School-level conditions nnd school leadership, in particular, arc key issue, in effort.'> LO change instruction. While new organizational structures and new leadership roles maner to instructional innovation, what seems mot critical is how leadership practice is undcrrnken. Yet, the practice of cbool leadership bas received limited attention in the research literature. Building on activity theory and theories of d1srribun:d cognition, this paper develops a disrrihute<l perspective on school leadership as a fromc for studying leadership practice, arguing that leadership practice i; constituted m the mteracuon of school leaders, followers, and the situation.
This study provided a comprehensive examination of the full range of transformational, transactional, and laissez-faire leadership. Results (based on 626 correlations from 87 sources) revealed an overall validity of .44 for transformational leadership, and this validity generalized over longitudinal and multisource designs. Contingent reward (.39) and laissez-faire (-.37) leadership had the next highest overall relations; management by exception (active and passive) was inconsistently related to the criteria. Surprisingly, there were several criteria for which contingent reward leadership had stronger relations than did transformational leadership.
Furthermore, transformational leadership was strongly correlated with contingent reward (.80) and laissez-faire (-.65) leadership. Transformational and contingent reward leadership generally predicted criteria controlling for the other leadership dimensions, although trans-formational leadership failed to predict leader job performance.
This article provides a qualitative review of the trait perspective in leadership research, followed by a meta-analysis. The authors used the five-factor model as an organizing framework and meta-analyzed 222 correlations from 73 samples. Overall, the correlations with leadership were Neuroticism = -.24, Extraversion = .31, Openness to Experience = .24, Agreeableness = .08, and Conscientiousness = .28. Results indicated that the relations of Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness to Experience, and Consci- entiousness with leadership generalized in that more than 90% of the individual correlations were greater than 0. Extraversion was the most consistent correlate of leadership across study settings and leadership criteria (leader emergence and leadership effectiveness).
Overall, the five-factor model had a multiple correlation of .48 with leadership, indicating strong support for the leader trait perspective when traits are organized according to the five-factor model.
Keywords Schools, Leadership, Development, Educational philosophy, Integration
Abstract This paper looks at the central role of school leadership for developing and assuring the quality of schools, as corroborated by findings of school effectiveness research and school improvement approaches. Then, it focuses on the growing importance placed on activities to prepare school leaders due to the ever-increasing responsibilities they are facing. In many countries, this has led to the design and implementation of extensive programs. In this paper, international trends in school leader development are identified. As regards the aims of the programs, it becomes obvious that they are increasingly grounded on a more broadly defined understanding of leadership, adjusted to the core purpose of school, and based on educational beliefs integrating the values of a democratic society.
This article analyzes the topic of leadership from an evo-lutionary perspective and proposes three conclusions that are not part of mainstream theory. First, leading and following are strategies that evolved for solving social coordination problems in ancestral environments, includ-ing in particular the problems of group movement, intra-group peacekeeping, and intergroup competition. Second, the relationship between leaders and followers is inher-ently ambivalent because of the potential for exploitation of followers by leaders. Third, modern organizational struc-tures are sometimes inconsistent with aspects of our evolved leadership psychology, which might explain the alienation and frustration of many citizens and employees. The authors draw several implications of this evolutionary analysis for leadership theory, research, and practice.
Keywords: evolution, leadership, followership, game the-ory, mismatch hypothesis
A meta-analysis of 45 studies of transformational, transactional, and laissez-faire leadership styles found that female leaders were more transformational than male leaders and also engaged in more of the contingent reward behaviors that are a component of transactional leadership. Male leaders were generally more likely to manifest the other aspects of transactional leadership (active and passive management by exception) and laissez-faire leadership. Although these differences between male and female leaders were small, the implications of these findings are encouraging for female leadership because other research has established that all of the aspects of leadership style on which women exceeded men relate positively to leaders’ effectiveness whereas all of the aspects on
which men exceeded women have negative or null relations to effectiveness.
