Urban school leader development and preparation for leadership roles

Kirk, Darius L. This study aimed to understand how urban school leaders perceive and benefit from their preparation and training programs designed to prepare them for their current leadership roles. This will help to find ways to overcome leadership challenges in urban schools and help urban principals keep their students by improving their goals, policies, administrator involvement, and community development. I used the qualitative case study method, survey, focus groups, and semi-structured interviews of 10 principals to conduct the research. One significant result of this study is that all of the people who took part in the focus groups and semi-structured interviews and who had worked as urban school leaders for many years felt that their graduate programs did not fully prepare them for their jobs. These deficiencies were: (1) lack of urban school leadership presence and perspectives on graduate leadership teaching staff, (2) lack of discussion on urban culture and community, (3) lack of discussion on future professional development, (4) lack of coursework on grant writing for urban schools, (5) lack of good discussion of fiscal management in urban settings and (6) lack of discussion on how to manage school district politics, both within a school district and between school districts. The results of this study suggest that graduate educational leadership programs need to update their curricula to include more material related to urban educational leadership. In addition, the agenda should align its curricula with the aspect of Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory within the lens of school leadership. The following steps include introducing some ideas for discussion and coursework in graduate programs in educational leadership.

Grantor dc:publisher

Alverno College

Year dc:date

2022

Author dc:creator

• Kirk, Darius L.

• School administrators--Training of
• Educational leadership
• School management and organization
• Education, Urban--Administration

Statement dc:rights

• These materials may be used by individuals and libraries for personal use, research, teaching (including distribution to classes), or for any fair use as defined by U.S. Copyright Law.

Language dc:language

English

Repository record dc:identifier

https://alverno.omeka.net/items/show/799

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:alverno.omeka.net:799