are embedded in a setting where meaningful and sustained interaction with researchers occurs in an egalitarian context.

Aligning with State Standards Most states are at-tempting to align their tests with their standards. Gan-dal and Vranek70 encourage states to consider three principles in this endeavor. First, tests not based on the standards are neither fair nor helpful to parents or stu-dents. States that have developed their own tests have done a good job of ensuring that the content of the test can be found in the standards. That is, children will not be tested on knowledge and skills they have not been taught. This is what Fenwick English and Betty Steffy refer to as “the doctrine of no surprises.”71 How-ever, the same is not true when states use generic, off-the-shelf standardized tests. Such tests cannot measure

67Chris Argyris, Reasons and Rationalizations: The Limits to Organizational Knowledge (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).68Kenneth Leithwood and Karen Seashore Louis, The Learn-ing School and School Improvement: Linkages and Strate-gies (Lisse, NL: Swets and Zeitlinger, 2000).69Karen Seashore Louis and Sandra Kruse, “Creating Com-munity in Reform: Images of Organizational Learning in Ur-ban Schools,” in K. Leithwood and K. Seashore Louis (eds.), Organizational Learning and Strategies (Lisse, NL: Swets and Zeitlander, 2000).70Matthew Gandal and Jennifer Vranek, “Standards: Here Today, Here Tomorrow,” Educational Leadership, 59 (2001): 7–13.71Fenwick English and Betty Steffy, Deep Curriculum Align-ment (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2001).

62Robert J. Marzano, Debra J. Pickering, and Jane E. Pollock, Classroom Instruction That Works (Baltimore: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2001).63Carl Glickman, Leadership for Learning: How to Help Teachers Succeed (Baltimore: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2005).64Bruce Joyce and Beverly Showers, Student Achievement Through Staff Development, 3rd ed. (Baltimore: ASCD, 2002), p. XV.65Peter Senge, Schools That Learn (New York: Doubleday, 2001).66Gene E. Hall and Shirley M. Hord, Implementing Change: Patterns, Principles, Potholes (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2005).

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the breadth and depth of each state’s standards. Sec-ond, when the standards are rich and rigorous, the tests must be as well. Tests must tap both the breadth and depth of the content and skills in the standards. Third, tests must become more challenging in each successive grade. The solid foundation of knowledge and skills developed in the early grades should evolve into more complex skills in the later grades. If one accepts the premise that tests drive curric-ulum and instruction, perhaps the easiest way to im-prove instruction and increase student achievement is to construct better tests. Critics argue that many state-mandated tests require students to recall obscure fac-tual knowledge, which limits the time teachers have available to focus on critical thinking skill.72 How-ever, according to Yeh, it is possible to design force-choice items (multiple-choice test items) that test rea-soning and critical thinking.73 Such tests could require students to use facts, rather than recall them. And test questions could elicit content knowledge that is worth learning. Yeh argues that to prepare students to think criti-cally, teachers could teach children to identify what is signifi cant. Teachers could model the critical thinking process in the classroom, during instruction, through assignments, in preparing for tests, and in the content of the test itself. By aligning test content with worth-while questions in core subject areas, it may be possi-ble to rescue testing and instruction from the current focus on the recall of trivial factual knowledge. Test items could be created for a range of subjects and lev-els of diffi culty. Then there would be little incentive for teachers to drill students on factual knowledge.

Providing Support One of the biggest challenges in advancing state standards and tests, and the account-ability provisions tied to them, is providing teachers with the training, teaching tools, and support they need to help all students reach high standards. Specifi cally, teachers need access to curriculum guides, textbooks, or specifi c training connected to state standards. They need access to lessons or teaching units that match state standards. They need training on using state test results

to diagnose learning gaps.74 Teachers must know how each student performed on every multiple-choice item and other questions on the state test. And training must be in the teachers’ subject areas. Only then can teachers be prepared to help students achieve at high levels on state-mandated tests. In addition to professional development for teach-ers, all schools need an intervention and support system for students who lag behind in learning the curriculum. Schools need to provide additional help to students who lag behind in core subjects, either in school, af-ter school, on weekends, or during the summer. School administrators need to supply the fi nancial resources to fulfi ll this mandate. This involves acquiring materi-als, information, or technology; manipulating sched-ules or release time to create opportunities for teachers to learn; facilitating professional networks; or creat-ing an environment that supports school improvement efforts.75

Higher state standards usually mean changes in cur-riculum, instruction, and assessment — that is, changes in teaching and learning. The history of school reform indicates that innovations in teaching and learning sel-dom penetrate more than a few schools and seldom en-dure when they do.76 Innovations frequently fail because the individuals who make them happen— classroom teachers — may not be committed to the effort or may not have the skills to grapple with the basic challenge being posed.77 Teachers are motivated to change when their personal goals are aligned with change, when they are confi dent in their ability to change, and when they feel supported in attempting the change.78 To gain com-mitment of teachers and students to pursue school im-provement efforts, school administrators must promote school cultures that reward achievement.

Making Data-Driven Decisions How can school dis-tricts gauge their progress in achieving high state stan-dards? Three factors can increase a school district’s

72Linda McNeil, Curriculum of School Reform: Educa-tional Costs of Standardized Testing (New York: Routledge, 2000).73Stuart S. Yeh, “Tests Worth Teaching To: Constructing State Mandated Tests That Emphasize Critical Thinking,” Educational Researcher, 30 (2001): 12–17.

74Fred C. Lunenburg and Beverly J. Irby, High Expectations: An Action Plan for Implementing Goals 2000 (Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, 1999).75Fred C. Lunenburg, The Principalship: Concepts and Applications (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Merrill/Prentice Hall, 1995).76Elmore, School Reform from the Inside Out.77Fullan, Learning Places.78Lunenburg and Irby, The Principalship.

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HENRY S. BANGSER Superintendent, New Trier Township High School District, Winnetka/Northfi eld, Illinois.

Previous Positions: Superintendent of Schools, St. Charles Community Unit School District, Illinois; Superintendent of Schools, Pelham Union Free School District, New York; Principal, Lake Forest High School — East Campus, Illinois.

Latest Degree and Affi liation: Ph.D., Educational Administration, Northwestern University.

Number One Infl uence on Career: Certainly, it was the fi rst district in which I taught and served as an ad-ministrator. New Trier was and is one of the fi nest high schools in the nation. Thus, I learned early where the bar could be set for fi rst-rate, public suburban high school education.

Number One Achievement: In different ways, facili-tating the work among the school board, staff, com-munity, students, and parents in four school districts where expectations were and are extremely high.

Number One Regret: Leaving my fi rst two superin-tendencies after four and three years, respectively; therefore, not having the opportunity to see several important initiatives come to fruition.

Favorite Education-Related Book or Text: Leadership Jazz by Max DePree.

Additional Interests: Spending time with my children as they grew up in the schools and communities which I served as superintendent. Learning the unique chal-lenges which golf brings to the human spirit, through caddying as a youngster and playing golf competitively during college and adulthood.

Leadership Style: Ask tough questions during the pro-cess of resolving of an issue. Give others credit where their work was critical in the successful completion of a project. Take responsibility for the decisions that are made within the organization.

Professional Vision: Hire the best people you can fi nd as leaders and other staff members. Support them in their job in a way that will allow them to fl ourish. Ultimately, the organization will benefi t as a result of their combined efforts.

Words of Advice: As early in your career as possible, hopefully well before you become a superintendent, develop a baseline philosophy and a set of principles around which you will build your management and leadership style. These are standards from which you will not vary. In my opinion, these must embody re-spect for all individuals within the organization: stu-dent to student, student to adult, adult to student, and adult to adult.

Example of How an Issue Could Have Been Handled Better: When I entered my fi rst superintendency, I inherited a committee which had been formed to address the issue of a gifted program for the elemen-tary grades. My predecessor, an interim superinten-dent, had appointed twenty passionate advocates for a self-contained program (i.e., a system in which the brightest students in the district would be educated in classes together, thus leaving behind those students who needed them as role models). As an educator who had spent my whole career in high school education, I knew very little about this matter. However, my gut feeling was that it was unfair and inappropriate. I al-lowed the committee to deliberate longer than I should have. Finally, close to the date when the committee re-port that was designed to create the self-contained program was scheduled to be made public, I pulled the plug on it. I did this by meeting individually with each person on the committee before I announced my decision to the board of education and the commu-nity. What I learned from this experience — and what I have told superintendent aspirants often — is that many more leadership errors are made by omission than commission. Develop a philosophy, trust your basic principles, and act on them.

■ Exemplary Educational Administrators in Action

progress in meeting state standards.79 The primary fac-tor is the availability of performance data connected to

each student, broken down by specifi c objectives and target levels in the state standards. Then schools across the district and across the state are able to connect what is taught to what is learned. The state standards should be clear enough to specify what each teacher should teach. And a state-mandated test, aligned with state standards, will indicate what students have learned.

79Susan Sclafani, “Using an Aligned System to Make Real Progress in Texas Students,” Education and Urban Society, 33 (2001): 305–312.

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Also, teachers need access to longitudinal data on each student in their classroom. With such data, teachers are able to develop individual and small-group education plans to ensure mastery of areas of weakness from pre-vious years while also moving students forward in the state-mandated curriculum. The second factor is the public nature of the mea-surement system. Assuming the school district has a system of rating schools, the district should publish an-nually a matrix of schools and honor those schools that have performed at high levels. This provides an impe-tus for low-performing schools to improve their perfor-mance. It also provides role models for other schools to emulate. At the school and classroom levels, it provides a blueprint of those areas where teachers should focus their individual education plans and where grade levels or schools should focus the school’s professional devel-opment plans. The public nature of the data from the ac-countability system makes clear where schools are. As-suming the state disaggregates its data by race/ ethnicity and socioeconomic status, performance of each sub-group of students on state-mandated tests makes the school community aware of which students are well served and which students are not well served by the school district’s curriculum and instruction. The third factor is the specifi cally targeted assistance provided to schools that are performing at low levels. Before the advent of state accountability systems, it was not evident which schools needed help. The fi rst step is to target the schools in need of help based on student performance data. Each targeted school is paired with a team of principals, curriculum specialists/ instructional coaches, and researchers to observe current practices, discuss student performance data with the staff, and assist in the development and implementation of an improvement plan. The targeted schools learn how to align their program of professional development to the weaknesses identifi ed by the data. They learn how to develop an improvement plan to guide their activi-ties and monitor the outcomes of the activities, all of which are designed to raise student performance levels. In sum, the new framework for school improvement that we have described here provides a powerful and useful model for achieving school success. Sustained districtwide school improvement is not possible with-out a strong connection across levels of organization (school, school district, community, and state). Internal school development is necessary from principals, teach-ers, and parents; but school improvement cannot oc-cur unless each school is supported by a strong exter-nal infrastructure; stable political environments; and

resources outside the school, including leadership from the superintendent and school board as well as leader-ship from the state.