Leadership models of the last century have been products of top-down, bureaucratic paradigms. These models are eminently effective for an economy premised on physical production but are not well-suited for a more knowledge-oriented economy. Complexity science suggests a different paradigm for leadership—one that frames leadership as a complex interactive dynamic from which adaptive outcomes (e.g., learning, innovation, and adaptability) emerge. This article draws from complexity science to develop an overarching framework for the study of Complexity Leadership Theory, a leadership paradigm that focuses on enabling the learning, creative, and adaptive capacity of complex adaptive systems (CAS) within a context of knowledge-producing organizations. This conceptual framework includes three entangled leadership roles (i.e., adaptive leadership, administrative leadership, and enabling leadership) that reflect a dynamic relationship between the bureaucratic, administrative functions of the organization and the emergent, informal dynamics of complex adaptive systems (CAS).
Keywords: leadership, complexity theory, complex adaptive systems (CAS), Knowledge Era, creativity, adaptive organizations, bureaucracy
The leadership literature suffers from a lack of theoretical integration (Avolio, 2007, American Psychologist, 62, 25–33). This article addresses that lack of integration by developing an integrative trait-behavioral model of leadership effectiveness and then examining the relative validity of leader traits (gender, intelligence,
personality) and behaviors (transformational-transactional, initiating structure-consideration) across 4 leadership effectiveness criteria (leader effectiveness, group performance, follower job satisfaction, satisfaction with leader). Combined, leader traits and behaviors explain a minimum of 31% of the variance in leadership effectiveness
criteria. Leader behaviors tend to explain more variance in leadership effectiveness than leader traits, but results indicate that an integrative model where leader behaviors mediate the relationship between leader traits and effectiveness is warranted.
While the phenomenon of leadership is widely considered to be universal across cultures, the way in which it is operationalized is usually viewed as culturally specific. Conflicting viewpoints exist in the leadership literature concerning the transferability of specific leader behaviors and processes across cultures. This study explored these conflicting views for managers and professional workers by empirically testing specific hypotheses which addressed the generalizability of leadership behaviors and processes across five nations in North America and Asia. Confirmatory factor analyses provided evidence for conceptual and measurement equivalence for all six leader behaviors employed in the study.
In a longitudinal, randomized field experiment, we tested the impact of transformational leadership, enhanced by training, on follower development and performance. Experimental group leaders received transformational leadership training, and control group leaders, eclectic leadership training. The sample included 54 military leaders, their 90 direct followers, and 724 indirect followers. Results indicated the leaders in the experimental group had a more positive impact on direct followers' development and on indirect followers' performance than did the leaders in the control group.
The Wounded Leader: How Real Leadership Emerges in Times of Crisis (2002), a recently published book by Richard Ackerman and Pat Maslin-Ostrowski, asks educational leaders to reflect on personal and profound questions - ones they are not likely to have been asked in a formal interview or performance evaluation. Ackerman, co-director of the International Network of Principals’ Centers and Associate Professor of education at the University of Massachusetts Lowell Graduate School of Education, and Maslin- Ostrowski, an Associate Professor of educational
leadership at Florida Atlantic University, have spent the past seven years asking school leaders about “wounding” or “crisis” experiences in their leadership practice, and how they make sense of this wounding in terms of
their personal and professional lives.
Teacher empowerment requires investing in teachers' right to participate in the determination of school goals and policies and the right to exercise professional judgment about the content of the curriculum and means of instruction. Implications of this conception and the kind of school leadership it requires are discussed. (Source:ERIC)
Two central questions should arise for anyone who attends to the rhetoric of empowerment that is being used in current discussions of improvement of teaching as a profession: (1) What is teacher empowerment? and (2) Toward what ends are teachers to be empowered? Discussions of teacher empowerment have proceeded as if all of those who use the term were in agreement, when even a cursory review of what has been written on the subject reveals that this is clearly not the case. In the literal sense, to ize or license. It is also to impart or bestow power to an end or for a purpose. An obsolete definition ng back into the history of the word, is to gain power or assume power over.1
ize or license. It is al ng back into the history of the word, is to gain power or assume power over.
