Superintendent Leadership Research Articles

Balancing trust and control through dialogue meetings in Norwegian school district governance

Increased attention has been paid to school superintendents and their role in school reforms. Still, there are few studies on dialogue meetings between actors at different levels in the school hierarchy. The current paper investigates how a superintendent balances between trust and control while supporting school development through dialogue meetings. Drawing on interviews, reflection notes, and longitudinal observational data from dialogue meetings, comprising a superintendent, subordinated school leaders, and team leaders, this action research study provides insight into requirements for productive dialogue meetings. We argue that superintendent leadership through regular dialogue meetings can foster trust-building, empowerment, and professional commitment.

The effects of community-wide distributed leadership on students’ academic achievement

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to verify whether students’ academic achievement is enhanced not only by the leadership of school organization members represented by a principal but also by the comprehensive power of community-wide distributed leadership. A questionnaire survey was conducted from July to September 2018. The participants were 1,157 principals from 55 school districts in Japan. A logistic multilevel analysis was conducted using three binary variables as dependent variables. In the logistic multilevel modeling, four district level variables including superintendent leadership and socioeconomic status factors, in addition to 10 school level variables including distributed leadership and socioeconomic status factors, were used as explanatory variables. The analysis results indicated that distributed leadership at the school level had a suppression effect on continuous low-level academic achievement and a promotion effect on academic growth. The main explanatory variables for continuous high-level and low-level academic achievement were socioeconomic status factors. On the other hand, academic growth was explained by distributed leadership and the establishment of support headquarters. However, this study is limited in the method of measuring distributed leadership, professional community, and teacher efficacy, in addition to do not describing the process from distributed leadership to academic achievement.

The change-ready leadership of technology-savvy superintendents

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to help the researchers sought to take a closer look at the technology challenges facing district superintendents in today’s leadership climate. Design/methodology/approach The authors chose semi-structured interviews as the data collection method. Through 45 min, one-on-one, semi-structured telephone interviews, the researchers were able to collect data about overcoming the challenges of being a modern technology-savvy superintendent. Findings Through the analysis, the authors identified four themes related to the challenges faced by these district leaders, including meeting the needs of stakeholders, supporting professional development, fostering mindset changes and addressing a fear of the unknown. Research limitations/implications This study only relied on interviews and did not examine evidence from the field, such as site visits or artifact examination. Practical implications This study provides the field with insights into the role of the change-ready district leaders who foster lasting technology-infused transformation. Social implications While challenges for any district leader wishing to make long-lasting change exist, there are district leaders today who embody second-order change leadership when overcoming the challenge of school technology leadership. These technology-savvy superintendents play an important role as whole-system change agents. Originality/value This study highlighted that there many district leaders today who embody second-order change leadership in helping move their districts forward.

Making sense across levels in local school governance

Dialogues and relations between interdependent leaders working at different hierarchical levels within a given school governance system are crucial for developing shared understandings which are seen as a prerequisite for effective school development. Shared understandings among interdependent actors emerge from productive and dialogical sensemaking processes. The current study provides insight into how sensemaking plays out in dialogue meetings set up by a school superintendent and a team of subordinated school leaders, initiated at the purpose of establishing and maintaining a shared interpretation community working with important areas of pedagogy and schooling. Drawing on action research with observations, reflective conversations, and reflection notes from five key participants in the local school system, and framed within a theory of sensemaking, this issue is addressed by demonstrating how dialogue meetings strengthen the relations between a superintendent and school leadership teams. In such a context of asymmetrical power relations, the current study argues that sensemaking constitutes the pivotal activity in dialogue meetings when ensuring productive relations and bridging the gap between municipalities (as school districts) and schools. In the dialogue meetings subjected to the study, steps were taken towards shared understanding, and the involved leaders set the tone in this process by acting as role models, as facilitators of creating space for reflection.

