The retirement of community college administrators has led to the creation of leadership development institutes. Yet, few studies exist to understand their comprehensive design, practices, and effectiveness. The purpose of this study was to develop an understanding of, and a framework for, creating and evaluating effective leadership development institutes. The framework was applied to the El Paso Community College’s Leadership Development Academy (EPCC-LDA) to examine how its program aligned with the framework; assess the EPCC-LDA’s success in meeting its own specified goals of creating more skilled leaders; and understand better how EPCC-LDA decisions, practices, program components and forms of evaluation have led to successful outcomes. The research design followed a descriptive, case study format utilizing both qualitative and quantitative data. This study had several major findings. First, El Paso Community College demonstrated how an effective leadership development institute can be created by focusing its design and implementation on processes, core values, and human interaction. Second, the study’s analytic framework was validated through a triangulation of data: research recommendations; EPCC-LDA coordinating committee interviews; and program participant evaluations. Third, El Paso Community College was accomplishing and surpassing its mission of improving employee leadership skills. This study concluded with recommendations for the refinement of its analytic framework, for EPCC-LDA programmatic considerations, and for future studies. By instituting responsive and focused programming that continually meets the needs of the institution, the participants, and leadership in general, leadership development institutes can serve as one effective resource for increasing the flow into the community college leadership pipeline, increasing the skills of those within the pipeline, and improving the pipeline’s outflow of diverse leaders. / text

Thesis (MTech (Public Management))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2016. / There is always much debate about the performance of high schools, especially around the lack of learners excelling and the Grade 12 poor pass rate. This dissertation nvestigates the impact of mentorship on the performance of principals, deputy principals and subject heads at a selection of high schools in the Cape Town metropolitan area. Literature on the topic indicates that various types of mentorship programmes exist. The literature review consisted of journal articles, books and policy documents. For the purpose of the empirical study, the research question of whether mentorship has a positive impact on the performance of senior personnel in high schools was best answered by following a quantitative approach to research. The study population comprised 42 senior staff members from three high schools in the Cape Town metropolitan area. A questionnaire survey was used to collect data from the sample of 21 senior staff members, and the data analysis was done by means of a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet using pie charts to illustrate the results. The study found that mentoring subordinate educators and principals is a Key Performance Area (KPA) of the convenience randomly selected schools that fall within the respective district under the jurisdiction of the Western Cape Education Department (WCED), that key personnel are familiar with mentorship, but that there are some issues that need to be resolved. It is envisaged that the implementation of mentorship programmes at high schools will positively influence the development of educators, and impact positively on the performance of key personnel and the performance of the affected schools.

School districts face tremendous budget challenges and, as a result, professional development has been "trimmed" from many school budgets. (Habegger & Hodanbosi, 2011). School administrators responsible for planning professional development face a daunting task and often focus on PowerPoints, district mandated training, one-shot presentations, and workshops that are delivered by expensive experts. These types of activities lack teacher collaboration, time for sharing of ideas and opportunity for reflection and analysis (Torff & Byrnes, 2011, Coggins, Zuckerman & Mckelvey, 2010). The problem addressed in this study is that teacher professional development is usually planned by school administrators who are provided little support or training. This study used the problem-based learning approach designed by Bridges and Hallinger (1995) to determine the usefulness of a handbook for principals to utilize as they plan professional development. The handbook was developed, field tested and revised using Borg and Gall's (2003) research and development cycle. This qualitative study included surveys, observations, interviews and workshops to determine the usefulness of the handbook. The study consisted of preliminary field testing and product revision followed by the main field testing. The main field test was a workshop for K-12 school and district level administrators on how to use the handbook in planning meaningful, ongoing teacher professional development. The data collected in this study determined that the handbook,Teachers Teaching Teachers: Designing Successful Teacher Professional Development on a Shoestring Budget, is a useful tool for school administrators responsible for planning teacher professional development.