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Communication in any organization is a complex phenomenon. Public schools are people‐centered enterprises in which the primary tasks of teaching and learning are accomplished verbally. Within each school, the principal is uniquely positioned to regulate these communications activities. The research reported here sought to examine how five school principals managed communications in their schools. Three major questions guided the research. What are the preferred modes and levels of communications activities utilized by principals? What are the major messages communicated through various modes and at different levels by principals? What do the communications activities of individual principals tell us about how principals interpret their leadership role in school, how they set administrative priorities, and how they put their beliefs and values into practice? The findings indicate that the communications activities of school principals are dominated by dyadic interpersonal contacts. The major purpose of these dyadic interpersonal exchanges were maintenance messages which related to policies, procedures, and regulations for organizing, operating and perpetuating the school. As an adaptation to the nature of a principal's work life, each principal demonstrated a pragmatic preference for accomplishing his/her communications through talk even when written messages or other mechanisms for message delivery would have been more efficient. Finally, the principals believed that the success of their communications activities in school was characterized by openness, honesty, high visibility, and the ability and capacity to listen.

Metaphors are revelatory of the perceptions, values and behaviors of school administrators. Through transfer of meaning, metaphors attempt to broaden perspectives, enhance understanding and provide insight into the organization, operation and administration of school. What effect do metaphors, whether verbalized openly, expressed symbolically, or camouflaged in organizational structures and behaviors, have on schools and their operations? What influences, if any, are there if school administrators liken the activities and administration of their schools to an assembly line operation? A ticking clock? A garden? A mirror of society? A museum? Or, candy machine? The purpose of the paper is to address these two questions by: presenting a variety of images, similes, metaphors, and analogies used to describe the purposes of and the organization, operation and administration of public schools; examining what six particular metaphors contribute to an understanding of various characteristics and dimensions of schools; and finally, analyzing what these metaphors mean in terms of how educational administrators conceptualize schooling, interpret their administrative role, and put their knowledge, skills, attitudes and values into practice. The paper includes a discussion of the potential of metaphor in terms of its implications for the practice of administration in schools, for the training of educational leaders, for the construction of theory, and for the development of a philosophy of educational administration.

Architecture deals with the creation and definition of space expressed in buildings and other physical structures. Pre‐service preparation programs and on‐going professional development for school leaders similarly are built structures designed to help aspiring and practicing administrators acquire critical knowledge, dispositions, and competencies as democratic educational leaders. Building on earlier work on the architecture of professional development, this paper argues that the pre‐service preparation of school leaders is a particular type of professional development; one that is formalized and routinely delivered in departments of educational administration. Next, current state and national standards documents are reviewed for evidence of explicitly or implicitly expressed democratic principles. The paper ends with a description of how the redesign of administrator preparation and professional development programs in the authors department, Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis at the University of Wisconsin‐Madison, created spaces for professional learning and community building anchored in democratic principles.

How two high school principals, one public and one parochial, exercised symbolic leadership to influence teachers′ attitudes and behaviours is examined. Data on these principals were collected over a five month period through participant observation; élite, structured interviews; informal unstructured interviews; document analysis; survey instruments and examination of physical, environmental factors. The findings reveal that symbolic leadership is the integration and communication of a principal′s thoughts, words and actions. Evidence of symbolic leadership by these two principals indicated that symbols were powerful transmitters of important messages used to reinforce, maintain, create and give meaning to organisation culture.

Using needs theory as a framework, describes research that examined top rated school superintendents′ needs for power, achievement and affiliation. Identifies distinctive motivational profiles using the job choice exercise (JCE) and supplements quantitative results with telephone interviews which enabled comparison of JCE scores with verbal responses. Results indicated the need for power was the dominant motive and that it tended to be coupled with low affiliation rather than high affiliation. Interview data supported the importance of power, but suggested motives serve as predispositional tendencies which are often superseded by pressure to act in response to situational specifics.

Growing appreciation for the potential impact of principals on their schools has stimulated a significant body of research concerning the principalship. While many aspects of the principalship have been the object of study, it is often difficult to determine the relationship among these studies and how these studies, as a whole, contribute to a better understanding of the principalship. It is also difficult to judge which aspects of the principalship would provide the most productive focus for subsequent research. The review reported in this article addressed both sets of difficulties by analysing a total of 135 empirical studies conducted between 1974 and 1988; 60 of these studies were reported between 1985 and 1988 and received more attention than the earlier 75. Results of the analysis identify aspects of the principalship about which much is known, approaches to research which appear to have exhausted their usefulness and areas in which further study seems likely to be of most value. One major conclusion from the analysis is that we know most about effective principal practices and least about how such practices develop.

This issue is a selected bibliography covering the subject of leadership.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a framework for integrating social responsibility within the accountability context now prevalent across the regular and special education contexts of Canadian and American schools while exposing readers to many of the different theories that exist concerning transdisciplinary forms of inclusive education.

The author uses her experience as superintendent to create a system of inclusive and authentic collaboration amongst educators, parents, and specialists in the hope of creating a more complete plan for special education in her district. She introduces these collaborative teams to numerous various theoretical frameworks hoping to expand their views of what constitutes “acceptable” educational knowledge.

Results from the full‐scale implementation of the new transdisciplinary model indicate that emergent collaborative sensibilities among team members are beginning to characterize educational work which reflects a transition towards a more socially responsible learning community characterized by qualities of transparency, honesty, inclusivity, interdependence, respectful reciprocity, trust, and caring.

The study furthers our understanding of special education programs and the different ways in which it is possible to improve the current special education system. The study introduces us to one specific study (related to special education and done by the author herself) while continuously relating that study to grounded and established educational and ethic‐related theory.