Educational Leadership Commons^™

The State Of Education In Arkansas 2008: How Much Are Arkansas Schools Spending?, Joshua H. Barnett, Gary W. Ritter, Brent E. Riffel

Arkansas Education Reports

Over the last half century, more than forty states across the nation have experienced school finance lawsuits as a consequence of funding gaps between rich and poor districts. Arkansas is one such state, with a long history of school funding battles in the courts. The legal challenges began in 1983, when the Arkansas Supreme Court initially found the state's school funding system unconstitutional under the equal protection clause of the state constitution1 . The court found “no legitimate state purpose” and “no rational relationship to educational needs” in the state's method of financing public schools. This initial finding set the …

Faculty Senate Meeting Agenda And Minutes, April 7, 2008

Faculty Senate Minutes and Agendas

Agenda and minutes from the Wright State University Faculty Senate Meeting held on, April 7, 2008.

Wsu Board Of Trustees Meeting Minutes, Minutes, April 3-4, 2008

Board of Trustees Minutes

Minutes from the Wright State University Board of Trustees Meeting held on April 3-4, 2008.

2008-04-03 Faculty Senate Meeting Minutes, Morehead State University. Faculty Senate.

Faculty Senate Records

Faculty Senate Meeting Minutes for April 3, 2008.

Koinonia, Rick Zomer, David Johnstone, Tim Elmore, Gene C. Fant Jr., Edee Schulze, Connie Sjoberg, Mike Broberg, David A. Kennedy, Nicole Hoefle, Michael Santarosa, Stephanie Santarosa, Jason M. Morris, Heidi Johnston

Koinonia

Spotlight Features
Has Facebook Jumped the Shark?, Rick Zomer

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Virtual Community, David Johnstone

Screenagers: How Technology is Changing the Way we Interact with Students, Tim Elmore

'In Loco Parentis' Revisited, Gene C. Fant Jr.

ACSD News: From Location to Interest: ACSD Considers Move from Regional to Collaboratives Model, Edee Schulze, Connie Sjoberg, Mike Broberg, David A. Kennedy, Nicole Hoefle

Thinking Theologically
Keeping Faith: Serving Students or the Kingdom, Michael and Stephanie Santarosa

Book Reviews
Encouraging Authenticity and Spirituality in Higher Education, reviewed by Jason M. Morris

My Freshman Year, Heidi Johnston

Features …

Frequency Of Principal Turnover In Ohio’S Elementary Schools, Michelle Chaplin Partlow, Carolyn Ridenour

Educational Leadership Faculty Publications

One remedy for Ohio schools that fail to meet the state’s test score criteria for “effectiveness” is to force a change in the principalship. Concerns have been raised that such a remedy may simultaneously undermine the organizational stability of the school. The researchers in this study examined the frequency with which elementary building principals in 109 southwest Ohio schools changed during the 7-year period of 1996-1997 (FY 1997) through 2002-2003 (FY 2003). The researchers found that urban and rural schools had a significantly higher turnover frequency than did suburban schools. Ways to counter frequent principal turnover while, at the same …

Crossing Academic Domains: Creating A Learning Environment In Faculty Teamwork, Paula Korsko, Kate Lyons

Touchstone

The following paper takes a look at the process that two college professors from different disciplines underwent to develop and carry out a project by creating a learning environment in which both faculty members attempted to acquire the language and culture of the other in order to accomplish the task at hand.

The Leadership Paradox, Jean Marie Vianney Mulinda

Academic Leadership: The Online Journal (2003-2012)

A book review of The Leadership Paradox by Denny Gunderson

Fuzzy And Research Paradigms Relationship: A Mutual Contribution, Devood Salmani, Mohsen Akbari

Academic Leadership: The Online Journal (2003-2012)

Fuzzy sets were introduced by Zadeh in 1965 to represent manipulate data and information possessing non-statistical uncertainties. It was specifically designed to mathematically represent uncertainty and vagueness and to provide formalized tools for dealing with the imprecision intrinsic to many problems. However, the story of fuzzy logic started much earlier. Fuzzy system is an alternative to traditional notions of set membership and logic that has its origins in ancient Greek philosophy. Research paradigms are rooted in philosophy paradigm, determine the direction of researches; how the researches reach to the reality, how they answer the questions of the seeking mind … …