Democratic Community

The concept of democratic community is not new. Much of the current work is grounded in Dewey’s ideas promulgated more than 100 years ago.80 For example, at the turn of the twentieth century, John Dewey ar-gued that schools should embody the kind of commu-nity that combined the best aspects of classic liberalism and communitarianism or, in Dewey’s words, of “in-dividualism and socialism”81— a place that could pre-pare people to live within and to maintain a healthy, democratic society. However, Dewey’s vision was rela-tively uninfl uential throughout much of the twentieth century. A resurgence of interest in Dewey and his con-cept of a democratic community as it relates to school-ing has emerged in education in recent years.82 At mid-twentieth century, James Contant suggested that the basic tenets of American democracy should be taught in schools, along with language, history, eco-nomics, science, mathematics, and the arts.83 More re-cently, Wood expanded this theme by suggesting that democratic citizenship should be taught in schools. These include traits such as commitment to community and a desire to participate; values such as justice, lib-erty, and equality; skills of interpretation, debate, and compromise; and habits of study and refl ection.84 Oth-ers concur. Hargreaves suggests that the cultivation of “openness, informality, care, attentiveness, lateral working relationships, reciprocal collaboration, candid

80John Dewey, The School and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1900).81Dewey, The School and Society, p. 7.82See, for example, Carol Rogers, “Defi ning Refl ection: An-other Look at John Dewey and Refl ective Thinking,” Teach-ers College Record, 104 (2002): 842–866; Aaron Schutz, “John Dewey’s Conundrum: Can Democratic Schools Em-power?” Teachers College Record, 103 (2001): 267–302; Julie Webber, “Why Can’t We Be Dewey on Citizens?” Edu-cational Theory, 51 (2001): 178–189.83James B. Contant, Education and Liberty: The Role of the Schools in a Modern Democracy (New York: Vintage Books, 1953).84George H. Wood, Schools That Work: America’s Most In-novative Public Education Programs (New York: Dutton, 1992).

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and vibrant dialogue, and the willingness to face un-certainty together”85 is a central purpose of schooling, not merely the production of employable workers. Critiques concerning the meaning of democracy in our time have proliferated over the last two decades. And a number of publications have addressed the var-ious meanings of community. For example, com -munity is described in multiple ways in the education literature.86 Community is referred to as “profes -sional community” among educators, “learning commu-nity” among students, “school–community” addressing school–community relations, and “community of dif-ference” in multicultural settings. Furman and Starratt advocate the defi nition of community of difference as more compatible with contemporary postmodernism.87 Thinking about a community of difference requires a reconceptualization of the concept of community it-self, moving away from homogeneity toward a new cen-ter in which diverse groups negotiate a commitment to the common good. According to Shields, “a community of difference begins, not with an assumption of shared norms, beliefs, and values; but with the need for respect, dialogue, and understanding.”88 Educational leaders who want to move toward a community of difference will be informed by research on race and ethnicity. Similarly, democracy is subject to many interpreta-tions in education. Its most common meaning is usually

tied to the idea of the nation-state and the American version of democracy. According to Mitchell, demo-cratic community cannot be limited to such a narrow view of democracy in a world characterized by diversity, fragmentation, and globalization.89 National boundar-ies are permeated by regional and global alliances. Chil-dren should be educated within an increasingly global context. Our version of democratic community resembles more the ideas promulgated by Gail Furman and Rob-ert Starratt.90 They extend the emerging work on demo-cratic community through a deeper analysis of the link-ages between democratic community and leadership in schools. And Furman and Starratt’s model places dem-ocratic community in a context of postmodernism, characterized by inclusiveness, interdependence, and transnationalism. In their view and ours, professional community, learning community, school–community, and community of difference, and the American version of democracy, along with Dewey’s progressivism, laid much of the groundwork for the concept of democratic community. But the model requires some modifi cations in a contemporary, postmodern context of diversity, fragmentation, and globalization. Some common themes are beginning to emerge re-garding the concept of democratic community derived from Dewey’s progressivism and its more contempo-rary, postmodern interpretations. Furman and Starratt discuss the nature and character of democratic commu-nity and how it might be enacted in schools.91 The cen-tral tenets of democratic schools include the following:

1. Democratic community is based on the open fl ow of ideas that enables people to be as fully informed as possible.

2. Democratic community involves the use of critical refl ection and analysis to evaluate ideas, problems, and policies.

3. Democratic community places responsibility on individuals to participate in open inquiry, collective choices, and actions in the interest of the common good.

89Katheryne Mitchell, “Education for Democratic Citizen-ship: Transnationalism, Multiculturalism, and the Limits of Liberalism,” Harvard Educational Review, 71 (2001): 51–78.90Furman and Starratt, “Leadership for Democratic Commu-nity in Schools.”91Furman and Starratt, “Leadership for Democratic Commu-nity in Schools.”

85Andy Hargreaves, “Rethinking Educational Change: Go-ing Deeper and Wider in the Quest for Success,” in A. Harg-reaves (ed.), Rethinking Educational Change with Heart and Mind (Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Cur-riculum Development, 1997), p. 22.86Patricia E. Calderwood, Learning Community: Finding Common Ground in Difference (New York: Teachers Col-lege Press, 2000); Gail C. Furman, School as Community: From Promise to Practice (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003); Karen F. Osterman, “Students’ Need for Belonging in the School Community,” Review of Educa-tional Research, 70 (2001): 323–367; Carolyn M. Shields, “Thinking about Community from a Student Perspective,” in G. Furman (ed.), School as Community: From Promise to Practice (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003).87Gail C. Furman and Robert J. Starratt, “Leadership for Democratic Community in Schools,” in J. Murphy (ed.), The Educational Leadership Challenge: Redefi ning Leadership for the 21st Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), pp. 105–133.88Carolyn M. Shields, Linda J. Larocque, and Steven L. Oberg, “A Dialogue about Race and Ethnicity in Education: Struggling to Understand Issues in Cross-Cultural Leader-ship,” Journal of School Leadership, 12 (2002): 132.

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4. Democratic community involves acting for others as well as with others in the interest of the common good.

5. Democratic community is based on the acceptance and celebration of difference, and focuses on the integral linkages between the school, the surround-ing community, and the larger global community.

6. Creating democratic community in schools involves systematic attention to structure, process, curricu-lum, and instruction.

Family and Community Involvement Schools alone cannot adequately provide children and youth with the necessary resources and support they need to be-come successful students, productive workers, and re-sponsible citizens in a democratic society. Family and community involvement in schools is viewed as so criti-cal for the success of students, especially poor and mi-nority students, that many reform programs include a family and community involvement component in their school improvement strategies.92

Epstein’s parent involvement strategies,93 Henry Levin’s Accelerated Schools,94 Robert Slavin’s Success for All schools,95 and James Comer’s School Develop-ment Program96 are grounded in developing inclusive and democratic connections with families and com-munities. The programs emphasize family and com-munity support processes. They provide the school’s faculty with strategies for increasing parent involve-ment, raising attendance rates, improving classroom management, preventing behavior problems, integrat-

ing social and health services, and solving other nonaca-demic problems. The programs structure the school in ways that fundamentally change the notion of school as merely an academic institution. Levin’s Accelerated Schools, Slavin’s Success for All schools, and Comer’s School Development Program have been shown to result in student success in school, including positive attitudes toward school, better at-tendance and behavior in school, higher rates of home-work completion, and better achievement in academic subjects. This research has been supplemented by stud-ies that have shown that well-planned activities, such as Epsein’s parent involvement strategies, can increase parent and community involvement even among fam-ilies traditionally considered hard to reach, including low-income, minority, and single-parent families.97

National and State Education Policies Research on the benefi ts of family and community involvement has had a positive effect on national policies during the past decade. The Goals 2000: Educate America Act of 1994, for example, identifi ed eight national goals for public schools. Goal 8 states:

Every school will promote partnerships that will increase parental involvement and participation in promoting the social, emotional, and academic growth of children.98

Linked to Goals 2000 was the Improving America’s Schools Act (IASA) of 1994, a reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. Among other things, this reauthorization strengthened the family involvement component of Title I, which seeks to improve the educational opportunities for and outcomes of poor children. The reauthorization of Title I mandated that school-level family involvement policies include parent-school agreements designed to clarify the goals, expectations, and shared responsibil-ities of schools and parents as partners in students’ ed-ucation. Such agreements were intended to be helpful frameworks for discussions between schools and par-ents about how to encourage better student performance in school. And, recently, “Title V: Promoting Informed Parental Choice and Innovative Programs” of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 contains numerous pro-visions for school, family, and community involvement in students’ learning.

92Mavis G. Sanders, Glenda L. Allen-Jones, and Yolanda Abel, “Involving Families and Communities in Educating Children and Youth,” in S. Stringfi eld and D. Land (eds.), Educating At-Risk Students (Chicago: Univeristy of Chicago Press, 2002), pp. 171–188.93Joyce L. Epstein, School, Family, and Community Partner-ships: Preparing Educators and Improving Schools (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2001).94Henry M. Levin, Accelerated Schools for At-Risk Students (CPRHE Research Report RR-010), (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University, Center for Policy Research in Education, 1987).95Robert E. Slavin and Nancy A. Madden (eds.), One Million Children: Success for All (Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2001).96James Comer, School Power: Implications for an Interven-tion Project (New York: Free Press, 1980); James Comer et al. (eds.), Rallying the Whole Village (New York: Teachers College Press, 1996).

97Epstein, School, Family, and Community Partnerships.98Goals 2000: Educate America Act of 1994, Sec. 102 (www.ed.gov/legislation/GOALS2000/TheAct/).