Exploring the relationship between research universities and schools, Lieberman asks us to think seriously about the real meaning of collaboration and of how real, notjust creden tialed, teacher leaders can be developed. She points out many things we have already found out about the characteristics and learning experiences that good teacher leaders have and how detached university faculties have been from the schools.
The booming business of publishing books on educational administration is largely due to the rapid, but essentially undisciplined, expansion of college programs to prepare administrators. Increasingly rare is the institution of any sort of higher education which does not also offer courses for administrators. There is, however, a dearth of instructors properly qualified to teach educational administration on the intellectual level of professional courses in law or engineering. Many who probably could do well as instructors are not available because college salaries are dismally low when compared to those of practicing administrators. The differential between public school administration and college teaching of the subject is much greater than for other positions in the public education
enterprise. The deplorable result of such circumstances is that large numbers of courses in educational administration are textbook-bound. Basically, the demand
ONE set of circumstances distinguishes the present crucial demand for strong educational leadership from past demands: the pressures for change in school and society outweigh any in the past century. Freedom, democracy, human dignity are under fire. The repercussions of this upheaval are reaching into almost every community in the land. No other period of civilization has witnessed the kinds of changes which have occurred in the past half century and are continuing. Scarcely a single aspect of present-day society has not been altered markedly in this brief period. Building a school program to keep pace with—let alone contribute to—change requires effective educational leadership.
A TEACHER who strives to develop professional skills finds it profitable to examine and evaluate the social forces which are active within the class situation. Periodic observations and evaluations of how students respond to the
teaching method and content, what reactions express their feelings, and why these reactions are forthcoming can improve the quality of instruction, integrate teaching and learning, and provide a more democratic atmosphere in which to resolve the problems of both teacher and students. When followed cooperatively by students and teacher, these procedures should also improve the quality and extent of learning in every experience.
A DISCUSSION of educational leadership in these troublous times might concern itself with an attempt to review our social and economic ills, to show their relationship to education, and to propose the way out by means of economic and social reconstruction. I shall assume that all of you are familiar with current discussion concerning the maladjustments in our society. I shall take it
for granted, as well, that you are conversant with the opposed points of view of those who see the
need for complete reorganization of our economic life, our government, and indeed the whole social
order, and those who believe that progress lies in the more gradual evolution of our society. I
feel sure that you will agree with me that leaders in education and in all other walks of
life will need to cooperate in finding and putting into effect those changes which will contribute to the common good. I take it, as well, that you would agree that those of us who work in the field of education must depend for guidance on experts in economics, in government, in psychology, in sociology, and in anthropology if we are to have a sound basis in fact for our thinking with respect to social change.
MANY an ephemeral emphasis has come and gone in education. Teachers still activ can remember when they were first challenged by the Palmer method of handwriting, the additive method of subtraction, homogeneous grouping, or the Dalton Plan for individualized instruction. For some years after World War I, Teachers College gave
courses in how to Americanize the flood of recent immigrants. During depression years some states began to require that their schools give instruction in the Cooperative Movement. Viewing the upsurge, in the past dozen years, of educational articles, pamphlets, films, talks, and workshops on intergroup relations, one might first ask whether this, too, will swiftly run its course as another educational fad— inspired, of course, by the highest motives.
THE question of educational priorities becomes increasingly important as contemporary culture becomes more complex and more tasks are thrust upon the school. The identification of priorities is difficult, however, and, in an age of ideological conflict, almost inevitably controversial. Decisions concerning priorities in the school program need to be based on the characteristics of contemporary culture, some conception of ideals and values, and the best available knowledge regarding the dual growth and development and the learning process.
THE science of psychology, in spite of its immaturities and its brashness, has advanced mightily in recent decades. From a concern with observation and measurement, it has moved toward becoming an "if-then" science. By this I mean it has become more concerned with the discernment and discovery of lawful relationships such as that
if certain conditions exist, then certain behaviors will predictably follow.