Critically Prophetic Action In The Public Square: Transformational Insights For School And Community Leaders, Peter Miller, Max Engel

Academic Leadership: The Online Journal (2003-2012)

Ladson-Billings’ assertion that students’ familial and cultural identities must be recognized and more fully incorporated into the educative process finds much support in the community of progressive educational scholarship, as countless academics (including bell hooks, Paulo Freire, Peter McLaren, and Henry Giroux) and activists (including Myles Horton and Ernie Cortes) have critiqued generalist models of education that ignore community assets in their structures and delivery. Ladson-Billings and others insist that when educational programs (both school and community-situated) are designed and implemented as if they occur in social vacuums they implicitly ignore unique community identities and modes of understanding. They relegate …

Table Of Contents - Spring 2008, Fort Hays State University College Of Education

Academic Leadership: The Online Journal (2003-2012)

Academic Leadership Journal Spring 2008 table of contents

An Investigation Of New Faculty Orientation And Support Among Mid-Sized Colleges And Universities, Robin Lindbeck, David Darnell

Academic Leadership: The Online Journal (2003-2012)

Colleges and universities are encountering an interesting conundrum in today’s fast-paced and aging culture. Faculty demographics are changing radically as the professorate ages and “the first 77 million baby boomers turn 60 next January.” (Friedman and Moen 2005). The impact of this demographic shift was described by the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges (2000), when they projected that by 2010, more than 30,000 full-time and part-time faculty will be replaced. In addition, the authors of the study projected the need for an additional 15,000 new hires to teach the roughly half million new students who will be entering higher …

Book Review – Spousework: Partners Supporting Academic Leaders By Teresa Johnston Oden, Janet Haynes

Academic Leadership: The Online Journal (2003-2012)

This book is not a first about supporting spouses in leadership roles, however it appears to be the first book to describe marriage with a spouse in educational leadership as “spousework.” Spousework defined by Johnston Oden is “supporting our leader-partners in an artful, intelligent way”. The book is written from the leadership perspective of a wife partnering an academic leader in a marital relationship and an institutional relationship.

Attraction: The Secret Of Teaching, Learning, And Leadership, Kay Woelfel

Academic Leadership: The Online Journal (2003-2012)

The Secret, reveals that the single attribute that ensures success is one that every great educator has always had in his repertoire. Rhonda Byrne (2006, 4) says that “the greatest teachers who have ever lived have told us that the law of attraction is the most powerful law in the Universe.” Byrne points to poets, musicians, artists, and thinkers like Shakespeare, Beethoven, da Vinci, Socrates, Plato, and other legends. But lesser mortals, teachers and administrators in the field, also have known that “attraction” is the secret to school success. Jon Saphier and Robert Gower (1987, 2) put forth this idea …

Leading In The Mathematics Classroom, Jon Warwick

Academic Leadership: The Online Journal (2003-2012)

Within the United Kingdom (UK) higher education sector there has been a considerable amount of debate in recent years about the level of quantitative and literacy skills exhibited by students on entry to university courses. Indeed the UK government commissioned two major reports on the development of skills at school level in the post-14 age range focussing specifically on the development of quantitative skills (Roberts 2002; Smith 2004) since there has been a sustained year-on-year fall in the numbers of students opting to study mathematics, science, and engineering subjects at degree level. Coupled with this reluctance of students to specialise …

Not On My Watch: How To Have A Diverse Academic Program And High Quality Students In Your Program At The Same Time?, Marcheta Evans

Academic Leadership: The Online Journal (2003-2012)

Here is the dilemma: The faculty in my department wants to use the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) as a criterion for admissions into our Master’s program. This is a new shift since my university has made the decision to move to a research one institution. Now on the outside, this sounds like a wonderful idea. The university where I am employed is a Hispanic serving institution with over 28,000 students. We have developed many new doctoral programs including a new Ph.D. program in my department. So, of course, the next step is to move up in the Carnegie rankings to …

Personal Faith And Public Religious Neutrality: A Brief History Of The Separation Of Church And State For School Leaders, Peter Miller, Engel Max

