This study is divided into three sections. The first researches the techniques used to train and develop top-level business and corporate executives. The second part researches the techniques used to train the elementary and secondary school principal. The third part applies the findings to design a program by which school principals may be trained to lead their school as a top-level executive would their business or corporation.

The purpose of the study was to develop a proposed program that would provide comprehensive preparation for prospective secondary and elementary school administrators in Jamaica. The population consisted of one hundred practicing school administrators in Jamaica.A Q-sort technique was used to prioritize thirty-six educational preparation goal statements. The twenty most important goals were chosen and rank-ordered to develop a core curriculum for the proposed program. Findings The following goal statements were ranked as the four most important goals by practicing school administrators:-Goal Statement 1--"Develop competence in selection, development and evaluation of personnel."-Goal Statement 3--"Development and understanding of the decision making process."-Goal Statement 13--"Develop competence in providing leadership in the development of the total school curriculum and educational policies."-Goal Statement 27--"Develop competence in fostering and maintaining staff and student morale."Goal statements judged to be the least important by practicing school administrators were:-Goal Statement 16--"Develop competence in the process of negotiations and concepts of labor relations in the public school setting."-Goal Statement 33--"Develop competence in the use of computers in educational operations and in the decision making process." Conclusions The judgment of practicing school administrators regarding core preparation experiences needed by prospective administrators was revealed by the final rank-ordering of the set of twenty educational goal statements.Since the rank-ordering of the goal statements revealed that administrators in all types of positions were in substantial agreement on the items ranked in the top half of the set of twenty goal statements it would seem reasonable that the core of a program include the content suggested from these items.

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M.Ed. (Educational Management) / The present crisis in Black education in South Africa centres largely around the problem of educating and re-educating principals. Major deficiencies in the teaching of Mathematics and Physical Science exacerbate the acute shortage of adequately qualified teachers. During the past two decades there have been even greater uncertainties, fears and instabilities in the field of professional development. The problem of upgrading Black principals also seems to have received limited and sporadic attention. Central to this problem is the quality of the professional development of educational leaders. Hartshorne (1990:4) argues that" ...although it is crucial to highlight the fact that while there has been a marked improvement in the professional qualifications of Black teachers, there has been a disturbing and remarkable increase in the number of professionally under-qualified teachers in Black schools". Comments such as these highlight the severity of the education crisis, the need for skilled principals and the demand for effective professional development to improve their management skills. They also outline the context and rationale of this investigation. The three major resources in meeting the challenge of the provision of education are teachers, classroom facilities and effective managers or educational leaders. This investigation will suggest that innovative methods and strategies will have to be found in both pre-service and in-service education and professional development to increase the quality of principals available to the present system of schooling, without resorting to "quickfix" and 'cheap solutions. The first step could be the removal of the past educational inequalities: size of classes, teacher qualifications, funding disparities, educational facilities and equipment (Hartshorne, 1990:85). The recipe knowledge approach to professional development in the initial training programmes is becoming increasingly difficult to justify or sustain...

Bibliography: pages 76-82. / The election of a new South African government in April 1994 has marked the onset of major changes in the education system. These changes will be most universally felt in their effects on schools. Thus school principals will become the fulcrum around which change takes place, receiving policy directives from the authorities and being responsible for their propagation and implementation in the schools. In such a situation, the whole question of the training, both pre-service and in-service, that is provided for school principals to equip them for their job becomes crucial. This study identifies a selection of in-service courses available to school principals in the Cape Town metropolitan area and compares the content of these courses with a list of the tasks and skills required of principals in the 1990's identified from a survey of the international literature. The aim is to determine the extent to which these courses are dealing with the tasks and skills. The literature survey also identifies a list of characteristics appropriate to effective in-service courses against which the Cape Town courses are compared. As an adjunct to the study, the opinions of a group of school principals were canvassed via a questionnaire. This questionnaire attempted to establish what management training these principals had received and also in which areas they desired training or further training. In the final section of the study, policy recommendations relating to management training for school principals are made. The study concludes that, whilst there are a number of courses on offer for school principals in the study area, management training for school principals does not appear to have been a priority in the past, there is very little co-ordination between the courses, and there are a number of important areas that are addressed by few, if any, of them. Amongst its recommendations, therefore, is the establishment of a research institute to co-ordinate in-service training for school principals and thus provide a more effective basis from which they can carry out their important role in the future.

published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

The process through which most aspiring superintendents are prepared for their craft, university-based superintendent preparation programs, have for some time been assailed by an array of nationally respected critics and organizations. The basis of their disparagement is grounded in the wide-ranging conclusion that these programs are out of kilter with the present day specialized needs of would-be school executives. The critics draw support for their perspective by accentuating the observation that the contemporary university-based superintendent preparation process has stagnated while transformation in the work of superintendents has evolved noticeably, especially within the last twenty-five years. This study develops a framework for intensive assessment of attributes and components of current university-based superintendent preparation programs as the beginning point of a larger discussion that reconsiders their efficacy and effectiveness. Secondly, the study amasses broad insight from the current literature and from experts in the field regarding how the effort to recreate these programs must be approached as well as who should be at the table for these negotiations to engender productive outcomes. The data that spring from this study should be rich with fresh insight and, as such, should be given ample consideration as professional associations continue to push forward in the struggle for answers to how these programs might be redesigned. At the very least, it will provide several significant clues for future action and should result in a more thoughtful discussion around this issue. In-depth interviews with veteran practicing superintendents as well as nationally prominent scholars add significant value and merit to the study and suggest that its findings and conclusions are deserving of consideration by educators, policymakers, and scholars alike. / text

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This qualitative case study of two primary teachers during their first year of using a new provincial art curriculum was concerned with the effect of a special relationship between the two teachers on their implementation efforts. The relationship was part of an implementation strategy devised by arts consultants in the school board office; one teacher in every school was designated a “Catalyst Teacher” with a loosely defined role of acting as an on-site “cheerleader” (or catalyst) for the implementation activities of colleagues. This use of a non-specialist member of a staff is related to peer-centred improvement and change efforts discussed in recent literature under such terms as “peer coaching,” “cooperative professional development,” and “collaborative consultation.” It has been shown that a collegial approach to change efforts tends to contribute to the successful implementation of change. Through a series of semistructured interviews with the two teachers individually and together, and supplemented by observations of their art teaching and by interviews and informal conversations with Ministry of Education personnel, the local art consultant, and the school principal, a picture was produced of the meanings constructed by the two teachers about the new curriculum, their roles as teachers and colleagues, the place of art in their total programs, and the effect of the Catalyst Teacher Program on their own implementation efforts. At the end of the interview series, the teachers considered their own progress with the help of Hall and associates’ Levels of Use scale (1975). Looking through the lens of a symbolic interactionist approach to studying this working relationship, I was able to focus on the interdependence of all the elements in the cyclical process of data gathering, sorting, coding, reflecting, and analyzing. The qualitative causal network described by Corbett and Rossman (1989) provided a framework within which the case data could be analyzed and compared to Corbett and Rossman’s findings. The progress of the participants in this study showed the positive effect of the implementation strategy in use in their board. These two teachers’ special qualities of collegiality contributed to their early success, suggesting that conditions of teacher empowerment and collegiality need to precede other specific change efforts. Conditions of distancing between grade-level units within the school, that may have contributed to differences in implementation progress, point to a need to reconsider the wide scale of most implementation efforts.