Education Commons^™

Distribution Of Instructional Leadership Roles Within A School Organization, Zora Wolfe, Kim-Kathie Knudsen, Abbie Mahaffey

Excelsior: Leadership in Teaching and Learning

Educational leaders are tasked with many managerial responsibilities as well as instructional leadership roles. However, effective instructional leadership is a critical factor in improving student achievement. The purpose of this study was to explore how instructional leadership is distributed within a school organization, specifically examining the perceptions of district, building, and teacher leaders in relation to their roles in instructional leadership and the barriers to effective instructional leadership. Qualitative interviews were conducted with district office leaders, building leaders, and instructional coaches, and their responses to the questions were reviewed, categorized, and coded using Crewell’s Data Analysis Spiral (2011).

Data from …

Addressing English Learner Teacher Shortage: Conceptualizing Collaborative Efforts Between K–12 Schools And Higher Education, Rui Niu-Cooper, Tom Reeder, Mayda Bahamonde-Gunnell, Shirley Johnson, Carol Lautenbach

Excelsior: Leadership in Teaching and Learning

With the rapid increase of English Learners (ELs) in K–12 schools, school districts are struggling to find ways to meet the needs for EL teachers. One approach to address the shortage is to build teacher capacity by collaborating with higher education institutions where English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher preparation programs are offered. However, such collaborations are expensive to local schools due to the credit hours that those programs require.

In this paper, comparing the contexts in the State of Michigan and the State of New York, we describe a partnership experience between a university in Michigan and its …

School-Based Leadership Perspectives On University Partnerships, Shelley B. Wepner, Diane W. Gomez, Diana Quatroche

Excelsior: Leadership in Teaching and Learning

The success of school-university partnerships depends on the leadership. This qualitative study reports on school-based leaders (SBAs) as critical stakeholders in the collaborative process of forming viable partnerships with colleges and universities. It describes SBAs’ responsibilities as partners, motivation for forming their partnerships, perceived benefits and challenges of the partnership, perspectives on forming and sustaining a partnership, and self-reflective comments about their leadership characteristics as an SBA and a partner. Sixteen SBAs, most of whom were school principals, responded to 12 interview questions. SBAs indicated that they have been engaged with Professional Development Schools (PDSs) an average of 10 years. …

Expanding Capacity To Serve Multilingual Learners: A University-School District Partnership, Beth Clark-Gareca, Kim Fontana

Excelsior: Leadership in Teaching and Learning

In a time of new teacher certification requirements in New York, school districts are grappling with how to meet the regulatory expectations imposed by Commissioner’s Regulations Part 154. One way that schools are solving staffing challenges is by forging new collaborations with university partners to expand their collective capacities to serve Multilingual learners (MLLs). In this article, we document a partnership between SUNY New Paltz’s Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) program and the Pawling Central School District during the 2017-18 academic year. We describe the partners’ distinct roles in the university-district collaboration, and discuss the logistical considerations …