Academic Leadership: The Online Journal (2003-2012)

We are often told “keep the faith” or “have faith” but rarely are we told what that means. Psychologist and educational philosopher Sharon Daloz Parks states that faith is the way we make meaning from our life’s experiences: faith results when “human beings… compose a sense of the ultimate reality and then stake [their] lives on that sense of things” (Parks, 2000, p. 20). Faith is both a dynamic force as well as a stabilizing and grounding entity; it organizes how the world is perceived, acted upon, and interpreted; faith is not synonymous with religion, belief, or spirituality. Obviously something …

Preliminary Study Of The Relationship Between Undergraduate Learning Outcome Assessment And Estimated Earnings Of Graduates, C. Crawford, Lawrence Gould, Robert Scott, Dane Crawford

Academic Leadership: The Online Journal (2003-2012)

The primary motivation for exploring the relationship between learning outcomes assessment and graduate earnings is to simply document the assumed link so that educators have some basis for claiming long-term benefits of outcomes assessment. Furthermore, the scope of the project was limited to exploring learning outcomes assessment in the state of Kansas as this was deemed a preliminary inquiry. Specifically, this article seeks to address the following three questions: 1. Have academic programs in Kansas adopted assessment plans? 2. Does student ability play a role in earnings differentiation upon graduation? 3. Is there a difference in earnings between the highest, …

Teacher Expectations And Urban Black Males’ Success In School: Implications For Academic Leaders, Terrell Strayhorn

Academic Leadership: The Online Journal (2003-2012)

Over 50 years after Brown vs. Board of Education, the American educational system is fraught with separate and unequal opportunities for historically underrepresented and underserved populations. However, unlike the 1950s when race was the single most important predictor of educational disparities, most contemporary scholars agree that it is a convergence of multiple factors that shapes the circumstances in which America’s neediest students exist. For example, in 2005 (the most recent year in which data are available), women represented the majority of college entrants at 2- and 4-year institutions. Yet, African American women represented a smaller proportion of the total population …

Transformational Leadership Practices Of Teacher Leaders, Gary Alger

Academic Leadership: The Online Journal (2003-2012)

Although many schools are developing teachers as leaders, researchers have not sufficiently investigated the leadership behaviors of these individuals. Therefore, using data collected from teacher leaders and their principals, I addressed three questions in this study: 1. What are the leadership practices of teacher leaders, as perceived by the teacher leaders and their principals? 2. Are there significant differences between the perceptions of teacher leaders and principals regarding the leadership practices of teacher leaders? 3. Are selected demographic variables of teacher leaders, specifically age, years of experience, educational level, and gender related to the leadership behaviors of teacher leaders?

What Our Students Need, Natala Orobello

Academic Leadership: The Online Journal (2003-2012)

I have been an educator for over twenty years; this is long enough to know what works in the school system and what does not work. I have mentored rookies and peers, and I have mentored students in and out of school (I was a mentor for Big Brother Big Sister). Today’s students need a lot more than reading, writing and arithmetic. They need educators who are willing to go the extra mile and by educators I mean all those who purport to be working for our students like politicians, school board members, administrators, teachers, staff and anyone else who …

A Study Of Relationship Between Consequences Of Leadership And Transformational Leadership Style Of The Presidents Of Iranian Universities And Institutions Of Higher Education, Nasrin Noorshahi

Academic Leadership: The Online Journal (2003-2012)

All through history, leadership has been a part of human societies. When leadership is considered as a function, it is an important dimension of management whose presence and existence depends on several skills which can be taken as methods or styles of leadership and guidance on the part of a group of people in order to achieve a certain goal (Bennett and Anderson, 2003).

