Elementary Principals' Perceptions of a Leadership Development Training Program

Research indicates that school leaders are crucial to improving instruction and raising student achievement (Council of Chief State School Officers, 2008). As such, educational reforms such as the No Child Left Behind Act (2001) and Race to the Top (2009) have sparked an accountability movement where principals are being held accountable for students' academic achievement and educational outcomes. The shift towards greater accountability has placed new attention on the ways principals are trained. Researchers have noted that organized professional development programs have not adequately prepared school principals to meet the priority demands of the 21st century (Hale & Moorman, 2003; Murphy, 1994). Murphy (1994) stated, "Traditional preparation programs - usually pre-service programs based in colleges or universities, that awarded certification and advanced degrees - rarely concentrated on the leadership challenges that principals actually face in real schools" (p. 4). As a result, many school districts are seeking ways to develop leadership development training programs that will prepare principals for their job responsibilities as a school leader. In spite of the additional training principals receive, researchers suggests that there is an obvious gap between the readiness of administrators to be instructional leaders and the demands for accountability that school administrators face (Hale & Moorman, 2003). This quantitative study examined elementary school principals' perceptions of their leadership development training program. Guided by four research questions, the study examined principals' perceptions of their overall training and how well their training prepared them to deal with school and classroom practices that contribute to student achievement; to work with teachers and others to design and implement a system for continuous student achievement; and to provide necessary support to carry out sound school, curriculum, and instructional practices. Data for this study was collected by way of survey responses from a total of 46 elementary school principals. The results from the study revealed that more than half (58.7%) of participants perceived their training as excellent. While principals' perceived that their training adequately prepared them to work collaboratively in teams, set clear visions and goals, and to use data to improve students achievement, many respondents reported a lack of training in being informed and focused on student achievement. Principals also suggested that they were not effectively trained in finding effective ways to obtain support from central office or community members.

TIMESCAPES: an architectural process of memory and adaptation

What if the architectural process of making could incorporate time? All designers who impact the physical environment- consciously and unconsciously are gatekeepers of the past, commentators of the present, and speculators of the future. This project proposes the creation of architecture and adaptive public space that looks to historical memories, foster present day cultural formation, and new alternative visions for the city of the future. The thesis asks what it means to design for stasis and change in a variety of scales- urban, architectural, and detail and arrives at a speculated new neighborhood, institutional buildings, and landscape. Central to this project is the idea of the architect as archeologist, anthropologist, and artist. The project focuses on a rapidly changing part of the city of Fort Worth, Texas and assigns a multipurpose institutional buildings and public space as a method of investigation. The thesis hopes to further architectural discourse about into the role of architecture in the preservation of memory, adaptive potential of public spaces, and the role of time in architecture.

The Educational Imaginary in Radical Reconstruction: Congressional Public Policy Rhetoric and American Federalism, 1862-1872

Facing the exigencies of Emancipation, a South in ruins, and ongoing violence, between 1862 and 1872 the United States Congress debated the role education would play in the postbellum polity. Positing schooling as a panacea for the nation’s problems, a determiner of individual worth, and a way of ameliorating state and federal tensions, congressional leaders envisioned education as a way of reshaping American political life. In pursuit of this vision, many policymakers advocated national school agencies and assertive interventions into state educational systems. Interrogating the meaning of “education” for congressional leaders, this study examines the role of this ambiguous concept in negotiating the contradictions of federal and state identity, projecting visions of social change, evaluating civic preparedness, and enabling broader debates over the nation’s future. Examining legislative debates over the Reconstruction Acts, Freedmen’s Bureau, Bureau of Education, and two bills for national education reform in the early 1870s, this project examines how disparate educational visions of Republicans and Democrats collided and mutated amid the vicissitudes of public policy argument. Engaging rhetorical concepts of temporality, disposition, and political judgment, it examines the allure and limitations of education policy rhetoric, and how this rhetoric shifted amid the difficult process of coming to policy agreements in a tumultuous era. In a broader historical sense, this project considers the role of Reconstruction Era congressional rhetoric in shaping the long-term development of contemporary Americans’ “educational imaginary,” the tacit, often unarticulated assumptions about schooling that inflect how contemporary Americans engage in political life, civic judgment, and social reform. Treating the analysis of public policy debate as a way to gain insights into transitions in American political life, the study considers how Reconstruction Era debate converged upon certain common agreements, and obfuscated significant fault lines, that persist in contemporary arguments.