Students In Educational Administration Research Articles

Attendance Policies and Student Grades

The details described in this case study examine the issues related to attendance policies and how such policies might be legally used to affect student grades. Concepts discussed should cause graduate students in educational administration to reflect on the issues presented from various points of view when the students complete an analysis of the topics discussed. The analytical approaches that can be used in thinking about the student behaviors and resulting administrative actions described in the article include the opportunity to apply the graduate students’ understanding of Bolman and Deal’s four frames as well as use the processes followed to solve problems that identified “expert problem solvers” would use.

Leadership for Social Justice and Equity: Evaluating a Transformative Framework and Andragogy

Purpose: This study explores the effects of an alternative, transformative andragogy (i.e., the art and science of helping others to learn) designed to be responsive to the challenges of preparing educational leaders committed to social justice and equity. Design: Within the context of preparation programs, the three theoretical perspectives of adult learning theory, transformative learning theory, and critical social theory are interwoven with the three andragogical processes of critical reflection, rational discourse, and policy praxis to form an alternative, transformative framework. Forty graduate students of educational administration (two cohorts of preservice leaders) participated in this study. Quantitative methods are used to assess the possible effects of transformative learning strategies on preservice leaders' attitudes toward issues of diversity in education. Qualitative research methods are then employed to further explore the possible effects of andragogical approaches on preservice leaders' personal beliefs and their reported ability to connect theory to practice. Findings: Findings indicate that participation in transformative learning processes and strategies can increase students' perceived growth in awareness, acknowledgement, and action toward social justice. Implications: The strategies used were created to help future leaders develop as transformative, reflective scholars and practitioners actively engaged in political, emancipatory interests. By participating in a number of assignments requiring the examination of ontological and epistemological assumptions, values and beliefs, context and experience, and competing worldviews, transformation is possible.

Portfolio Analysis: Documenting the Progress and Performance of Educational Administration Students..

Portfolio Analysis: Documenting the Progress and Performance of Educational Administration Students..

Academic and affective factors contributing to degree completion of doctoral students in educational administration

Little published research exists on doctoral attrition, retention, and completion of degree programs. This study sought to examine the factors, both quantitative and qualitative, that may serve to predict at the time of admission which doctoral students in the field of educational administration will be most likely to persist to degree conferral. The study was conducted in two phases. First, independent variables such as GRE scores, age, undergraduate GPA, masters degree GPA, type of institution from which baccalaureate and masters' degrees were earned, undergraduate major, graduate major, and completion of the Specialist in Education degree were subjected to regression analysis to determine which factor(s) or combinations of factors best predicted program completion. Second, a survey instrument was administered to 152 doctoral students who began a program of study during the years 1986 to 2000 at a medium‐sized midwestern university to assess their perceptions of the reasons for success (graduation) or non‐success.

Finding the Horizon: Education Administration Students Paint a Landscape of Cultural Diversity in Schools

A landscape painting metaphor was used to report the implications of this study of 33 graduate students preparing to become elementary and secondary school administrators who kept personal journals during their enrollment in an Issues of Diversity class at a private Midwestern university. The journals forced their cultural lens to be transparent, freeing them to locate the horizon line, a reference point for their own experience, beliefs, and values. The students, a 3:1 ratio of white to African American students and 56% female, revealed feelings of confusion, ambivalence, fear, and uncertainty about race and gender in their personal and professional lives. They described new understandings about cultural differences and showed evidence of moving into new behaviors. The power of journaling for those preparing to be school leaders was another dominant theme from the analysis.

Field of Broken Dreams: How Damaged Trust and Failed Induction Weakens the Change Process

Olympia School District, located in a fast growing suburb, attempts to transform Field School, an intermediate school for seven years, into a primary school. As a result, changes in grade level, staff, material resources, and the physical structure must be made. The administration promises assistance with the transition yet the teachers are faced with a lack of materials as well as personal support. The absence of adequate induction to their new position creates a strain in the socialization of the Field School staff. This case presents a multi-faceted dilemma faced by both central office and building level administrators. Professors and students of educational administration can use this case to supplement analysis and discussion of issues related to educational change, trust, and employee induction.