A Regional Network of Superintendents Confronting Equity

Research into equity leadership has been a growing focus within educational leadership. Few studies explore the role of the superintendent in equity work. Drawing from interview data and observation of monthly regional leadership meetings, this article examines how 12 superintendents describe their equity leadership practices. Focusing on the ways their practice is evidenced across public and private domains of talk and action, we employ the term “messy messages” to communicate the complex, fluid, and uncomfortable nature of this work. Discussion illustrates the complexity of district equity advocacy, and increasing need for social justice education in superintendent leadership preparation programs.

Public School Board Presidents’ and Superintendents’ Perceptions of the Characteristics of Effective Superintendents in a Midwestern State

The expectation for strong superintendent leadership has increased due to a demand for greater student achievement and accountability. This study examined public school board presidents’ and superintendents’ perceptions of the characteristics superintendents must possess to effectively lead in today's complex educational system. A researcher-developed survey instrument was used to collect data from public school board presidents and superintendents in a Midwestern state. Computation of item means indicated school board presidents perceived developing a close, positive, and productive relationship with the school board, developing a culture and climate which enhances teacher morale and student achievement, developing partnerships between school and community, developing budgets and manage fiscal matters, and visibility throughout the community and district as the most important characteristics of effective superintendents. Superintendents perceived developing a culture and climate which enhances teacher morale and student achievement, developing a close positive, and productive relationship with the school board, building a team atmosphere and coherence, developing budgets and manage fiscal matters, and communicating with stakeholders as the most important characteristics of effective superintendents. School board presidents considered involvement of stakeholders in collaborative goal-setting and monitoring as well as superintendent visibility throughout the community and district to be significantly more important than did superintendents. In contrast, superintendents believed recruiting, selecting, developing personnel, and implementing effective evaluation structures to be significantly more important than did the superintendents. Independent sample t tests revealed that small district public school superintendents perceived recruiting, selecting, developing personnel, and implementing effective evaluation structures as significantly more important than small district school board presidents did ( p < .05). There was no statistically significant difference in perceptions for the 20 characteristics of effective superintendents between large district board presidents and superintendents, or between less experienced school board presidents and superintendents ( p < .05). More experienced school board members perceived involving stakeholders in collaborative goal-setting and monitoring to be statistically significantly more important than did more experienced superintendents ( p < .05).

School Closure and Loss: Guiding a District Through the Change Process

This case study is designed for aspiring principal and superintendent leadership candidates who are studying transitions, change theory in organizations, or board/superintendent relations. It examines the arduous process of closing a school and making huge cuts in a small district because of declining enrollment and expenditures that far outweighed revenue. In this case study, the superintendent and leadership team play the complex roles of communicators, grief counselors, organizers, and change agents.

Leadership Role of School Superintendents in Saudi Arabia

This study examines the practice of school superintendents in Saudi Arabia in five roles as seen by education supervisors within school district offices. The purpose of the study is to examine the leadership of school superintendents in these five roles: work environment, rules and regulations, implementation of technology, accountability, and professional development of the education supervisors in school districts. The study sample consists of 276 education supervisors working in 30 school districts. The study reveals that the respondents (education supervisors) perceived leadership roles enacted to a low degree for the five roles. The final results show that school superintendents’ leadership needs to be developed in order to provide a high quality of education, by improving the selection of superintendents and offering better training in the five roles. The Ministry of Education should decentralize major decisions to school superintendents so that they can be active in leading change and perform leadership roles in their school districts.

International Comparison of the Influence of Educational Reform on Superintendent Leadership

During recent decades, the rise of the global economy launched a wide array of social, economic, and political changes in nations throughout the world. Heightened concern about the quality of schools launched what is arguably the most pervasive, intense, and protracted attempts at educational reform in recent history. Examinations of the fundamental assumptions about how schools are organized, governed, and led contributed to shifts in educational policies in Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark, and the United States. Findings from national superintendent studies provide insights into changes in political ideology, devolution of responsibility for education, and the changing nature of superintendents’ leadership.

