The Assistant Principal : Leadership Choices and Challenges

Preface vii Acknowledgments x About the Authors xi What Is Special About Assistant Principals? 1(26) Unanswered Questions and Continuing Dilemmas 3(2) What Do Assistant Principals Do? The Nature of the Tasks and Roles 5(7) Role Ambiguity 7(1) Role Conflict and Overload 7(2) Job Satisfaction and ``Dissatisfaction'' 9(1) Career Incentives 10(2) Policy Concerns in the Assistant Principal Role 12(11) Recruiting and Retaining Leaders 12(1) Identifying Appropriate Training and Selection Systems 13(1) Encouraging Innovators 14(2) Encouraging Instructional Leaders 16(1) Providing Equal Opportunity 17(3) Empowerment and Participatory Management 20(2) The Plateaued Assistant 22(1) Recent Realizations and Developments Affecting the Assistant 23(2) Summary 25(1) Discussion Questions and Activities 25(2) How Do Assistant Principals Get Their Jobs? 27(22) The Case of Tim George 27(5) The Case of Alicia Brown 32(2) How Assistant Principals Learn About the Role 34(3) Career Decision-Making 34(1) Anticipating the Roles 35(1) Role Model Learning 36(1) Task Learning 36(1) Professional Socialization: The Mix of Formal and Informal Training 37(7) Aspiration Building and Self-Selection 39(1) The Formal Selection Process 40(2) The Informal Assessment Process 42(1) Ambiguous and Negotiated Expectations 43(1) Recent Trends Affecting Recruitment Into the Position 44(2) Crisis Recruitment 44(1) Early Exiting 45(1) Balancing ``The Look'' in School Sites 45(1) Summary 46(1) Discussion Questions and Activities 47(2) Progress in Understanding the Assistant Principal's Role 49(30) Research on the Work and Work Arrangements 50(2) Research on the Socialization of the Assistant Principal 52(3) Constraints on Behavior and Values: Assumptive Worlds 55(12) Right and Responsibility to Initiate 55(1) Acceptable and Unacceptable Values 56(1) Patterns of Expected Behavior 57(1) School Site Conditions Affecting Political Relationsips 58(1) Implications of Assumptive Worlds 58(3) Orientations to the Position 61(1) Details From the Case Studies 62(5) New Research Insights 67(1) Factors Affecting Assistant Principals 68(1) A Focus on the Career Assistant Principal 68(3) Career Assistant Principals' Rewards and Satisfactions 70(1) Research on Styles of Achieving 71(2) Research on Emotional Work 73(2) An International Perspective 75(1) Summarizing Insights From Complexities 76(1) Discussion Questions and Activities 77(2) Opportunities for Improving the Assistant Principaiship 79(40) Training and Certification Policies 80(8) University and Professional Training 82(3) Staff Development 85(2) Assistant Principal Conferences 87(1) Selection Policies 88(6) Instructional Leadership 94(2) Achieving Equity in Administration 96(7) Satisfiers, Supports, and Coping Strategies 103(3) So What Does Give Satisfaction, Long-Term? 106(1) Progress in Valuing the Role 107(3) Opening Up the Realm of Emotion and Moral Purpose 110(1) Facing Fundamental Dilemmas 111(1) Reforms 111(4) Summary 115(1) Discussion Questions and Activities 116(3) A New and Different Assistant Principalship 119(56) Specific Alterations in the Current System 121(8) Defining Roles, Tasks, and Functions 121(4) Participatory Management 125(1) Affiliation-Support Groups 126(1) Discretionary Power and Recognition 127(2) Reassessing the Value of Assistant Principals 129(2) Promoting the Value of Assistant Principal Functions 129(2) Preparation, Recruitment, and Selection 131(8) University and Professional Training 131(2) Sponsors, Role Models, and Mentors 133(2) Internships 135(1) Recruitment and Selection 135(3) Certification 138(1) Staff Development, Workshops, Celebrations, and Special Conferences 139(2) A Deeper Cut: Changing Professional and Cultural Assumptions 141(4) Reconceptualizing Assumptions About Administration 142(1) Shifting Dominant Views of Schooling 142(3) Alternative Leadership Theories and Models 145(14) Transformative Leadership 146(1) Leaders as Critical Humanists 146(2) Intentional Leadership 148(1) Feminist Perspectives on Leadership 149(3) Emotionally Engaged, Relational, and Caring Leadership 152(1) Viewing Administration as Leadership of Identity-Negotiation Organizations 153(1) Leadership as Expanding Schools' Social Capital 154(1) Power-Sensitive Leadership 155(1) Social Justice Leadership 156(1) Policy Advocacy Leadership 157(2) Looking at Equity in the Profession Through Cultural and Political Lenses 159(4) Purposefully Examining Fundamental Dilemmas 163(2) Refraining and Re-visioning Fundamental Assumptions of Schooling 165(2) Training for New Metaphors and Theories for Enacting Leadership 167(3) Summary 170(2) Discussion Questions and Activities 172(3) References 175(11) Index 186