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States have developed standards to encourage greater family and community involvement in schools. Key educational reform groups, such as the Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium (ISLLC), the In-terstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consor-tium (INTASC), and the National Council for Accredi-tation of Teacher Education (NCATE), have developed standards pertaining to parent and community involve-ment in schools. Created in 1994, ISLLC is a consor-tium of thirty-two education agencies and thirteen educational administration associations that have es-tablished an education policy framework for school leadership. In 1996, the consortium adopted ISLLC Standards for School Leaders. Currently, thirty-eight states have either adopted or adapted the ISLLC Stan-dards and are in different stages of implementing the standards in reforming educational leadership within their state. Standard 4 of the six standards states:

A school administrator is an educational leader who promotes the success of all students by collaborating with families and community members, responding to diverse community interests and needs, and mobilizing commu-nity resources.99

In 1992, INTASC (a consortium of state education agencies, higher education institutions, and national education organizations) developed ten principles that all teachers should master. According to Principle 10, teachers are expected to foster relationships with school colleagues, parents, and community agencies to sup-port students’ learning. The NCATE emphasized in its standard for content knowledge that teacher candidates should understand principles and strategies for school, family, and community partnerships to support stu-dents’ learning.

Curriculum and Instruction A resurgence of inter-est in democratic community in recent years has im-plications for schools and schooling, particularly as it relates to curriculum and instruction. To be sure, the enactment of democratic community in schools would require changes in curriculum and instruction. These modifi cations would be compatible with some compo-nents found in Theodore Sizer’s Coalition of Essential

Schools (CES)100 and Mortimer Adler’s Paideia Pro-posal (PP).101 More specifi cally, two powerful strategies that are grounded in the tenets of democratic commu-nity and found in Sizer’s CES and Adler’s PP are critical thinking and constructivism.

Critical Thinking The Center for Critical Thinking provides an excellent treatise on critical thinking ap-plied to instruction.102 Critical thinking shifts classroom design from a model that largely ignores thinking to one that renders it pervasive and necessary. Critical teaching views content as something alive only in minds, modes of thinking driven by questions, existing in textbooks only to be regenerated in the minds of students. Once we understand content as inseparable from the thinking that generates, organizes, analyzes, synthe-sizes, evaluates, and transforms it, we recognize that content cannot in principle ever be “completed” be-cause thinking is never completed. To understand con-tent, therefore, is to understand its implications. But to understand its implications, one must understand that those implications in turn have further implications, and hence must be thoughtfully explored. The problem with didactic teaching is that content is inadvertently treated as static, as virtually dead. Con-tent is treated as something to be mimicked, to be par-roted. And because students only rarely process con-tent deeply when they play the role of passive listeners in lecture-centered instruction, little is learned in the long term. Furthermore, because students are taught content in a way that renders them unlikely to think it through, they retreat into rote memorization, aban-doning any attempt to grasp the logic of what they are committing to memory. Those who teach critically emphasize that only those who can think through content truly learn it. Content “dies” when one tries to learn it mechanically. Content has to take root in the thinking of students and, when properly learned, transforms the way they think. Hence,

100Theodore R. Sizer, Horace’s Compromise: The Dilemma of the American High School (Boston: Houghton Miffl in, 1984); Horace’s School: Redesigning the American High School (Boston: Houghton Miffl in, 1992); Horace’s Hope (Boston: Houghton Miffl in, 1997).101Mortimer J. Adler, The Paideia Proposal: An Educational Manifesto (New York: Macmillan, 1982).102Center for Critical Thinking, Critical Thinking and the Redesign of Instruction (Santa Rosa, CA: Center for Critical Thinking, 2003).

99Council of Chief State School Offi cers, Interstate School Offi cers, Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium: Standards for School Leaders (Washington, DC: Council of Chief State School Offi cers, 1996), p. 16.

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when students study a subject in a critical way, they take possession of a new mode of thinking that, so internal-ized, generates new thoughts, understandings, and be-liefs. Their thinking, now driven by a set of new ques-tions, becomes an instrument of insight and a new point of view. History texts become, in the minds of students thinking critically, a stimulus to historical thinking. Geography texts are internalized as geographical think-ing. Mathematical content is transformed into mathe-matical thinking. As a result of being taught to think critically, students study biology and become biological thinkers. They study sociology and begin to notice the permissions, injunctions, and taboos of the groups in which they participate. They study literature and begin to notice the way in which all humans tend to defi ne their lives in the stories they tell. They study economics and begin to notice how much of their behavior is in-tertwined with economic forces and needs. There are ways, indeed almost an unlimited num-ber, to stimulate critical thinking at every educational level and in every teaching setting. When considering technology for this stimulation, the World Wide Web (WWW) is important to instructional design; it con-tains three keys to educational value: hypertext, the delivery of multimedia, and true interactivity. These values are operant and alive in the classroom through such applications as graphics, audio, and video, which bring to life world events, museum tours, library vis-its, world visits, and up-to-date weather maps. Through these WWW mechanisms, a constructivist instructional model advances higher-level instruction, such as prob-lem solving and increased learner control. The WWW becomes a necessary tool for student- centered discovery and research. Of course, it can also be used for lower-level drill and practice. At every level and in all subjects, students need to learn how to ask questions precisely, defi ne contexts and purposes, pursue relevant information, analyze key concepts, derive sound inferences, generate good reasons, recognize questionable assumptions, trace im-portant implications, and think empathetically within different points of view. The WWW enables learners and teachers in each area by providing information for good reasoners to fi gure things out. Critical thinking may be a key organizing concept for curriculum reform and for improving teaching and learning.103

Constructivism Constructivism may be the most sig-nifi cant recent trend in education relative to the dynamic relationship between how teachers teach and how chil-dren learn. One foundational premise of constructiv-ism is that children actively construct their knowledge, rather than simply absorbing ideas spoken to them by teachers. For example, more than thirty years ago, Jean Piaget proposed that children make sense in ways very different from adults, and that they learn through the process of trying to make things happen, trying to ma-nipulate their environment. Theories such as these, which assert that “people are not recorders of informa-tion, but builders of knowledge structures,” have been grouped under the heading of constructivism.104 Thus, students are ultimately responsible for their own learn-ing within a learning atmosphere in which teachers value student thinking, initiate lessons that foster co-operative learning, provide opportunities for students to be exposed to interdisciplinary curriculum, struc-ture learning around primary concepts, and facilitate authentic assessment of student understanding. In constructivist theory, it is assumed that learners have to construct their own knowledge — individually and collectively. Each learner has a repertoire of con-ceptions and skills with which she or he must construct knowledge to solve problems presented by the environ-ment. The role of the teacher and other learners is to provide the setting, pose the challenges, and offer the support that will encourage cognitive construction. Because students lack the experience of experts in the fi eld, teachers bear a great responsibility for guiding student activity, modeling behavior, and providing ex-amples that will transform student group discussions into meaningful communication about subject matter. Constructivism emphasizes the processes by which children create and develop their ideas. Applications lie in creating curricula that not only match but also chal-lenge children’s understanding, fostering further growth and development of the mind. Furthermore, when chil-dren collaborate in cooperative learning groups, they share the process of constructing their ideas with oth-ers. This collective effort provides the opportunity for children to refl ect on and elaborate not only their own ideas but also those of their peers. With improvement of and access to the WWW, the children’s cooperative classroom becomes the world. In this cooperative learn-ing setting, children view their peers as resources rather

103Center for Critical Thinking, Critical Thinking and the Redesign of Instruction.

104Jean Piaget, “Piaget’s Theory,” in P. Mussen (ed.), Car-michael’s Manual of Child Psychology, Vol. I (New York: Wiley, 1970), pp. 703–732.

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than as competitors. A feeling of teamwork ensues. These processes have resulted in substantial advances in student learning.105 Constructivism is serving as the basis for many of the current reforms in several subject matter disci-plines. The National Council of Teachers of Mathemat-ics published Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics, which calls for mathemat-ics classrooms where problem solving, concept devel-opment, and the construction of learner-generated so-lutions and algorithms are stressed rather than drill and practice on correct procedures and facts to get the “right” answer.106 The National Committee on Science Education Standards and Assessment similarly issued National Science Education Standards, which calls for science education reform based on experimentation and learner-generated inquiry, investigations, hypothe-ses, and models.107 The National Council of Teachers of English has called for emergent literacy as an important thrust in language arts reform. Interdisciplinary curri-cula is the theme of social studies reform being advo-cated by the National Council of Social Studies. In sum, in Sizer’s Coalition of Essential Schools and Adler’s Pai-deia Proposal, critical thinking and constructivism are compatible with the principles of democratic commu-nity, particularly the open fl ow of ideas, critical refl ec-tion and analysis to evaluate ideas, and dialogue.

Social Justice

A concern for social justice is at the core of democ-racy. The United States prides itself on being a fair and just democracy, a nation in which every citizen is to be treated equally in social, economic, political, and ed-ucational arenas. According to its Constitution, the United States seeks to establish “liberty and justice for all.” In spite of these goals, U.S. society is composed of many inequities: rich and poor, educated and illiterate, powerful and powerless. Now in the fi rst decade of the twenty-fi rst century, educational leaders must continue

to question whether they have an obligation to create a nation whose words are supported by the experiences of its citizens. The Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Consti-tution addressed the question of equal opportunity, declaring that “no state shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” The mandate that people receive equal protection extends to equal educational opportunity. While this funda-mental affi rmation of equal opportunity has been part of American discourse since the inception of this nation and is found in the Declaration of Independence and other documents, inequities in the major social, eco-nomic, political, and educational institutions continue to exist in American society. Inequities in schooling are among the social injus-tices with which educational leaders need to be most concerned. Although it has been a stated goal in the United States that all youngsters, regardless of family background, should benefi t from their education, many students do not. Most schools do not teach all students at the same academic level. The U.S. educational sys-tem to this day is beset with inequities that exacerbate racial and class-based challenges. Differential levels of success in school distributed along race and social-class lines continues to be the most pernicious and prevail-ing dilemma of schooling. Furthermore, there is con-siderable empirical evidence that children of color ex-perience negative and inequitable treatment in typical public schools.108

Many children of color fi nd themselves marginal-ized in toxic schools that offer inferior education. These schools affect the opportunities and experiences of stu-dents of color in several immediate ways: They tend to have limited resources; textbooks and curricula are outdated; and computers are few and obsolete. Many of the teachers do not have credentials in the subjects they teach. Tracking systems block minority students’ access to the more rigorous and challenging classes, which retain these students in non-college-bound des-tinations. These schools generally offer few (if any) Ad-vanced Placement courses, which are critical for entry into many of the more competitive colleges. Further-more, African American students are overrepresented in special education programs, compared with the over-all student population. More than a third of African

108Linda Skrla, James J. Scheurich, Joseph F. Johnson, and James W. Koschoreck, “Accountability for Equity: Can State Policy Leverage Social Justice?” International Journal of Leadership in Education, 4 (2001): 237–260.