A comparison of the views of educational administration students in the USA and Mexico

This study is an examination of the views of students completing an educational administration preparation program at Southwest Texas State University (SWT) in San Marcos, TX, USA, with those completing a similar program, the Maestria en Administracion y Desarrollo de la Educacion (MADE), at the Instituto Politecnico Nacional (IPN) in Mexico City, Mexico. Focus groups are used to explore perceptions of how students change over the course of the program, what distinguishes them from graduates of other programs, and how they feel about the quality of their experience. The process of pairing institutions for joint study across cultures appears to hold significant promise for gaining insight into current practices and giving direction needed for change.

A Cross-cultural Investigation of Leadership in the United States and Mexico

This study reports the administration of Kouzes and Posner's (1995) Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI) to 28 graduate students in educational administration at a university in the Southwest of the USA and 28 graduate students at a university in Mexico. A rationale for the importance of cross-cultural study in educational administration is presented. The results of this study indicate that the US educators scored significantly higher than Mexican educators on all five of Kouzes and Posner's leadership practices. The rank order of the practices was quite different. The leadership practices appear to be quite firmly embedded in US culture but not Mexican culture. Questions are raised about whether the theory has universal application and how effective leadership may be defined differently across cultures.

A meeting of cultures: part-time students in an Ed.D. Program

The purpose of this study was to examine the cultural perspectives of the part-time doctoral students in educational administration and of selected faculty in the college of education at a medium-size middle western US university. Results indicated that among participants in this study two distinct cultures developed. The first culture, the vocational culture, was made up of part-time doctoral students and professors of the educational administration department. The perspectives of this culture were developed on values, beliefs, and goals that emphasized skills, training, processes, and procedures for effective educational administration. The second group, the academic culture, emphasized a more traditional, academic, research emphasis, and was made up of the instructors of the professional common core subjects. The adoption of the Ed.D. degree caused the university to search for a new identity, contributing to an attempt by each culture to try to convince the part-time doctoral students in educational administration that their respective values, beliefs, and goals were the knowledge most worth acquiring. The genuine feeling of sympathy for the time constraints and other situations affecting the part-time doctoral student in educational administration caused a certain amount of accommodation and negotiation to take place that enabled the students a questionable degree of influence concerning degree expectations.

Restructuring schools for linguistic diversity: linking decision making to effective programs

The linguistically diverse population is the fastest growing segment of the student population. Educators are beginning to realize that a models approach to designing programmes for linguistically diverse students does not work, whereas a decision-making approach accommodates the variety of needs presented by these students. This volume offers the integration of knowledge regarding English as a second language and bilingual instruction across the curriculum, presented with a process for incorporating them into a complete programme that lies precisely within the goals and realities of schools. It should prove useful to professors and graduate students of educational administration, teacher education, students of bilingual and ESL courses, inservice practitioners, curriculum developers, policy makers, and professionals in bilingual administration.

Leadership stories: what novices learn by crafting the stories of experienced school administrators

Describes research undertaken to study the kinds of understandings and reflections in which administrators‐in‐training engage by writing the story of an experienced administrator. Explains how 17 graduate students in educational administration carried out multiple interviews with practising school administrators concerning their personal biography, professional biography and a discrete incident of professional practice. Reports the findings that novices did get to hear about some of the grey areas in which educational administrators typically operate. The stories provided basic assumptions and details about how experienced administrators performed in specific situations and circumstances and illustrated some of the explicit rules used by administrators to manage problems as well as the more tacit knowledge and assumptions embedded in practice. States that this led students to reflect on their own approaches to practice.

Autobiographical Stories of Rites of Passage of Caucasian and African-American Female Doctoral Students in Educational Administration

This paper focuses on the autobiographical stories of one Caucasian and three African-American female doctoral students during their rites of passage in departments of educational administration. A rite of passage has been defined as the student's journey toward the completion of the dissertation. While not generalizable, the four stories offer different perspectives and experiences of nontraditional doctoral students and may provide new insights for those who advise and teach diverse graduate students.