Introduction: International Perspectives on Educational Reform and Superintendent Leadership

During the last three decades, the rise of the global economy has launched a wide array of social, economic, and political changes in nations throughout the world and heightened concern about the q...

Superintendent leadership under shifting governance regimes

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to analyse the superintendent position, its relation to the local political system and the function as superior of principals in the school district in order to illuminate important district-level conditions for student learning. Influences from historical legacies and policy cultures are investigated by means of cross-country case analyses.Design/methodology/approach– This paper is based on data from national surveys of superintendent leadership in Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway.Findings– A key point is the observation of a mix-mode system of hard and soft governance. Municipalities, schools, teachers and pupils are – in different degrees across the Nordic countries – subjected to external evaluation and assessment by central control agencies, where the streams of reports, assessments and performance data are assembled. However, shifts in the governance systems are only modestly reflected in the self-reports on the superintendents’ role. Overall, superintendents in the cases express a self-preferred leadership style as professional learning facilitators who focus on pupil orientation, which positions the superintendent in “crossfires” between conflicting stakeholder demands.Research limitations/implications– The paper reinforces the importance of superintendent leadership in local school governance. It underscores the importance that superintendents facilitate learning conditions for school leaders, teachers and students, which we see as a promising path for further research.Originality/value– The paper provides empirical evidence regarding superintendent leadership situated in local social and political contexts within the Nordic countries. The cross-country analysis illuminates how path-pendent historical legacies mediate current reform trends.

The Superintendent's Leadership Role in School Improvement: Relationships Between Authenticity and Best Practices

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between superintendent leadership and the operational processes of school improvement. School district superintendents (N = 226) from six southeastern states were surveyed concerning their leadership authenticity and school improvement practices. Descriptive statistics, analyzes of variance, Pearson correlation coefficients, and structure equation modeling were used to analyze the data. A significant and positive relationship was found between superintendent levels of leadership authenticity and their districts’ use of best practices in the school improvement process. Implications for practice in academic professional preparation programs, for practicing administrators, and for governing boards are discussed.

Acceptance Levels of Traditional and Nontraditional Superintendents by Experienced Educators

AbstractThis triangulated mixed methods study examines the differences in experienced educator acceptance of nontraditional and traditional superintendents in two southern California public high school districts. A researcher‐developed 5‐point Likert‐type survey instrument combined with open‐ended questions was used, which allowed simultaneous collection of both quantitative and qualitative data. Results indicate that participants did not trust, respect, support, or accept nontraditional superintendents in comparison to traditional superintendents. The major theme that emerged from the qualitative analysis was that nontraditional superintendents are not qualified to be superintendents because of a perceived lack of teaching or other educational experience. Traditional superintendents have educational experience that allows them to relate better to teachers and students as well as to deal with complex educational issues. Quantitative data were analyzed relative to the hypotheses that traditional superintendents are easier to (a) trust, (b) respect, (c) support, and (d) accept than are nontraditional superintendents. The results led to the acceptance of all four hypotheses. The major inference of the current study is that experienced educators may not accept the leadership of nontraditional superintendents, which may affect the ability of such superintendents to lead effectively. This result is especially relevant if a nontraditional superintendent has a mandate for change when hired.

Superintendent's leadership: a key factor in project success

This research was undertaken to explore: 1) the link between leadership competency at a construction site, project success and profitability; 2) the possibility of identifying a ‘great superintendent’. The conclusions of this effort indicate that the quality and level of on-site leadership (as compared to management) is, and will remain, a key element for the success of construction projects. Two separate but complementary tools were developed: a self-evaluating ‘field construction superintendent (FCS) questionnaire’ and a ‘project manager questionnaire’ that solicits an independent performance evaluation from the FCS’s superior. These tools profile the leadership skills and capabilities of a FCS and induce an awareness of the scope and importance of leadership. The tools can be used to profile the leadership competencies or lack thereof of anyone with construction site responsibilities. The collected data confirms a significant correlation between a FCS’s leadership competency and job performance. Not surprisingly, it is the effectiveness of management skills that dominates the job performance. However, it is the degree of applied leadership that distinguishes the great performers (great superintendents) from the unexceptional ones. Interviews conducted with the participants’ company executives found a 90% congruency in the study’s and the corporate rankings.