105Jacqueline Grennon Brooks and Martin G. Brooks, In Search of Understanding: The Case for Constructivist Class-rooms (Baltimore: Association for Supervision and Curricu-lum Development, 2003).106National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics (Reston, VA: Author, 1989).107National Committee on Science Education Standards and Assessment, National Science Education Standards (Wash-ington, DC: National Academy Press, 1996).

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American students (as compared with fewer than a fi fth of white students) in special education are labeled with the more stigmatizing labels of “mentally retarded” and “emotionally disturbed.” Conversely, four-fi fths of the white students (as compared with two-thirds of the Af-rican American students) in special education are much more likely to be labeled “learning disabled” or “speech impaired.” African American males are more than twice as likely as white males to be suspended or ex-pelled from school or to receive corporal punishment.109 Jonathan Kozol, in Savage Inequalities, described the inferior education received by minority students (partic-ularly African Americans and Hispanic Americans) —fewer resources, inequities in funding, inadequate fa-cilities, tracking systems, low expectations, segregated schools, and hostile learning environments.110

These related inequities, the persistent and dispro-portionate academic underachievement of children of color and their injurious treatment in our schools, are compelling evidence that the United States public edu-cation system remains systemically racist.111 This is not to suggest that racism is consciously intended or even recognized by educators; it is institutional racism that is systemically embedded in assumptions, policies and procedures, practices, and structures of schooling. Nevertheless, every day more than 17 million African American, Hispanic American, Native American, and Asian American children experience the effects of sys-temic racism in U.S. public schools.112

Systemic Racism in Schools Racism in the United States includes a broad spectrum (individual, institu-tional, white racism, racial prejudice, interethnic and in-traethnic hostility, and cultural racism to name a few).113 African American, Asian American, European Ameri-can, Hispanic American, Native American, and mixed racial categories all play a part within these subtle racist systems. However, the targets of racism in our schools

and in society are people of color through both institu-tional and individual racism. Racial prejudice, individ-ual bigotry, and institutional racism have devastating effects on students and society at large. The disproportionate academic underachievement by children of color has been the driving force behind the current accountability policy in the United States. However, a shift in U.S. demographics would seem to exacerbate the problem of achieving educational equity and its attendant impact on social justice. The student population grows increasingly diverse, the teaching force remains predominantly white, and achievement of children of color continues to lag signifi cantly be-hind their white counterparts.114

Demographic trends indicate that growth in the nation’s minority population will have signifi cant im-plications for public schools. In 1990, the total popu-lation of the United States was 248.7 million and in-creased to 281.4 million in 2000, an increase of 32.7 million people.115 A signifi cant proportion of individu-als making up this increase are people of color. Demo-graphic projections indicate that the nation’s popula-tion will grow to 294 million by the year 2020. At that time, more than 98 million Americans, one-third of the nation, will be nonwhite.116 Moreover, students of color are the fastest-growing segment of the school popula-tion and have been the least well served by the schools. The U.S. Census in 2000 reported that of the nation’s 49 million elementary and secondary school students, 38 million were white; 8 million were African Ameri-can; 7.3 million were Hispanic American, and 2.1 mil-lion were Asian or Pacifi c Islanders. Experts project that the percentage of students of color in elementary and secondary schools will increase steadily during the coming decades from 30 percent in 1990 to 36 percent in 2000 and will reach 50 percent of the public school population in the twenty-fi ve major cities in the United States.117

109Carola Suárez-Orozco and Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco, Children of Immigration (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer-sity Press, 2001).110Jonathan Kozol, Savage Inequalities: Children in Ameri-ca’s Schools (New York: Crown, 1991).111Skrla, Scheurich, Johnson, and Koschoreck, “Accountabil-ity for Equity: Can State Policy Leverage Social Justice?”112Linda Skrla, “Accountability, Equity, and Complexity,” Educational Researcher, 30 (2001): 15–21.113Karen B. McLean Donaldson, Shattering the Denial: Pro-tocols for the Classroom and Beyond (Westport, CT: Green-wood, 2000).

114Kathy Hytten and Amee Adkins, “Thinking Through a Pedagogy of Whiteness,” Educational Theory, 51 (2001): 432–449.115U.S. Census Bureau, United States Department of Com-merce, School Enrollment (Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau, 2000).116Harold Hodgkinson, Demographics of Education: Kin-dergarten through Graduate School (Washington, DC: Insti-tute for Educational Leadership, 2001).117National Center for Education Statistics, Characteristics of the 100 Largest Public Elementary and Secondary School Districts in the United States: 2000–2001 (Washington, DC: Author, 2004).

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In general, similar demographic shifts have not occurred in the teaching ranks. Despite the changing racial makeup of public school students in the United States, 87.7 percent of the teaching force is white, 9.3 per-cent is African American, and 3.0 percent is classifi ed as “other.”118 This often results in considerable cul-tural and social distance between middle-class white teachers and students of color. Young and Laible sug-gest that white educators and educational leaders do not have a thorough enough understanding of racism in its many manifestations, nor do they comprehend the ways in which they are perpetuating white racism in their schools.119 Short further summarizes the conse-quences of this mismatch between white middle-class teachers and students of color. She cites how teacher preparation programs rarely train teacher candidates in strategies for teaching culturally diverse students. The lack of familiarity with their students’ cultures, learn-ing styles, and communication patterns translates into teachers holding negative expectations for students, what some theorists refer to as defi cit thinking.120 And often, inappropriate curricula, instructional materials, and assessments are used with these students.121

Murray and Clark found eight forms of racism oper-ating in U.S. schools at all grade levels: (1) hostile and insensitive acts; (2) bias in the use of harsh sanctions; (3) inequalities in the amount of teacher attention given to students; (4) bias in the selection of curriculum ma-terials; (5) inequalities in the amount of instructional time provided; (6) biased attitudes toward students; (7) failure to hire educators and other personnel of color; and (8) denial of racist actions.122 These subtle forms of racism that exist in schools threaten the aca-demic success of students of color. For example, denial of racist actions and attitudes, and biased education,

policies, and hiring practices, are present in schools at all levels and adversely affect students’ success in school. For example, Donaldson found that racist treat-ments affect the learning and development of students of color. The study confi rmed that, as a result of racist treatment, students felt low self-esteem, causing dimin-ished interest in school; a perceived need to overachieve academically; and guilt and embarrassment at seeing other students victimized.123 Thomas Good reviewed the research on teachers’ differential treatment of high-achieving students and at-risk students. He identifi ed seventeen teaching be-haviors that are used with different frequencies with the two groups of students. These behaviors defi ne a pattern of diminished expectations for at-risk students’ ability to learn, and perhaps a lower regard for their personal worth as learners. The teaching practices are as follows: (1) wait less time for at-risk students to answer ques-tions, (2) give at-risk students the answer or call on someone else rather than try to improve their responses by giving clues or using other teaching techniques, (3) reward inappropriate behavior or incorrect an-swers by at-risk students, (4) criticize at-risk students more often for failure, (5) praise at-risk students less frequently than high-achieving students for success, (6) fail to give feedback to the public responses of at-risk students, (7) pay less attention to at-risk students or interact with them less frequently, (8) call on at-risk students less often to respond to questions, or ask them only easier, nonanalytical questions, (9) seat at-risk stu-dents farther away from the teacher, (10) demand less from at-risk students, (11) interact with at-risk students more privately than publicly and monitor and structure their activities more closely, (12) grade tests or assign-ments in a differential manner, so that high-achieving but not at-risk students are given the benefi t of the doubt in borderline cases, (13) have less friendly inter-action with at-risk students including less smiling and less warm or more anxious voice tones, (14) provide briefer and less informative feedback to the questions of at-risk students, (15) provide less eye contact and other nonverbal communication of attention and responsive-ness when interacting with at-risk students, (16) make less use of effective but time-consuming instructional methods with at-risk students when time is limited, and (17) evidence less acceptance and use of ideas given by at-risk students. According to Good, academic achieve-ment is highly correlated with race and social class,

123Karen B. Donaldson, Through Students’ Eyes: Combating Racism in United States Schools (London: Praeger, 1996).

118National Education Association, Status of the American Public School Teacher, 2000–2001 (Washington, DC: Au-thor, 2004).119Michelle Young and Julie Laible, “White Racism, Antira-cism, and School Leadership Preparation,” Journal of School Leadership, 10 (2000): 374–415.120Richard R. Valencia, The Evolution of Defi cit Thinking: Educational Thought and Practice (London: Falmer, 1997).121Donna J. Short, “Integrating Language and Content for Effective Sheltered Instruction Programs,” in C. J. Faltis and P. M. Wolfe (eds.), So Much to Say: Adolescents, Bilingual-ism, and ESL in the Secondary School (New York: Teachers College Press, 1999).122Carolyn Murray and Reginald Clark, “Targets of Racism,” American School Board Journal, 177 (1990): 22–24.

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which means that at-risk students are more likely to come from disadvantaged home backgrounds, whereas high-achieving students are likely to come from advan-taged home backgrounds. Therefore, the differential teaching behaviors found by Good suggest a pattern of discrimination based on students’ race and social class as well as their achievement level.124 A recent Education Trust document concluded, “We take students who have less to begin with and give them less in school too.”125 Darling-Hammond con-fi rmed this data, making explicit reference to teach-ers in the schools. Being poor, being of color, being an inner-city resident do not cause differences in educa-tional achievement. Rather, the lack of resources put into the education of some students and the inequita-ble treatment of children of color and low-income chil-dren are the major causes of difference and social injus-tice. And teachers are the most important educational resource available to students.126

In its simplest form, social justice is linked to re-dressing institutionalized inequality and systemic rac-ism. Rawls argues that social justice is defi ned by four principles.127 The fi rst is based on equality of treatment of all members of society (equal rights and liberties). The second is based on all people being regarded as individuals. The third involves giving everyone a fair chance (equal opportunity). The fourth involves giving the greatest social and economic benefi ts to those least advantaged. The application of these four principles of social justice to education would mean that more re-sources should be allocated to improve circumstances of those historically least served by the system rather than treating all individuals equally. The notion of so-cial justice suggests that treating all people equally may be inherently unequal. Rawls argues that all education stakeholders are obligated not only to safeguard indi-viduals’ rights, but also to actively redress inequality of opportunity in education. This notion posits that educational leaders are obligated to examine the cir-cumstances in which children of color and poverty

are educated. Social justice in schooling, then, would mean equal treatment, access, and outcomes for chil-dren from oppressed groups. It would mean closing the achievement gap between children from low-income communities and communities of color and their main-stream peers so they are successful in school so that school success would be equitable across such differ-ences as race and socioeconomic status. It would mean working toward such a vision of social justice in school by engaging the powerful force of accountability pol-icy, that is, excellence and equity for all children.