Multi-Perspective Systems Thinking Arrives At School, Curt Duffy

Academic Leadership: The Online Journal (2003-2012)

Managers who cling, dogmatically and unquestioningly, to a single view of leadership are especially apt to fail in educational institutions, where critical thinking and serious debate are part of the daily routine. Such unskilled application of simplistic leadership philosophies is seen even more often now that the corporate model, and its focus on basic accountability, is being integrated into the educational sector. Today’s educational administrators desperately need sophisticated training to help them apply forprofit methodologies to the more value-based and institutionalized educational arena.`

Position Paper: Scholarship Defined, Fort Hays State University College Of Education

Academic Leadership: The Online Journal (2003-2012)

Scholarly activities at Fort Hays State University are defined as original, innovative intellectual contributions in the form of research, practice, creative activity, or performance. FHSU recognizes and values the diversity of types of scholarship, including discovery, pedagogy, integration, engagement, and application (Boyer, 1997). Scholarly activities must be intended and reasonably expected to lead to the production of scholarly works. Scholarly works must be communicated with and validated by peers beyond the FHSU campus community. The means of communication as well as the comparative value of types of scholarly activity and work are to be determined by each department. These determinations …

Is Safety A Concern For Women Runners?, Wayne Major

Academic Leadership: The Online Journal (2003-2012)

Being fearful or concern for one’s safety is not normally associated with running. (Crawford, Jackson and Godbey 1991; Mannell and Kleiber 1997) have explored how fears and coping behavior affect leisure experience. In addition, research examining women’s perceptions of leisure have contributed insights into how women experience fear in leisure settings and how these fears affect their leisure experience (Henderson 1996; Henderson and Bialeschki 1993; Whyte and Shaw 1994). There has been research exploring the relationship between women, adventure activities and meaning (Little 2002), and, women, fear and solo hiking experience, (Coble, Selin and Erickson 2003). Despite this research, no …

Institutional Servant Leadership: A Catalyst For Urban Community Sustainability, Brian Grizzell

Academic Leadership: The Online Journal (2003-2012)

Servant leadership is a growing practice that calls for community leaders (politicians, clergy, and educational centers) to be more pragmatic and lead others by serving them. Inspired by principles of religion, servant leadership implies that true servants make true leaders (Greenleaf, 2002, 21). They must be flexible in their approach and responsive to the needs of those they serve. Servant leaders must also provide a fresh outlook based on their past experiences and contribute to society by meeting its demands in an earnest effort. Exhibiting such behavior definitely may have a positive impact on others; thus inspiring them to do …

Reliable Sources: Recruiting And Developing Evaluators, External To The University Community, Paul Watkins, Ruth Roberts

Academic Leadership: The Online Journal (2003-2012)

Wiggins and McTighe (2005, 18) challenge educators to think critically about acceptable assessment evidence by asking: “How will we know if students have achieved the desired results? What will we accept as evidence of student understanding and proficiency?” (p 18). Teacher education programs must face these important questions and affirm that answers are both valid and equitable. This article explores the benefits of evaluator training in the scoring of high-stakes work samplings produced by teacher preparation candidates.

A Study Of Teacher Leadership And Its Relationship With School Climate In American Public Schools: Findings From Sass 2003-2004, Donghai Xie

Dissertations

This study made inquiry into teacher leadership and its relationship with school climate in American public schools by using the data from SASS 2003-04 by National Center for Education Statistics. The study was focused on the statistical assessment of public school teachers' perceptions of teacher leadership in the areas of school operation and classroom operation. Another aspect to be inquired was teachers' perceptions of school climate in the dimensions of school leadership and teacher collaboration.

The results of descriptive analyses in the study indicated that the majority of public school teachers did not consider they had much influence over the …

The Relationship Of Teacher Route To Certification To Student Outcomes On Statewide Social Studies Assessment, Aaron L. Smith

Educational Leadership & Workforce Development Theses & Dissertations

Public school divisions face daunting challenges today. One such challenge is the ability to recruit and retain highly qualified and effective teachers. Endemic teacher shortages coupled with escalating national education standards make it imperative that school divisions hire and retain teachers who can positively and immediately impact student achievement. Schools without effective teachers face possible sanctions, which could include re-staffing of the school, parental choice that would allow the student population to attend more successful schools and loss of funds.

At the same time, colleges and universities have begun alternative certification programs in an effort to compensate for teacher shortages …

Save The World, Steven J. Hite

Faculty Publications

Development education, or the use of education as a tool for human capital development, is an intensely interesting and diverse field. First catalyzed by my experiences as a missionary in Apartheid-era South Africa, my conviction is that equitable access to quality educational opportunities is the key to development and, consequently, life advancement for individuals, families, communities, and nations.