Jennifer L. Stephan

School Principal Expertise: Putting Expert-Aspiring Principal Differences in Problem Solving Processes to the Test

This article reports on differences between expert and aspiring principals. Following the work of Leithwood and colleagues, we asked expert and aspiring principals to respond to ill-structured written problem scenarios. Our sample of 44 included 20 expert principals and 24 aspiring principals. The aspiring principals were from a cohort of participants in a professional development program for aspiring principals in a large Midwestern urban school district. Drawing from that same school district, the expert principals were selected based on an analysis of longitudinal teacher survey data and student achievement data. We found statistically significant differences between expert and aspiring principals on five problem-solving processes, three of which were in line with prior hypotheses generating research on principal expertise.

Perfectionist Dreams and Hidden Stratification: Is Perfection the Enemy of the Good?

Research from the 1960s shows that high school counselors acted as gatekeepers to limit college access, and community college counselors engaged in cooling out that is, dampening students’ ambitious plans and convincing them to reduce their goals of attending 4-year colleges. This research may have had some impact, since today many counselors deplore such actions and advise differently. Rather than cooling out students, guidance counselors now use new practices that encourage low-achieving students to pursue high-track 4-year-college pathways despite a low likelihood of payoffs, while ignoring alternate degrees with better outcomes, fewer academic demands, and shorter timetables.