Excellence and Equity Educational leadership for so-cial justice is founded on the belief that schooling must be democratic, and an understanding that schooling is not democratic “unless its practices are excellent and equitable.”128 Skrtic asserts that educational equity “is a precondition for excellence.”129 Gordon linked social justice to excellence and equity by arguing:

The failure to achieve universally effective education in our society is known to be a correlate of our failure to achieve social justice. By almost any measure, there continue to be serious differences between the level and quality of educational achievement for children coming from rich or from poor families, and from ethnic-majority or from some ethnic-minority group families. Low status ethnic-minority groups continue to be overrepresented in the low achievement groups in our schools and are corre-spondingly underrepresented in high academic achieve-ment groups.130

We must achieve equal educational results for all chil-dren. Failure to do so will hamper specifi c groups from attaining the fundamental, primary goods and services distributed by society — rights, liberties, self-respect, power, opportunities, income, and wealth. Education is a social institution, controlling access to important opportunities and resources. Education policy in the United States is dominated by accountability concerns. Public education issues are a top priority of national and state political agendas. The Goals 2000: Educate America Act of 1994, the Im-proving America’s Schools Act (IASA) of 1994, a reau-124Thomas L. Good, “Two Decades of Research on Teacher

Expectations: Findings and Future Directions,” Journal of Teacher Education, 38 (1987): 32–47.125Education Trust, Education Watch: The 2001 Educa-tion Trust State and National Data Book (Washington, DC: Author, 2002).126Linda Darling-Hammond, Doing What Matters Most: In-vesting in Quality Teaching (New York: National Commis-sion on Teaching and America’s Future, 1997).127James Rawls, A Theory of Justice (London: Oxford Uni-versity Press, 1971).

128Thomas M. Skrtic, Behind Special Education: A Critical Analysis of Professional Culture and School Organization (Denver, CO: Love, 1991), p. 199.129Thomas M. Skrtic, “The Special Education Paradox: Eq-uity as a Way to Excellence,” Harvard Educational Review, 61 (1991): 181.130Edmund W. Gordon, Education and Justice: A View from the Back of the Bus (New York: Teachers College Press, 1999), p. XII.

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thorization of the Elementary and Secondary Educa-tion Act of 1965, and the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 call for equal treatment, access, and outcomes for all children. There are numerous reports that demonstrate that it is possible to fi nd effective public schools where ad-ministrators, teachers, and parents collaborate to pro-duce high achievement for all students. But these suc-cesses occur in only a small number of schools. We still cannot account for the fact that some students master academic content and many others do not. And there is little research on organizational design and practice in exceptionally high-performing school districts.131 The available documentation does point to some common themes that high-performing school districts possess, but the knowledge base on which to offer advice to school districts and administrators on the design of sus-tained districtwide improvement processes is limited. Government offi cials, academic scholars, business leaders, and the educational community have begun to look at state accountability systems to realize the vision that “equity and excellence need not be mutually exclu-sive goals.”132 Within the past ten years a few examples of sustained districtwide academic success of children have begun to emerge in the research literature. These examples have appeared in states that have highly devel-oped, stable accountability systems, such as Connecti-cut, Kentucky, New York, North Carolina, and Texas. There is evidence from these states and others that their accountability systems driven by state policy initiatives have improved student performance for all students (as measured by state achievement tests, National Assess-ment of Educational Progress (NAEP), Advanced Place-ment (AP) exams, and ACT and SAT tests. In addition, there is evidence of narrowing of the achievement gap between the performance of children of color and low-income children and that of their white and more eco-nomically advantaged counterparts.133

Preliminary research in some of these districts found evidence of common strategic elements in the way these districts managed themselves. Superintendents in high-performing districts exhibited a much greater clarity of purpose, along with a much greater willing-ness to exercise tighter controls over evidence of per-formance. They used data on student performance to focus attention on problems and successes; they built

district accountability systems that complemented their own state’s system; and they forged strong relationships with their school boards around improvement goals. They created a climate in which teachers and princi-pals were collectively responsible for student learning and in which the improvement of instruction was the central task. Incentive structures in these districts fo-cused on the performance of all students, not just on average school performance. Superintendents realigned district offi ces in these school districts to focus on di-rect relationships with schools around instructional is-sues; and they focused more energy and resources on content-specifi c professional development.134 The suc-cess of these school districts confi rms the fi ndings of Valencia that it is critically important for school lead-ers to reject assumptions of defi cit thinking.135 Leaders who reject defi cit thinking about students and their par-ents engage in what many theorists call capacity build-ing, helping people to acquire skills and dispositions to learn new ways of thinking and acting.136 Darling-Hammond underscores the fundamental importance of capacity-building skills on the part of educators when she states that the capacity to “achieve associations be-yond those of any narrow group — to live and learn het-erogeneously together”137 undergirds our ability to live in a diverse democratic society.138

Leadership in Schools

We will examine several leadership frameworks in Chapter 5. A few deserve brief mention here for their contributions to the post–behavioral science era. In ad-dition, we mention briefl y here attempts by some schol-ars to expand the traditional knowledge domains that defi ne educational leadership. In his examination of the concept of transforma-tional leadership, Bernard Bass contrasts two types of leadership behavior: transactional and transforma-tional.139 According to Bass, transactional leaders de-termine what subordinates need to do to achieve their own and organizational goals, classify those require-

134Elmore, School Reform from the Inside Out.135Richard R. Valencia, The Evolution of Defi cit Thinking.136Fullan, Learning Places.137Darling-Hammond, Doing What Matters Most.138Shields, Larocque, and Oberg, “A Dialogue about Race and Ethnicity in Education: Struggling to Understand Issues in Cross-Cultural Leadership.”139Bernard M. Bass et al., Transformation Leadership (Mah-wah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2005).

131Elmore, School Reform from the Inside Out.132Debra Viadero, “Setting the Bar: How High?” Education Week, 17 (1999): 24.133Skrla, Scheurich, Johnson, and Koschoreck, “Accountabil-ity for Equity: Can State Policy Leverage Social Justice?”

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ments, help subordinates become confi dent that they can reach their goals by expending the necessary ef-forts, and reward them according to their accomplish-ments. Transformational leaders, in contrast, motivate their subordinates to do more than they originally ex-pected to do. They accomplish this in three ways: by raising followers’ levels of consciousness about the im-portance and value of designated outcomes and ways of reaching them; by getting followers to transcend their own self-interest for the sake of the team, organization, or larger polity; and by raising followers’ need levels to the higher-order needs, such as self-actualization, or by expanding their portfolio of needs. One of the most comprehensive models of transfor-mational leadership in schools has been provided by Leithwood. The model conceptualizes transformational leadership along eight dimensions: building school vi-sion, establishing school goals, providing intellectual stimulation, offering individualized support, modeling best practices and important educational values, dem-onstrating high performance expectations, creating a productive school culture, and developing structures to foster participation in school decisions.140

Peter Senge provides important insight into how ed-ucators can transform schools into “learning organiza-tions” that renew themselves.141 A number of observers have suggested that the increasing complexity of mod-ern organizations puts a greater premium on leaders’ possession of a repertoire of styles and strategies. Bol-man and Deal,142 for example, argue that the ability to reframe — to reconceptualize the same situation using multiple perspectives — is a central capacity for leaders of the twenty-fi rst century. W. Edwards Deming’s Total Quality Management (TQM) principles are revitalizing businesses, service organizations, universities, and ele-mentary and secondary schools.143

Irby and her colleagues have developed a new the-ory of leadership sensitive to the feminine perspective called the synergistic leadership theory. Six aspects par-

ticular to the synergistic leadership theory infl uence the ideas and include issues concerning diversity and the inclusion of the female voice in the theory. Four factors are key to the relational and interactive nature of the theory, which provides a useful framework for building and understanding the interdependent relationships. In a tetrahedron model, the theory uses four factors, in-cluding leadership behavior, organizational structure, external forces, and attitudes, beliefs, and values to demonstrate aspects not only of leadership but its ef-fects on various institutions and positions. Developed through a qualitative approach, the theory has been validated qualitatively and quantitatively nationwide and is currently being validated internationally.144

Subjectivist and interpretivist approaches to the study of educational administration (variously labeled neo-Marxist/critical theory and postmodernism) emerged in the late 1970s and have continued to the present. The scholars in this tradition have attempted to expand the traditional knowledge domains that defi ne educational administration. These alternative, nontra-ditional perspectives have spawned scholarship on eth-ics and values by researchers such as Christopher Hodg-kinson, Jackie Stefkovich, Joan Shapiro, Lynn Beck, and Jerry Starratt; gender, race/ethnicity, and class by scholars such as Carol Gilligan, Sonia Nieto, Lisa Del-pit, Charol Shakeshaft, Margaret Grogan, Cryss Brun-ner, Marilyn Tallerico, Beverly Irby, Genevieve Brown, Linda Skrla, Joseph F. Johnson, Flora Ida Ortiz, Cath-erine Marshall, Kofi Lomotey, Barbara Jackson, Diana Pounder, Norma Mertz, Cynthia Dillard, and Gretchen Rossman; and critical theory and postmodernism by analysts such as T. B. Greenfi eld, Henry Giroux, Rich-ard Bates, Peter McLaren, William Foster, Fenwick En-glish, Colleen Capper, Spencer Maxcy, James Scheu-rich, Michael Dantley, Cornel West, Michelle Young, Colleen Larson, Gail Furman, Gary Anderson, Caro-lyn Shields, Patti Lather, and Paulo Freire.

Development of Administrative Thought

We have attempted to place the development of admin-istrative thought into a loose historical framework. In general, four models emerge: classical organizational theory, the human relations approach, the behavioral science approach, and the post–behavioral science ap-

140Kenneth Leithwood, “Leadership for School Restructur-ing,” Educational Administration Quarterly, 35 (1994): 498–518.141Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization (New York: Doubleday, 1990, 2006).142Lee G. Bolman and Terrence E. Deal, Reframing Organi-zations: Artistry, Choice, and Leadership, 3rd ed. (San Fran-cisco: Jossey-Bass, 2003).143W. Edwards Deming, Out of the Crisis (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988).