Developing an Administrative Perspective: Toward a Curriculum Framework for Fostering Conceptual Change

The prior experience of entering students of educational administration as classroom teachers is usually disregarded for purposes of program planning. Nevertheless, that experience can exert a prepotent effect during the early stages of academic induction devoted to developing an administrative perspective. Drawing on conceptual change theory, a curriculum framework can be designed to foster the beginning stage of that cognitive shift during introductory coursework. The real art of discovery consists not in finding new lands, but in seeing with new eyes. -Marcel Proust All seeing is essentially perspective, and so is all knowing. -Friedrich Nietzsche

Characteristics of career success: An additional input to selecting candidates for professional programs?

It has been argued that selecting students for graduate degrees in professional schools should involve the use of information on a student's potential for “career” as well as academic success. The purpose of this study was to describe the elements of career success of 96 former doctoral students in educational administration and to measure their relationship to conventional academic and individual variables, such as GRE and MAT scores, career experience, age, sex, and quality of reference. It was found that there were no statistically practical or significant relationships between measures of academic success and career success.

Research Orientation of Doctoral Students in Educational Administration

The purpose of this study was to assess the research orientation of doctoral students in educational administration preparation programs. More specifically, the study sought to determine whether learning experiences during the doctoral program and certain personal variables were associated with research orientation. Prior exposure to research activity wasfound to be related to students' interest in and appreciation of inquiry. (This research was supported in part by a grant from the University Council for Educational Administration, Columbus, Ohio. The authors wish to acknowledge the assistance of Joan M. Beckman in collecting these data.)

SEX BIAS IN THE EVALUATION OF ADMINISTRATORS

Using a set of in‐basket materials that suggest specific leadership styles, 135 graduate students in educational administration evaluated hypothetical superintendents who were depicted as female or male and rule bound or flexible. Overall, the fictitious female superintendent was rated as less fair and less flexible than her male counterpart. Moreover, the female superintendent described as rule bound was rated as more inflexible than the male who exhibited identical behaviors and the woman described as flexible was rated as less flexible than the identidal male. When these results were viewed in the context of a body of literature that shows women administrators to be fully as effective as men and in the context of the small number of women in educational leadership positions, they strongly suggest that sex bias has operated to the disadvantage of women and the education profession.

Questionnaires and the Dissertation in Educational Administration

This study tests a model intended to help account for the prevalence of questionnaire methodologies among doctoral students in educational administration. Weaknesses of such methodologies for research on administrative phenomena are discussed, and several attributes of students and their doctoral programs are advanced as promoting these methods.

The Effect of Human Relations Training on Dogmatic Attitudes of Educational Administration Students

AbstractThe effects of human relations seminars on dogmatism scores of educational administration students were investigated. Two groups of graduate students coming largely from the Middle and Far East were used in this study. The experimental group was given a series of human relations workshops over a period of four weeks. The results provided evidence that human relations training can reduce dogmatism as measured by the Rokeach Dogmatism Scale. Also, the seminars provided an opportunity not usually found in the traditional academic program for graduate students to interact with their peers and the faculty.

Status of Special Education Administration Students Who Received USOE/BEH Training Grants

Status of Special Education Administration Students Who Received USOE/BEH Training Grants

Higher Education Administration Students’ Perception of Establishing a Community College

The recency of the community college movement has prevented large scale organization and dissemination of knowledge concerning the processes and steps required to establish a community college. There is, therefore, a need for means to incorporate contemporary evidence into the curriculum of prospective administrators of higher education. The purpose of this study was to compare Higher Education Administration students’ peceptions of a logical sequence of events for establishing a community college with a sequence of events for establishing a community college as determined by practice. The Edwards’ matched-pair technique was used to rank the perceptions of the students. A sequence of twenty-nine events was selected from the literature. Each event was matched with every other, thus providing 406 decision situations. From these decisions an ordering was obtained. Using the Spearman rho correlation technique, a coefficient of 0.82 was found between the sequence of events taken from the literature and rank or...