Paula M. Short

School Participant Empowerment Scale: Assessment of Level of Empowerment within the School Environment.

Two hundred eleven teachers in public schools rated 68 beliefs about what makes them feel empowered in schools. The items were factor analyzed revealing six dimensions or subscales: (a) Decision Making, (b) Professional Growth, (c) Status, (d) Self-Efficacy, (e) Autonomy, and (f) Impact. A 38-item School Participant Empowerment Scale (SPES) was constructed by selecting marker items for each of the six dimensions. Obtained internal consistency estimates of reliability for the total scale was .94, and ranged from .81 to .89 for the six factor scales. Evidence of discriminant validity also was discussed.

The Complexity of Substantive Reform: A Call for Interdependence among Key Stakeholders.

The field of educational leadership in the United States faces serious challenges in the 21st century, including the shortage of principals and superintendents, the growing demands of leadership positions, the struggle for adequate resources, the increasing trend to seek leaders from outside of education, and the content and effectiveness of school leadership preparation and professional development. Although each of these challenges could be viewed as a separate issue that warrants sustained and serious attention, it is also important to point out their interdependencies. The challenges facing educational leadership are complex and interconnected. This article explores the challenges facing educational leadership from the position of university educational leadership preparation. The authors look inward and outward, seeking to understand the complex factors and interconnections that support and detract from quality leadership preparation. Moreover, the authors explore contexts in terms of the factors that produce them and their interdependencies with other issues and contexts.

Creating Empowered Schools: Lessons in Change.

Sets out to understand how schools participating in a project to create empowered schools defined empowerment, how they structured the change process and how the school culture changed as a result of the effort to empower participants. Results of the change effort indicate that the participating schools could be grouped into three categories regarding their success in substantially changing the school culture in support of the empowerment concept, creating structures that build participant empowerment and in principal actions that facilitate the development of empowered participants. The three types of school were the opportunity school, the shifter school and the no‐go school. From these types of school, presents five themes for understanding school change.

Reconceptualizing Research and Scholarship in Educational Administration: Learning to Know, Knowing to Do, Doing to Learn

In this article, the authors explore common and emerging conceptions of what consti-tutes knowledge in educational administration, how knowledge relates to practice, and how individuals in universities and schools can engage in a particular kind of knowledge work—research. The authors suggest that a fully articulated perspective on research in educational administration might characterize research as occupying a multidimen-sional space delineated along three dimensions: why the research is done, who conducts the research, and how the research is done. Productive, interesting, and generative research can be situated anywhere on these dimensions, and five principles can be used to guide various forms of research. The implication is that although currently the field of educational administration encompasses two communities of practice, we should strive toward becoming one community of scholars. The authors discuss how doctoral pro -grams might develop students for this community of scholars and provide a case example from one university.

Teacher Empowerment and Principal Leadership: Understanding the Influence Process

Traditionally, principals have been held accountable for the effectiveness of schools. This continues to be largely true as principals work to influence the change process toward increased teacher involvement and empowerment. As principals initiate these changes, they do so primarily through interactions with the faculty. One explanation for a principals influence may be social influence theory from social psychology. Social influence theory suggests that credibility (a combination of expertness and trustworthiness) and social attractiveness are potent and persuasive elements of influence. Using social influence theory components, the purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship of the principals social influence and teacher empowerment. Results of the study indicated that teacher empowerment is most closely related to principals social attractiveness (perceived similarity to teachers) and trustworthiness (perceived willingness to suppress ones own self-interest for the benefit of the school).

The School Board President’s Perception of the District Superintendent: Applying the Lenses of Social Influence and Social Style

This exploratory study used components found in social influence theory and social style to examine the school board president’s perceptions of the district superintendent’s ability to influence the construction of the board agenda and voting decisions made by school boards in 131 randomly chosen school districts. Social influence theory and social style suggest that credibility, social attractiveness, assertiveness, and emotiveness are effective and compelling elements of influence. Results from this study suggest that favorable board decision making for superintendent-recommended action items is closely related to the superintendent’s trustworthiness (perceived use of skills and knowledge for the good of the district), expertise (specialized knowledge of the superintendent) and social attractiveness (perceived compatibility with board presidents). Findings also indicate that the attributes of social influence theory and social style are perceived as essential in the superintendent’s ability to develop and maintain a cooperative working relationship with board members and the community.