Management in Education

Prompted by the need for leaders able to turn around chronically low-performing schools, states, universities, education groups, and school districts in the US have initiated a variety of principal development programs. Some programs focus on enhancing the skills of experienced administrators, while others target talented teachers and even individuals with no prior school experience. Nowhere has the quest for turnaround specialists been undertaken with a greater investment of resources or on a larger scale than in Florida, where the state Department of Education in concert with the Southern Regional Education Board has used generous funding from the federal Race to the Top initiative to launch the Florida Turnaround Leaders Program. This article presents an overview of the Florida Turnaround Leaders Program, including its Theory of Action and the Design Principles for Leader Development upon which it is based. Some background information is offered on the circumstances that have led to new approaches to principal preparation, such as the Florida Turnaround Leaders Program. Details are provided concerning the skill sets encompassed by the training and the key assignments required of all participants. Finally, issues and obstacles encountered in the process of designing and implementing the Florida Turnaround Leaders Program are also addressed.

In this article, we report on our initial work with the International School Leadership Development Network. In doing so, we present two cases of principals leading high-need schools, and conclude with some key observations in relation to what is distinctive about leading these schools. The first case features a principal leading a suburban school in the large metropolitan city of Melbourne prepared by Drysdale and Gurr. This school is the result of the closure and amalgamation of several failing secondary schools, in what was termed a ‘regeneration project’. The second, prepared by Wildy and Clarke, is a personal account of a principal coping with leading a small school serving an Aboriginal community in a remote location (the nearest shop is 303 km away via an unsealed dirt road).

This study explores leadership in high-need schools where social and economic issues collide with learning, preventing students and their families from receiving the level of education they deserve. Two Latina principals in primary schools identified as high-need schools answer these questions: (a) “How can high-need schools be defined?”; (b) “Would a school inevitably be a high-need school in a high-need area?”; and (c) “In what ways do you see your leadership as influencing your specific school?” The views of these principals carry larger implications for the promotion of Latinos as the fastest-growing school-age group in the US. They defined their leadership as a moral craft, as one that prepares adults on campus to support families and students in urban high-need areas. At an international and cross-comparative level, considerations of socio-economic issues, and unaddressed academic, emotional, and physical issues, were regarded as needs to be met before focusing on students’ academic success.

This article contributes to the International Study of Leadership Development Network initiative to identify high-need schools around the globe by focusing on a small minority ethnic school in the country of Georgia. It will be clear in this article that the challenges the Karajala School administrator faces in this former Soviet bloc school stand as an example of the educational disadvantages common to rural minority ethnic schools in Georgia and to many small rural schools in former Soviet bloc nations. The Karajala School is populated with Azeri students and is located in an isolated agrarian village. In the Republic of Georgia, both conditions are markers of a high-need school. The national Ministry of Education struggles to develop educational resources for the educators and students in these types of schools. School principals are woefully ill-prepared to implement modern reforms in education. Even with its new facility, modernized classrooms, indoor restrooms, and a central heating system, Karajala remains a high-need school. This article provides a portrait of this school, identifies the factors that make it a high-need school, links the properties of this type of school to matters of social justice, and identifies the challenges that this school must overcome to address expectations of educational quality and justice.

This qualitative study investigated the social justice practices of four principals − two from the United States and two from Sweden. The purpose of the study was to enhance our understanding of school leaders’ actions as they work to promote socially just practices in different national contexts. Principals were interviewed to examine their perceptions of what social justice leaders do, how they make sense of social justice, what helps and hinders the work of social justice, and how they learned to become social justice leaders. Findings from the principals’ interviews are presented as a fictional conversation to illustrate similarities and points of departure in social justice practice between the two countries. Principals emphasized the proactive nature of social justice leadership, demonstrated through decision-making, strategic planning, and daily interactions. The importance of giving voice to those who cannot speak for themselves, holding high expectations for all students, and the importance of modeling positive values was underscored. Conclusions from this study illustrate that social justice leadership in practice, despite the national context, offers more commonalities than differences.

This article is an examination of two social justice leaders, one in Costa Rica and one in England. It is part of the International Study of Leadership Development Network, a multi-nation study of social justice and educational leadership. A brief discussion of the philosophy of social justice and an examination of the macro and micro context in each of the countries set the stage to understand the social perspective of the two school leaders. Interviews were conducted to construct a narrative to illuminate their views of social justice. A comparison of the leaders found more similarities than differences even though the settings in each country were quite different. They both felt that it was important to challenge inequities in society and demand that the government provide for all citizens; they emphasized respect for students; and, to some extent, they grounded their beliefs in faith. These narratives can be valuable for both practitioners and researchers to learn from the conceptions of social justice and the challenges of these leaders. Illuminating the agency of a school leader in one national context may stir the possibility of emancipation in another context.

This article presents a principal’s story of social justice practice in a Hong Kong primary school. The narration accounts for the notion of social justice through his practice in various ways. Studying in a ‘rooftop’ primary school located in a public housing area in Hong Kong was the principal’s salient memory of his first year of schooling in times of limited resources. Perhaps because of a change in education policy, he was subsequently transferred to a better school sponsored by a charitable organization under the subsidy scheme of the then colonial government. As a recipient, he found a great contrast between the two schools in terms of teaching and learning resources and school environments. The principal’s personal educational experiences and teachers’ educational ideology sowed the seeds of social justice in his mind. Thirty-six years later, he returned to serve his old primary school as a contributor to social justice for the students and the community in which the school is located. The story suggests how the principal made sense of social justice through his practice. It reflects the values of social justice which benefit not only students and teachers but also the community with equity and equality in education.