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Minority female students are increasingly faced with issues such as financial instability, work-family imbalance, and few growth opportunities in their careers. Within the context of community colleges, the presence of minority female administrators may serve as a venue for the empowerment and attainment of academic and professional goals for minority female students through administrators’ mentoring practices. The purpose of this paper is to explore the lived experience of community college minority female administrators in their role as informal mentors to community college minority female students.

The author used a qualitative phenomenological approach to explore community college minority female administrators’ experiences as mentors of female minority students. Mullen’s (2009) alternative mentoring model guided the study as well as a feminist lens. The purposive sample included six minority female administrators from two Florida community colleges, with individual interviews based on 18 open-ended questions. Data were analyzed with Atlas.ti™ qualitative software.

The findings uncovered four common themes and seven subthemes regarding the experience of informal mentoring as a minority female administrator: facilitating empowerment with two subthemes – modeling and coaching; administrator-student relationship with three subthemes – encouragement, life experiences, and past mentors; personal growth; and formalized mentoring with two subthemes – create a support system and access to information.

In any study, phenomenological or otherwise, the researcher’s biases may cloud the data analysis process, and the researcher may code the data incorrectly or leave out crucial information during the transcription of the interview. It was essential for the author to understand the concept of epochè to bracket the author’s own experiences as a minority female (Bloomberg and Volpe, 2012). The purposeful sample was small and only focused on one region in the US, and the study’s findings may not be transferable to other contexts.

Minority female administrators’ experiences mentoring minority female students have not been comprehensively explored in the scholarly realm; hence, their mentoring journey is unknown. The study sought to shatter that silence and create a dialogue that will hopefully continue in the field of mentoring.

This study explores factors that influence the initiation of leadership coaching relationships that include externally employed coaches and school administrators.

This qualitative research study includes semi-structured interviews, observations and documents collected across three academic years within the context of a university-based leadership coaching program. Participants included six leadership coaches and six school administrators who participated in the program.

Qualitative analysis indicates that gender and race, prior professional experience, pre-existing professional relationships and the complexity of the district’s organizational structure influence the initiation of the coaching relationship.

Confidentiality restrictions imposed by the program limit opportunities for member checking and other forms of triangulation. Additional data collection using more expansive research methods would help address this limitation.

This study contributes to the sparse literature about leadership coaching with school administrators by describing how different factors influence initiation coaching relationships.

The purpose of this paper is to present qualitative evidence on the processes and forces that shape school administrator career paths.

An embedded case study approach is used to understand more than 100 administrator career transitions within the Delaware education system. Semi‐structured interview data were collected from 48 principals and assistant principals. Coding and analysis occurred through an iterative process, revealing patterns in processes and forces influencing the careers of school administrators.

While some career decisions are self‐initiated, most are influenced in part or entirely by other actors in the system, described as recruiting/tapping, requesting, reassigning, passing over, and removing. In self‐initiated decisions to move or stay, a number of “pushes” and “pulls” are identified. Findings also suggest the decision to stay‐equilibrium is driven by relationships with students and by district support.

Data are limited to Delaware and represent the voices of principals and assistant principals only. Patterns evident in the data suggest a need to further investigate administrator career behavior qualitatively, as well as directions for future research.

There is a need to better understand and improve local human resource processes in terms of recruitment and assignment of administrators. Additional research is needed to better identify processes and forces related to career decisions in order to improve leadership recruitment and retention.

This research represents the first large‐scale qualitative study of administrator career behavior and is an important companion to recent quantitative analyses in this area.

The purpose of this paper is to show how instructional rounds contributes to shared understandings and facilitates the development of relationships among administrators.

This mixed methods study draws on three years of data in a district engaged in rounds. Administrators annually completed a social network survey, which focussed on how often they interacted around instructional issues. Additionally, the authors conducted semi-structured interviews with a purposeful sample of administrators.

Administrators have increased their participation in and understanding of instructional rounds, as well as their understanding of district initiatives. However, results are mixed when looking at the quantitative data. While the theory of rounds suggests that the process would lead to increased interactions, the authors found a statistically significant decrease.

Implications include examining rounds as part of a district’s set of formal and informal structures. Also, results suggest further examination of how turnover impacts networks. Finally, expanding the number of interviews may present a more mixed qualitative experience of rounds.

As districts adopt initiatives based on observations, rounds can be used to support administrators’ growth in understanding these initiatives. Simultaneously, districts need to consider the purpose for both central office and building administrators and how those purposes align with protocols, norms, and practices they use.

This paper advances the empirical knowledge on instructional rounds, which has been gaining popularity, though little empirical analysis exists of the process, how its theory of action is enacted, and how administrators experience rounds.

