Education Commons^™

A Phenomenological Exploration Of Superintendents’ And Principals’ Experiences In A Shared Professional Development Process, John R. Severson

Dissertations

For this qualitative study, I explored and described how superintendents and principals interpreted and experienced a sustained professional development process focusing on instruction and student learning, a form of Elmore’s Superintendents in the Classroom (SITC) Network. Specifically, I examined how the addition of principals in the SITC learning model experience changed the superintendents’ and principals’ knowledge and beliefs as well as their behavior in three areas: their individual experiences, the working relationship between superintendent and principal, and the way they now think about and encourage student learning.

For this phenomenological study, superintendents and principals were selected and individually interviewed from …

Effective Leadership Behaviors: How One Principal Made Sense Of And Integrated Research-Based Behaviors Into His Daily Practice, Heidi Ann Beidinger-Burnett

Dissertations

Unlike the principalship of yesteryear, today’s principals are under great pressure to improve academic achievement for all students. Recent literature describes the need for principals to become instructional leaders whereby they can lead change and improve student achievement. However, a lack of quality principal preparation programs and a shortage of effective principals exist. Thus, principals are often unprepared or underprepared for their role. The purpose of this participatory action research study (PAR) was to follow the process of how one high school principal made sense of and integrated research-based leadership behaviors into his practice to lead the redesign of his …