144Beverly J. Irby, Genevieve Brown, JoAnn Duffy, and Diane Trautman, “The Synergistic Leadership Theory,” Journal of Educational Administration, 40 (2002): 304–322.

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proach. The classical “rational” model evolved around the ideas of scientifi c and administrative management, including the study of administrative processes and managerial functions. The human relations “social” model was spurred by some early seminal social sci-ence research, including experimentation and analy-sis of the social and psychological aspects of people in the workplace and the study of group behavior. The be-

havioral science approach was an attempt to reconcile the basic incongruency between the rational-economic model and the social model. The more recent post–behavioral science approach includes the interrelated concepts of school improvement, democratic commu-nity, and social justice, as well as postmodernism. Table 1–2 briefl y summarizes the major differences among the four approaches to administrative thought.

Table 1–2 Overview of the Four Major Developments in Administrative Thought

Management Period Elements Procedures Contributors and Basic Concepts

Classical Leadership Top to bottom Time-and-motion study, functional supervisor, organizational Organization Machine piece rate (Taylor); fi ve basic functions, fourteentheory Production Individual principles of management (Fayol); POSDCoRB Process Anticipated (Gulick); ideal bureaucracy (Weber) consequences Authority Rules; coercive Administration Leader separate Reward Economic Structure Formal

Human Leadership All directions Hawthorne studies (Mayo, Roethlisberger, and relations Organization Organism Dickson); intellectual undercurrents: group dynamicsapproach Production Group leadership studies (Lewin, Lippitt, and White); client- Process Unanticipated centered therapy (Rogers); sociometric technique consequences (Moreno); human relations in the restaurant industry Authority Group norms (Whyte); small groups (Homans) Administration Participative Reward Social and psychological Structure Informal

Behavioral Consideration Cooperative systems (Barnard); fusion process (Bakke); optimal actualization —science of all major organization and individual (Argyris); social systems theory — nomothetic approach elements with and idiographic (Getzels and Guba); need hierarchy (Maslow); Theory X and Y heavy emphasis (McGregor); hygiene–motivation (Herzberg); Systems 1–4 (Likert); open–closed on contingency climates (Halpin and Croft); managerial grid (Blake and Mouton); contingency leadership, culture, theory (Fiedler); situational leadership (Hersey and Blanchard); expectancy theory transformational (Vroom); 3–D leadership (Reddin); compliance theory (Etzioni); structure of leadership, and organizations (Mintzberg); leadership–unconscious conspiracy (Bennis) systems theory

Post–behavioral Interrelated School improvement, democratic community, and social justice (Murphy); trans-science approach concepts of school formational leadership (Bass, Leithwood); learning organization (Senge); reframing improvement, organizations (Bolman and Deal); TQM (Deming); synergistic leadership theory democratic (Irby, Brown, Duffy, and Trautman); instructional leadership, tranformational community, and leadership, managerial leadership, moral leadership, participative leadership, social justice with refl ective/craft leadership (Leithwood and Duke); values and ethics (Hodgkinson, heavy emphasis Stefkovich, Shapiro, Beck, and Starratt); gender, race/ethnicity, and class (Gilligan, on leadership; Nieto, Delpit, Shakeshaft, Grogan, Brunner, Tallerico, Irby, Brown, Skrla, and emergent Johnson, Ortiz, Marshall, Lomotey, Jackson, Pounder, Mertz, Dillard, Rossman); nontraditional critical theory and postmodernism (T. B. Greenfi eld, Derrida, Foucault, Lyotard, perspectives Giroux, Bates, Williams, Habermas, McLaren, Foster, English, Capper, Maxcy, Scheurich, Dantley, West, Young, Larson, Furman, Anderson, Shields, Lather,

Freire, and Murtadha)

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As shown in Table 1–2, differences in leadership, organization, production, process, power, administra-tion, reward, and structure are important distinguishing characteristics of the four approaches. We can see how organization and administrative theory have evolved from a concern for effi ciency and the basic principles of management to an emphasis on human and psycho-logical factors, to social systems and contingency the-ory, and fi nally, to a concern for school improvement, democratic community, social justice, and postmodern-ism. While we have not included all people who have made contributions in the evolution of administrative thought, we have highlighted major contributors and basic concepts and primary eras in the evolution. Fur-thermore, no attempt is made to date the eras precisely. In fact, if we view the sequence of developments in orga-nizational and administrative theory, we notice a corre-lational rather than a compensatory tendency. Traces of the past coexist with modern approaches to administration. For example, while the classical “ratio-nal” model has been modifi ed somewhat since its emer-gence during the 1900s, views of the school as a rational-technical system remain fi rmly embedded in the minds of policymakers and pervade most educational reforms proposed since the publication of A Nation at Risk in 1983145 and the many reports that followed. Indeed, this view of schooling is in place today with current accountability policy to assess student, teacher, and school performance. Implicit in the No Child Left Be-hind Act of 2001146 is the concomitant expectation that school administrators and teachers will adjust instruc-tional strategies to yield more effective learning out-comes for all children.

Systems Theory

One of the more useful concepts in understanding or-ganizations is the idea that an organization is a system. A system can be defi ned as a set of inter related elements that function as a unit for a specifi c purpose. Systems theory is a way of viewing schools as learning organi-zations.147 Senge suggests that an organization must be

studied as a whole, taking into consideration the inter-relationships among its parts and its relationship with the external environment. The learning organization concept has received much attention since the initial publication of Peter Senge’s book The Fifth Discipline in 1990, now in its second edition. A learning organization is a strategic commitment to capture and share learning in the orga-nization for the benefi t of individuals, teams, and the organi zation. It does this through alignment and the collective capacity to sense and interpret a changing en-vironment; to input new knowledge through continu-ous learning and change; to imbed this knowledge in systems and practices; and to transform this knowledge into outputs. Senge defi nes the learning organization as “organi-zations where people continually expand their capac-ity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free and where people are continually learning how to learn together.”148 Senge describes a model of fi ve interdependent disciplines necessary for an organization to seriously pursue learn-ing. He identifi es systems thinking as the “fi fth disci-pline” because he believes that thinking systemically is the pivotal lever in the learning and change process. Brief defi nitions of Senge’s principles follow.

■ Systems thinking: A conceptual framework that sees all parts as interrelated and affecting each other.

■ Personal mastery: A process of personal commit ment to vision, excellence, and lifelong learning.

■ Shared vision: Sharing an image of the future you want to realize together.

■ Team learning: The process of learning collectively; the idea that two brains are smarter than one.

■ Mental models: Deeply ingrained assumptions that infl uence personal and organizational views and behaviors.

The fi ve disciplines work together to create the learn-ing organization. A metaphor to describe this systems theory–based model would be DNA or a hologram. Each is a complex system of patterns, and the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Senge, author of the best-selling book, The Fifth Discipline, has written a companion book directly fo-

145National Commission on Excellence in Education, A Na-tion at Risk (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Offi ce, 1983).146No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (www.ed.gov/nclb/landing.jhtml?src=pb).147Senge, The Fifth Discipline. 148Senge, The Fifth Discipline, p. 3.

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cused on education. In Schools That Learn,149 Senge argues that teachers, administrators, and other school stakeholders must learn how to build their own capac-ity; that is, they must develop the capacity to learn. From Senge’s perspective, real improvement will occur only if people responsible for implementation design the change itself. He argues that schools can be re- created, made vital, and renewed not by fi at or command, and not by regulation, but by embracing the principles of the learning organization. Senge makes a powerful argument regarding the need for a systems approach and learning orientation. He provides a historical perspective on educational sys-tems. Specifi cally, he details “industrial age” assump-tions about learning: that children are defi cient and schools should fi x them, that learning is strictly an in-tellectual enterprise, that everyone should learn in the same way, that classroom learning is distinctly different from that occurring outside of school, and that some kids are smart while others are not. He further asserts that schools are run by specialists who maintain control, that knowledge is inherently fragmented, that schools teach some kind of objective truth, and that learning is primarily individualistic and competition accelerates learning. Senge suggests that these assumptions about learning and the nature and purpose of schooling refl ect deeply embedded cultural beliefs that must be consid-ered, and in many cases directly confronted, if schools are to develop the learning orientation necessary for improvement. Through learning, people make meaning of their ex-perience and of information. Learning helps people to create and manage knowledge that builds a system’s in-tellectual capital. Karen Watkins and Victoria Marsick have developed a model of the learning organization around seven action imperatives that speak to the kind of initiatives that are implemented in learning organi-zations. (See Administrative Advice 1–1.)

Basic Systems Model

Figure 1–1 depicts the basic systems theory of orga-nizations, which has fi ve parts: inputs, a transforma-tion process, outputs, feedback, and the environment. Inputs are the human, material, fi nancial, or informa-tion resources used to produce a product or service.

Through technology and administrative functions, the inputs undergo a transformation process. In schools the inter action between students and teachers is part of the transformation or learning process by which stu-dents become educated citizens capable of contributing to society. Outputs include the organi zation’s products and services. An educational organization generates and distributes knowledge. Feedback is information con-cerning the outputs or the process of the organization that infl uences the selection of inputs during the next cycle. Such information may lead to changes in both the transformation process and future outputs. The envi-ronment surrounding the organization includes the so-cial, political, and economic forces that impinge on the organization. The environment in the systems model takes on added signifi cance today in a climate of policy account-ability. The social, political, and economic contexts in which school administrators work are marked by pressures at the local, state, and national levels. Thus, school administrators today fi nd it necessary to man-age and develop “internal” operations while concur-rently monitoring the environment and anticipating and responding to “external” demands. Since the publication of A Nation at Risk in 1983,150 education has been near the top of the national politi-cal agenda. The report nationalized the discussion con-cerning the well-being of public schooling in America. It linked the health of the economy to the performance of the public school system. Furthermore, at the time the report was released, the United States was in a se-vere recession, and there was concern regarding our economic competitiveness with other nations. In par-ticular, comparisons were made between Japanese in-dustrial performance and that of the United States. These economic comparisons led to corresponding edu-cational comparisons, and many people concluded that the U.S. public school system was underperforming.151

While there was little change at the national level concerning educational reform, the scope of state in-volvement greatly expanded, including intrusion into the technical core of schooling (teaching and learning). Issues addressed were what should be taught, how it should be taught, how students should be grouped for

149Peter Senge, Schools That Learn (New York: Doubleday, 2001).

150National Commission on Excellence in Education, A Na-tion at Risk.151David C. Berliner and Bruce J. Biddle, The Manufactured Crisis: Myths, Fraud and the Attack on America’s Public Schools (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1995).