Recent teacher evaluation reforms around the globe substantially increased the number of teacher observations, consequently raising observers' (typically school administrators') observational loads. The purpose of this study is to examine associations between observational loads and school administrator turnover, reported time use and strain.

The study uses education administrative data from the state of Tennessee to examine the link between observational loads and school administrator outcomes of interest. The results present credible regression estimates that isolate variation in observational loads within schools over time and within observers over time.

The evidence suggests individual school administrators allocate a set amount of time to observations that is insensitive to observational load and seemingly assign observations to colleagues strategically. School administrator reports do not suggest observational loads are associated with negative unintended consequences on administrator strain or observer turnover.

The study contributes to the literature on teacher evaluation by shedding light on how the constraints posed by an evaluation system may affect the work of school administrators. It also extends the job demands-resources theory that describes worker responses to new job demands.

The paper aims to argue that US colleges and universities resemble a “leaning tower” with ever expanding layers of administrators and managers who control and dominate university life. This set of institutional changes has altered the way that college administrators are recruited.

The paper uses recent developments in institutional theories of organisations to explain the changing environment facing US colleges and universities and the role that college administrators play in this environment. The paper matches data from a sample of administrative positions advertised in the 2004‐2005 Careers section of the Chronicle of Higher Education with web‐based data on incumbents subsequently hired for each position. These data are supplemented with aggregate statistics provided by the Chronicle and the American Association of University Professors (AAUP).

Results suggest that only a small number of administrative positions advertised involve academic appointments with tenure and that the educational qualifications advertised span a surprisingly wide spectrum of credentials other than academic PhD's. Ethnically underrepresented groups and women are most likely to hold jobs requiring PhD's while whites and men occupy most of the positions where qualifications are ambiguous or classic academic qualifications are not called for.

The paper is the first to discuss the growing distinctive labour market for college administrators while providing preliminary data on the diversity effects of this labour market.

This qualitative research study focused upon collaboration between regular and special education teachers in middle school inclusive social studies classrooms. Data sources included interviews, observations and a review of Individualized Education Plans (IEPs). Two pairs of regular and special education teachers (high and low collaborators) were selected from three schools in different counties. Major findings included a description of the ways teachers formed and maintained their relationships, the role of administrators, and obstacles that needed to be overcome. Lack of time was identified as the greatest obstacle. IEPs were not found to be useful. Teacher use of accommodations and strategies tended to be global, rather than individualized. Perceptions of role were examined by teacher type.

The purpose of this paper is to describe how practitioners from Canada, the UK, Singapore, and the USA, university educational administration faculty from the USA, and the editor of a premier international journal of educational management engaged in a collaborative process to discover how to improve the preparation and practice of educational administration on a global basis.

An appreciative inquiry theoretical research perspective was used to discover a positive core of experiences that could add to cultural proficiency as it relates to educational administration.

In each cultural context, the central nature of the highpoint stories focused on appreciative ways to work with other people. The stories suggest that relationships and collaboration are at the heart of an educational administrator's practice. It was discovered that twenty‐first century educational administrators operating in a global context believed that they could become difference makers in education.

The findings from this study provide encouragement for extended global collaboration for practicing educational administrators as well as those who are responsible for their preparation. The findings also suggest that using collaborative technologies in the framework of a cross‐cultural educator partnership can enhance the preparation and practice in educational administration programs.

This paper reports the findings of a study that examined several aspects of information systems at colleges and universities with 5,000 or fewer students. The subject schools were members of either CAUSE or Educom. The information system administrators at these institutions were mailed a survey that consisted of 20 questions that related to institutional demographics, management/ governance issues and finance/budgeting issues. A total of 21 hypotheses were tested for significant relationships using chi‐squares at 0.05 alpha level. This article specifically addresses parts of the study that related to information systems management structure, policy setting and resource acquisition.

This paper analyses the degree of political decentralisation and its relation to the local councils in Tanzania. It explores the institutional and political set-up of the local councils originating from the degree of political decentralisation and how it influences the tension between the bureaucrats and local politicians.

Qualitative approach by a comparative case study is adopted to investigate the phenomenon in two local governments in Tanzania. The data were collected through interviews with 37 senior local government officials and eight focus group discussions with 48 administrators and councillors.

The findings indicate that the two local governments are subjected to a similar political system guided by similar rules and guidelines from the central government bureaucracy for implementing the party manifesto and central government priorities. Thus, the local politicians have little room for negotiation in adopting local agenda to reflect the preferences of the local community. Any attempt to challenge this status quo creates political tensions between bureaucrats and the administrators.

The findings provide invaluable insights to different stakeholders such as political scientists, government officials, and policymakers with interests in research or practice of political decentralization and political-administrative relation.