Thinking out of the box: leadership for effective public alternative schools

Аннотация

This study was designed to answer the questions: What do practicing alternative school leaders believe are the essential roles and responsibilities of an effective alternative school leader and what do they believe are essential courses that should be included in an administrative preparation program so that alternative school leaders are adequately prepared to do their work? A mixed-methods design––survey, interviews, and a Q-Sort––was used to answer the questions. The survey was developed to gather data on the strategic, cultural and instructional leadership practices essential to alternative school leaders. The survey also included questions about the usefulness of the leaders’ administration preparation program in relation to their work. A factor analysis of the data identified seven scales. A one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted on five of the scales to examine differences in ratings among groups of respondents.