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Administrative Advice 1–1

The Seven Action Imperatives of a Learning Organization

The seven action imperatives can be interpreted in terms of what must change to help schools

become learning organizations.

■ Create Continuous Learning Opportunities. This means

that learning is ongoing, strategically used, and grows

out of the work itself. Administrators and teachers have

many opportunities to con sciously look at what they

are learning from new initiatives. They can look at re-

sults as opportunities to learn why an initiative was not

successful; and they can initiate projects to experiment

with change. They can make it attractive for faculty

members to serve as mentors. They can fi nd ways to

use technology better to help faculty gain new skills.

Schools might also fi nd ways to provide time, money,

and other incentives for professional development.

■ Promote Inquiry and Dialogue. The key to this impera-

tive is a culture in which people ask questions freely,

are willing to put diffi cult issues on the table for discus-

sion, and are open to giving and receiving feedback at

all levels. Strategies to implement this action imperative

include the use of dialogue and questioning in meetings

and learning sessions.

■ Encourage Collaboration and Team Learning. The rel-

evant action imperative for this level focuses on the

spirit of collaboration and the skills that undergird the

effective use of teams. People in schools frequently form

groups, but they are not always encouraged to bring

what they know to the table. Strategies to implement this

action imperative might include support for the effec-

tive functioning of teams that cross levels and groups

(students, faculty, administrators, and parents). A step

in this direction is to extend training that is commonly

given to a few key people, and to focus instead on team

building for intact site-based decision-making teams

that include teaching everyone needed skills of dialogue,

negotiation, consensus, and meeting management.

■ Create Systems to Capture and Share Learning.

Technology-based strategies that are used for this pur-

pose focus on the use of software such as Lotus Notes

or Microsoft Access to capture ideas across dispersed

teams and divisions, and computerized documentation

of changes in a particular area. Options for sharing

knowledge include keeping journals of lessons learned

and processes for collaborative development of new

ideas so all are involved in co-creating knowledge

before using it. Celebration events can be used to bring

people together, recognize accomplishments, and share

ideas across geographical, functional, time, and experi-

ence levels.

■ Empower People toward a Collective Vision. The primary

criteria for success with this action imperative are

the degree of alignment throughout the organization

around the vision, and the degree to which everyone in

the organization actively par ticipates in creating and

implementing the changes that follow from the vision.

To gain acceptance of a shared vision, schools could

ask task forces to identify and change elements that are

inconsistent with the vision. They could engage people

in ceremonies to mourn the passing of the old culture

and skits to depict the new. They could ask community

artists to render a new vision. They could invite stake-

holders to physically modify the creative product to

represent their ideas.

■ Connect the Organization to Its Environment. Schools

must function at both global and local levels. Schools

can use benchmarking to see what other schools are

doing to achieve excellence and to solve similar prob-

lems, and can scan their environment for new trends by

using computer databases. Technology enables people

in schools to move beyond their walls. Schools often ini-

tiate Internet projects whereby students and teachers

from one school can communicate with other students

around the globe; or design programs that bring school

faculty and staff members, students, and community

groups together around special interests.

■ Provide Strategic Leadership for Learning. Leaders who

model learning are key to the learning organization.

They think strategically about how to use learning to

move the organization in new directions. School leaders

can routinely discuss development plans and opportu-

nities with faculty and staff members, can make infor-

mation available regarding opportunities for learning,

and can seek resources to support faculty development.

Source: Adapted from Karen E. Watkins and Victoria J. Marsick, “Sculpt-ing the Learning Community: New Forms of Working and Organizing,” NASSP Bulletin, 83, no. 604 (1999): 78–87. Copyright © 1999 National Association of Secondary School Principals. www.principals.org. Reprinted with permission.

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instruction, and how instruction should be evaluated. The increased involvement of the state in the technical core of teaching and learning led to a change in policy focus. Prior to the A Nation at Risk report, state edu-cation policy tended to focus on inputs and processes, not on outputs such as student academic achievement. With the rise of international economic and educational comparisons, states began to focus their policy on stan-dards, accountability, and the improvement of student academic achievement. Statewide assessment systems were implemented nationwide. Thus was born an era of high-stakes testing complete with rewards and sanc-tions for low-performing schools. The social, political, and economic forces that im-pinge on the school organization are not all state and national, however. Local school administrators also face a number of challenges that are exclusively local in nature, such as bond referenda, diffi cult school boards, and teacher unions. These local political issues can at times confound state-mandated policies. For exam-ple, principals often face mandated programs that do not meet the changing demographics of their student population. Teachers are often bound by union con-tracts that confl ict with the norms of their particular school. Superintendents are expected to respond to fed-eral mandates even though resources are scarce. Zero-tolerance policies may require expelling a student, even though it may not be in the best interest of the student to miss school for an extended period of time. And ed-ucational leaders are faced with ongoing pressures to show good school results on standardized achievement tests, while at the same time dealing with a growing number of management duties, such as budgeting, hir-ing personnel, labor relations, and site committees re-sulting from School-Based Management initiatives.

A Systems View of School Administration

It is useful to analyze the operation of an edu ca tional organization and the role of school ad min is tra tors within that operation from an open systems frame-work. The dimensions of a school district’s operation can be grouped into the three broad categories of in-puts, transformation process, and outputs. This frame-work aids in the analysis of school district operations and, more specifi cally, in the organization’s system of operational management. It contributes greatly to the quick and accurate diagnosis of problems, and it can focus the school administrator’s efforts on the key ar-eas to introduce change in the system. The basic systems model is expanded to focus on the role of the school administrator in operating a school or school district. Figure 1–2 shows the interrelation-ships among the dimensions of the operational man-agement system. (Many of the topics will be discussed in subsequent chapters.) This fi gure, although oversim-plifying the relationships, helps make clear the pattern of inter relationships in operating a school district or other educational institution.

Inputs The school district’s environment provides it with personnel, fi nancing, and theory/knowledge. In ad-dition, federal, state, and local governments enact laws that regulate school district operations. Other groups make demands on the school district as well. Students, for example, want relevant and useful curriculum con-tent to prepare them for the world of work or higher education. Teachers want higher salaries, better work-ing conditions, fringe benefi ts, and job security. School board members want a high return on their investment, that is, quality education within an operating budget.

Figure 1–1

Basic Systems Model

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Similarly, the community expects the schools to provide quality education to all the district’s clients without an increase in taxes. And special interest groups have a va-riety of agendas. Each group has its own goals, which often confl ict. The job of the school administrator is to integrate these diverse goals into a viable plan of action.

Transformation Process Organizations convert the inputs from the external environment into some form of output. Work of some kind is done in the system to produce output. The system adds a value added to the work in process. This transformation process includes the internal operation of the organization and its sys-tem of operational management. Some components

of the system of operational management include the technical competence of school administrators, includ-ing their decision-making and communication skills, their plans of operation, and their ability to cope with change. Activities performed by school ad min is tra-tors within the organization’s structure will affect the school district’s outputs.

Outputs The school administrator’s job is to secure and use inputs from the external environment, trans-form them through administrative activities such as providing a structure, developing a culture, motivat-ing, leading, decision making, communicating, imple-menting change, developing curriculum, administering

Figure 1–2

A Systems View of School Administration

(*The numbers indicate chapters in this book.)

External Environment

Inputs

• Personnel (15)* • Federal and state (9)* • Legal structure (12)* • Financing (11)* • Local governments (10)* • Other groups • Theory and knowledge (1)*

Transformation Process

• Structure (2)* • Decision making (6)* • Curriculum (13)* • Culture (3)* • Communication (7)* • Improving teaching (14)* • Motivation (4)* • Change (8)* • Career development (16)* • Leadership (5)*

Outputs

• Student achievement • Student absenteeism • Teacher performance • Employee absenteeism • Student growth • Employee-management relations • Employee growth • School-community relations • Student dropout • Student attitudes toward school • Employee turnover • Employee job satisfaction

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personnel, and fi nancing the institution to produce out-puts. In school organizations, outputs include student achievement, teacher performance, growth levels of stu-dents and employees, student dropout, employee turn-over, student and employee absenteeism, employee–management relations, school–community relations, student attitudes toward school, and employee job sat-isfaction (see Figure 1–2). Finally, the external environment reacts to these outputs and provides feedback to the system. Feedback is crucial to the success of the school district operation. Negative feedback, for example, can be used to correct defi ciencies in the school administrator’s operational plan of action, which in turn will have an effect on the school district’s outputs. Most schools were not designed in the systems ap-proach as conceptualized by Peter Senge. They just evolved from earlier versions, adding and subtracting programs as they moved from decade to decade. Most schools are loosely coupled systems in which the whole is often less important than its parts.

The Malcolm Baldrige Framework

The Baldrige Framework is a systems perspective for achieving continuous education quality improvement. The core values and concepts of the framework are em-bodied in seven categories:

1. Leadership.

2. Strategic Planning.

3. Student, Stakeholder, and Market Focus.

4. Measurement, Analysis, and Knowledge Management.

5. Faculty and Staff Focus.

6. Process Management.

7. Results.

Figure 1–3 provides the framework connecting and in-tegrating the seven categories. From top to bottom, the framework has the following basic elements.

Organizational Profi le

The Organizational Profi le (top of fi gure) sets the con-text for the way the organization operates. The en-vironment, key working relationships, and strategic challenges serve as an overarching guide for the organi-zational performance management system.

System Operations

The system operations are composed of the six Baldrige categories in the center of the fi gure that defi ne the op-erations and the results achieved. Leadership (Category 1), Strategic Planning (Cate-gory 2), and Student, Stakeholder, and Market Focus (Category 3) represent the leadership triad. These cate-gories are placed together to emphasize the importance of a leadership focus on strategy and on students and stakeholders. Senior leaders (superintendent and asso-ciates) set the organizational direction and seek future opportunities for organizational direction and future opportunities for the organization. Faculty and Staff Focus (Category 5), Process Man-agement (Category 6), and Results (Category 7) repre-sent the results triad. The organization’s faculty and staff and key processes accomplish the work of the or-ganization that yields the overall performance results. All actions point toward Results (Category 7)—a composite of student, stakeholder, market, budgetary, fi nancial, and operational performance results includ-ing faculty and staff, governance, and social responsi-bility results. The horizontal arrow in the center of the framework links the leadership triad to the results triad, a linkage critical to organizational success. Furthermore, the ar-row indicates the central relationship between Leader-ship (Category 1) and Results (Category 7). The two-headed arrows indicate the importance of feedback in an effective performance management system.

