Educational Administration Quarterly

The aim of this study is to analyze teacher isolation at the level of communication behavior of teachers. The usefulness of communication network analysis is explored in eight elementary schools. The first research question is whether and in what way the communication behavior of teachers varies within as well as between schools. The second research question is how teachers’ communication network participation is related to their perception of different types of tasks. Our findings support the idea that teacher isolation at least partly results from the behavior of individual teachers. Results regarding the relationship between communication network participation and task perception yield insights that can be helpful in developing and supporting collegial relationships in schools.

Administrative leadership is considered critical to successful implementation of inclusive schooling practices whereby students with disabilities are educated with other students. This ethnographic study of one principal was conducted over a 15-month period in a midsize midwestern city. The results: (a) a supportive environment for critique encourages teacher autonomy and risk taking while communicating trust that teachers can succeed; (b) a supportive environment is open to critique about how to reach inclusion but not about the goal itself; (c) in a facilitative community, the principal and teachers ask questions and consider alternative frameworks for inclusion; (d) creating a just, democratic environment coalesces the staff, and the principal models inclusive practices; and (e) principal behaviors are undergirded by a spirituality grounded in six beliefs: valuing personal struggle, recognizing the dignity of all people, blending the personal and professional, believing people are doing their best, listening, and dreaming.

Professional development has become the panacea of 1990s reform efforts. However, our understanding of the breadth, depth, and nature of teacher learning experiences remains limited. Using an embedded case study design, this article examines the factors that motivate teachers to engage in development activities, the ways they experience professional learning, and most important, how work context influences their learning experiences. The author suggests that a complex nesting of work contexts limits the types of learning activities, and hence knowledge, available to teachers. Finally, steps that school leaders and education policy makers can take to broaden and enhance professional learning opportunities are discussed.

This study examined the relation of school leadership to school climate, school structure, and student population characteristics, together referred to as school configuration. Archival and survey data were obtained from 122 elementary schools. Some schools had changed principals under less than positive circumstances, whereas other schools had not. Schools having principal changes had greater use and more students who were new to the district, new to the school, economically disadvantaged, and minority. Schools having principal changes also had slightly lower scores on criterion-referenced tests. Students and their parents also perceived these schools as less ordered and disciplined, and parents reported lower levels of school empowerment and participation in school activities. As predicted, within schools having principal changes, students and their parents showed less agreement in perceptions of the school environment. Implications of results for effectively configured school organizations and effective principal leadership are discussed.

The December 1997 issue of Educational Administration Quarterly was devoted to the theme, “What will replace the comprehensive high school?” The articles were uninformed by a historical perspective on the American comprehensive high school. The authors of these articles ignored historic proposals for the comprehensive model and overlooked tensions between the ideal and reality of the comprehensive high school. Instead, the authors contrived a negative image of the comprehensive high school that served as a straw man against which restructuring measures were defined. In fact, each restructuring measure proposed by the EAQ contributors has precedents in the historic literature advocating the comprehensive high school. An alternative and ironic answer to the issue’s rhetorical question, then, is “the comprehensive high school.”