Dollars and sense: a budget-building framework of transparency for superintendent leadership

School superintendents annually need to gain affirmative votes from their governing bodies to approve their district budgets. This paper proposes a framework through which the superintendent can express the district’s educational needs and concomitant resource allocations in conceptual terms rather than in multi-columned ledgers. The framework calls for transparency, the involvement of all stakeholders and simplicity. It posits the superintendent in the vital leadership position of being the catalyst for orchestrating change for continuous improvement across the district. Components of the framework include repositories for concepts including: staffing, programme improvement, curriculum development and capital outlay.

Context-Responsive Leadership: Examining Superintendent Leadership in Context.

It is widely acknowledged that context matters, that it affects leadership practices. A large body of descriptive studies documents common elements in the work of school superintendents. What is less well known is how superintendents’ leadership may be expressed very differently given the varying contexts in which they work. The purpose of this cross-national study was to identify the specific variations in context which influence superintendents’ leadership, and to examine how superintendents respond to these variations in context. Structured, in-depth interviews were conducted with 12 superintendents- six from across Sweden and six from Wisconsin, in the United States. The findings illustrate that the work of superintendents is paradoxically similar but different. Superintendents described common primary work priorities, challenges and contextual variations which influenced their practice. Yet, differences in district size, organizational culture, community characteristics, and geographic location significantly influenced their leadership practices. Despite their challenges, all superintendents responded to and shaped the context of their work. The study provides illustrative examples of superintendent leadership in situ, and supports the argument that leadership is both embedded in and influenced by context. The study also furthers the authors’ emerging theory of context-responsive leadership.

Building budgets and trust through the alchemy of superintendent leadership

Superintendents have the burden and the opportunity to exert leadership through the budget-building process. This article details a dozen tenets which can be implemented by practicing superintendents. Doing so increases the chances of building trust among the stakeholders of administrators, staff, community, and school board members. The district superintendent of schools occupies the only positional office in the organization capable of orchestrating this process.

Building Budgets and Trust through Superintendent Leadership

In this study, we surveyed school district superintendents in a southeastern state about their budget-building strategies. The majority of responding superintendents had worked with their most senior principals and business managers for less than three years. Patterns of variance along the openness of budget-building processes, information management, and school settings had no relationship to superintendent rate of rise to authority, career path, or cohesiveness of staff. There was no relationship found between professional preparation and budget-building processes. Cohesiveness of staff had a negative and weak relationship with information management but the openness of processes had a significantly positive relationship to information management. The responding superintendents relied heavily on their on-the-job training and currently operate much differently than when they started their superintendency. We discuss these outcomes with regard to professional preparation programs and superintendent professional development activities.

Exploring Superintendent Leadership in Smaller Urban Districts

Much of the existing literature on urban school reform focuses on how the relatively small number of our nation's largest urban districts are approaching school reform with these objectives in mind. However, does smaller district size have any bearing, direct or indirect, on the nature of superintendent leadership? The authors' exploratory research investigates the interplay between superintendent leadership strategies and behaviors, and district reform initiatives in a sample of relatively well-performing, smaller urban districts in California. The authors conducted interviews with superintendents and members of their leadership teams in four urban districts to examine how district size might influence superintendent leadership strategies, reform initiatives, and personal behaviors. The authors found that the personal leadership behaviors and associated operating processes (strategies and tactics for execution) appeared remarkably distinct from what superintendents do (or are expected to do) in very large urban school districts. The implications of these tentative findings are discussed in the conclusion.

Perceptions of Effective Leadership in Schools for Students with Visual Impairments: A National Study

This study investigated the effectiveness of the leadership of principals and superintendents of schools for students who are visually impaired from their teachers’ perspectives. The findings indicated that these school leaders fell short of the teachers’ expectations on various aspects of leadership.