System Foundation

Measurement, Analysis, and Knowledge Management (Category 4) are critical to the effective management of the organization and to a fact-based, knowledge-driven system for improving performance. Measurement, anal-ysis, and knowledge management serve as a foundation for the performance management system.

Emergent Perspectives

Positivism was the dominant orthodoxy in educational administration until the late 1970s. Positivism is a view of knowledge as objective, absolutely true, and indepen-dent of other conditions such as time, circumstances, societies, cultures, communities, and geography. An-other tradition of positivism is empiricism, which main-tains that knowledge of the world can only be acquired

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through the senses and through experience. This view of science came to be known as logical empiricism or logical positivism. From these philosophies there devel-oped positivism— the view that any investigation in the natural or social sciences must be derived from empiri-cist postulates in order to be considered academically acceptable. Simply stated, positivism is a worldview that all knowledge of the world comes to us from sense experience and observation. The positivist approach to research consists of sev-eral functions: (a) the observation and description of perceptual data coming to us from the world through our senses, (b) the development of theories inferred from such observations and descriptions of perceptual data, (c) the testing of hypotheses derived from the theories,

and (d) the verifi cation of hypotheses that are then used to verify the theories derived from the observation and description of perceptual data. The approach evolved from an empiricist model of science that involves obser-vation and description, theory building, and hypothe-sis testing and verifi cation. Quantitative methods using large samples with the objective of statistical inferences was the predominant tool used. The positivist approach to the generation of knowledge dominated research in educational administration until the late 1970s. At the time, objections began to surface regarding the dominant (positivist) orthodoxy. Alternative paradigms began to appear and continued to be refi ned through the 1980s. These emerging nontraditional perspectives came under the general heading of subjectivist and in-

Organizational Profile:

Environment, Relationships, and Challenges

4

Measurement, Analysis, and Knowledge Management

3

Student,

Stakeholder,

and Market Focus

6

Process

Management

1

Leadership

2

Strategic

Planning

5

Faculty and

Staff Focus

7

Results

Figure 1–3

Baldrige Education Criteria for Performance Excellence Framework: A Systems

Perspective

Source: Adapted from Baldrige National Quality Program, National Institute of Standard and

Technology, Technology Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce, Administration

Building, Room A600, 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 1020, Gaithersburg, MD 20899–1020.

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terpretivist approaches. Subjectivist and interpretivist views refer to perspectives that look inward to the mind rather than outward to experience and that connect to philosophical idealism and, more recently, to phenom-enology and existentialism. Subjectivist and interpre-tivist perspectives are illustrated by the early work of scholars such as T. B. Greenfi eld in Canada; by the work of neo-Marxist and critical theorists such as Bates and others; and by the early work of postmodernists such as Derrida, Foucault, and Lyotard. These alternate nontra-ditional approaches spawned scholarship on ethics and values; gender, race/ethnicity, and class; and critical the-ory and postmodernism as mentioned previously.

The subjectivist and interpretivist perspectives led to the increased popularity of qualitative research meth-ods under various labels: qualitative methods, ethnog-raphy, participant observation, case studies, fi eldwork, and naturalistic inquiry. These approaches are at-tempts to understand educational processes within lo-cal situations. Societies; cultures; communities; unique cir cumstances; gender, race, and class; and geogra-phy serve as important analytical categories in such inquiry. There seems to be an increasing interest in bringing together positivist and interpretive paradigms that may prove valuable to both the researcher and the practitioner.

PRO/CON Debate

Training School Leaders

Xerox’s CEO David Kearns said that schools “are admirably suited to the economy and culture

of the 1950s and spectacularly unsuited to the high-tech future of the next century.” He believes

that education is big business and the same theories that guide industrial executives are the

ones school leaders need to solve education’s problems.

Question: Is the management training provided by business and industry for their leaders the

best source of information and skill development for principals and superintendents?

Arguments PRO

1. Organizational theory is generic. Its essential con-

cepts are applicable in all organizations.

2. Most organizational theory taught in educational ad-

ministration courses was generated by researchers in

the industrial setting. Industrial management thought

leads the way. Why not do away with intermediaries?

3. Business and school leaders need to work more

closely together. If they share the same training, think

about the same ideas, and speak the same language,

it will improve the collegial relationship between

schools and the communities they serve.

4. Management training is current and tested. Industry

has invested heavily in the development of manage-

ment-training programs. If that resource is being

offered to schools, it would be foolish not to take

advantage of the offer.

5. Management trainers understand organizational

theory well and can teach adult learners in all types

of organizations to apply theory to their settings.

Arguments CON

1. Business is private enterprise; schools are public ser-

vice agencies. It would be a dangerous mistake to bor-

row management theory wholesale.

2. Many aspects of management theory do not apply in

educational settings. It takes several years to adapt

management theory into educational administrative

theory. Educational researchers play an important

role in sifting and applying organizational theory.

3. The scions of industry are one consumer group for

schools. Educators’ relationship to them is important

but no more important than the relationship with the

leaders of other consumer groups such as parents,

colleges, and civic agencies. While educators should

be open to feedback from clients, they should not be

co-opted by them.

4. Management training is behaviorist and outcome-

driven. It does not consider the social and psychologi-

cal needs of the teacher as much as the profi ts of the

organization.

5. Management trainers understand profi t-driven organi-

zations but do not understand the norms and values

of educators.

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Summary

1. The practice of educational administration has changed in response to historical conditions and theoretical developments.

2. To an increasing degree, educational administra-tion is characterized by using theory to explain and predict phenomena in educational organizations.

3. The functions of theories include identifi cation of relevant phenomena, classifi cation of phenomena, formulation of constructs, summarization of phe-nomena, prediction of phenomena, and revelation of needed research.

4. Since the early 1900s, four major perspectives on administration have evolved: classical organization theory, the human relations approach, the behav-ioral science approach, and the post–behavioral sci-ence approach.

5. Three contemporary extensions of administrative perspectives are contingency theory, systems theory, and emergent nontraditional perspectives. Con-tingency theories suggest that numerous factors or situations affect leadership, many of which cannot be predetermined or perfectly controlled. Systems theory is usually discussed in terms of inputs, a transformation process, outputs, feedback, and environment.

6. Emergent nontraditional perspectives have spawned research in ethics and values; gender, race/ethnicity, and class; and critical theory and postmodernism.

7. The major dimensions of leadership may be divided into two categories — task dimensions and human relations skills.

Key Terms

theoryclassical organizational theorymanagement perspectivesscientifi c managementadministrative managementhuman relations approachHawthorne studiesbehavioral science approachcooperative systemfusion processnomothetic dimension

idiographic dimensionneed hierarchyTheory X and Theory Yhygiene factorsmotivation factorsSystems 1–4managerial gridcontingency theoriessituational leadership theorypost–behavioral science approachcritical thinkingconstructivismsystems theorylearning organizationopen systems frameworkpositivism

Discussion Questions

1. What are the functions of theories in educational administration?

2. Why is it important to understand the dif ferent ap-proaches to administrative theory that have evolved throughout the history of organizations?

3. What is the post–behavioral science approach? How does it differ from earlier approaches to administration?

4. Discuss the basic concepts underlying school improvement, democratic community, and social justice.

5. What are the major components of systems theory?

6. What contributions do the emergent perspectives have on the study and practice of educational administration?

Suggested Readings

Blankstein, Alan M. Failure Is Not an Option: Six Principles That Guide Student Achievement in High-Performing Schools (Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, 2004). Covering theory into practice, applications that include case studies and vignettes, and techniques for addressing diffi cult issues, this state-of-the-art resource provides practical approaches to perplexing problems. The author identifi es the professional learning community as the center of effective school reform and offers six

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guiding principles for creating and sustaining high-performing schools.

Conyers, John G., and Robert Ewy. Charting Your Course: Lessons Learned during the Journey toward Performance Excellence (Milwaukee: ASQ Press, 2004). Conyers and Ewy have chosen to entitle this book Charting Your Course because the Malcolm Baldrige criteria are nonprescriptive. The criteria do not tell you what to do—you have the leeway to chart your own course. What Bal-drige does is give you a systematic framework for organizational excellence. How you bring it about is dependent on your leadership.

English, Fenwick W. (ed.). The SAGE Handbook of Educational Leadership (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2005). A landmark work with contri-butions from 37 internationally renowned scholars covering an extensive range of issues confronting the fi eld of educational leadership and administra-tion. The Handbook reviews how leadership was redefi ned by management and organizational theory in its quest to become scientifi c, then looks forward to promising theories, concepts, and practices that show potential for development and application.

Firestone, William A., and Carolyn Riehl (eds.). A New Agenda for Research in Educational Leadership (New York: Teachers College Press, 2006). This book, the product of the task force on research co-sponsored by the American Educational Re-search Association Division A and the University Council for Educational Administration, sets an ambitious agenda for research in educational leader-ship. Prominent scholars cover a broad range of topics.

Fullan, Michael. Leadership & Sustainability: System Thinkers in Action (Thousand Oaks, CA: Cor-win Press, 2005). Pursue long-term sustainability

without jeopardizing short-term results. Provide an examination of what leaders at all levels of the edu-cational system can do to pave the way for large-scale, sustainable reform. Fullan asks the question: How do you develop and sustain a greater number of system thinkers in action, or new theoreticians? This groundbreaking work defi nes an agenda for the new theoretician, including crucial elements of sustainability.

Marion, Russ. Leadership in Education: Organiza-tional Theory for the Practitioner (Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, 2006). Marion writes in the preface, “Theories are little more than ivory tower artifacts if they cannot be translated into guides for actual leadership behavior.” This idea perme-ates Leadership in Education. Bridging the gap between the theoretical and the practical, Marion places organizational theory in broad historical and philosophical contexts to help students see patterns in the material. Each major paradigm shift the fi eld has undergone is examined in detail, along with the background shifts that accompanied them. All major organizational theories are covered: machine theory, human relations, structuralism, open sys-tems, and fi nally anti-positivist theories.

Marzano, Robert J., Timothy Waters, and Brian A. McNulty. School Leadership That Works: From Research to Results (Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2005). What can school leaders really do to increase student achievement, and which leadership practices have the biggest impact on school effectiveness? This book answers these questions defi nitively and gives you a list of leadership competencies that are research based. Drawing from 35 years of studies, the authors explain critical leadership principles that every administrator needs to know.

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educational administration

Documents

discussion of theory

use of theory

functions of theory

nature of theory

concepts administration

systems theory important

open systems theory

contingency theory popular