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CHOICE 2015 Outstanding Academic TitleWhat do women academics classify as challenging, inequitable, or \"hostile\" work environments and experiences? How do these vary by women's race/ethnicity, rank, sexual orientation, or other social locations?How do academic cultures and organizational structures work independently and in tandem to foster or challenge such work climates?What actions can institutions and individuals-independently and collectively-take toward equity in the academy?Despite tremendous progress toward gender equality and equity in institutions of higher education, deep patterns of discrimination against women in the academy persist. From the \"chilly climate\" to the \"old boys' club,\" women academics must navigate structures and cultures that continue to marginalize, penalize, and undermine their success.This book is a \"tool kit\" for advancing greater gender equality and equity in higher education. It presents the latest research on issues of concern to them, and to anyone interested in a more equitable academy. It documents the challenging, sometimes hostile experiences of women academics through feminist analysis of qualitative and quantitative data, including narratives from women of different races and ethnicities across disciplines, ranks, and university types. The contributors' research draws upon the experiences of women academics including those with under-examined identities such as lesbian, feminist, married or unmarried, and contingent faculty. And, it offers new perspectives on persistent issues such as family policies, pay and promotion inequalities, and disproportionate service burdens. The editors provide case studies of women who have encountered antagonistic workplaces, and offer action steps, best practices, and more than 100 online resources for individuals navigating similar situations. Beyond women in academe, this book is for their allies and for administrators interested in changing the climates, cultures, and policies that allo

Coloring outside the Lines critically looks at mentoring from the perspective of women who have been historically marginalized in school leadership, and grounds itself in a variety of experiences, including those of women school leaders of color. Using a feminist poststructuralist framework, the authors deconstruct the mentoring of women within the culture of K-12 public school administration in which they work. Providing arguments that mentoring has been and can be discriminatory, the authors explore it as a vehicle for transformation and change in education leadership rather than abandoning it completely. Summary reprinted by permission of State University of New York Press

\"How to Not Be a Terrible School Board Member is a practical guide both for how to become an effective school board member, and for how school administrators can improve their board relations. The intended audience is prospective, present, and past school board members and school administrators.While the overwhelming majority of school board members have good motives, even people with good motives can make bad moves, even terrible moves. This book is dedicated to preventing situations in which good intentions can lead to bad outcomes. The book takes a case based approach that focuses on terrible school board member moves as the fastest and most memorable way to help one learn how to be an effective school board member ,and to see, by contrast, how a successful school board member operates. Case-based learning is used in many professional programs such as business, law, medicine, and even teacher education, and research on learning by example has a strong and growing empirical research base\"-- Provided by publisher.

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to examine how US school leaders make sense of external mandates, and the way in which their understanding of state and district accountability policies affects their work. It is posited that school leaders' responses to external accountability are likely to reflect a complex interaction between their perception of the accountability policies, the state and district contexts in which those policies are situated and their own leadership beliefs and practices.Design methodology approach - The authors use both principal and teacher survey data to explore the question of how perceptions of external policy are associated with instructional leadership behaviors. Cases of seven principals are employed to flesh out the findings from the survey analysis.Findings - It is concluded that external accountability policy may have a positive impact on instructional leadership - where they see those policies as aligned with their own values and preferences, and where they see their district leaders as supportive of school-driven accountability initiatives. In these cases, school leaders internalize the external accountability policies and shape them to the particular needs that they see as priorities in their own school. Where one or the other of these factors is weak or missing, on the other hand, leaders demonstrate more negative attitudes to external accountability and weaker instructional leadership.Originality value - This analysis draws on a unique, large-scale data base and uses a mixed methods approach to answer the question.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the way in which low-performing schools and their district define, acquire, use, and diffuse research-based evidence. Design/methodology/approach: The mixed methods case study builds upon the prior research on research evidence and social networks, drawing on social network analyses, survey data and interview data to examine how educators in low-performing schools and across the district use evidence (including which types and for what purposes), as well as the relationship between network structure and evidence use for school improvement. Findings: Educators had narrow definitions of, and skepticism about, evidence, which limited its acquisition and use for school improvement. The authors found a lack of diffusion of evidence within schools and districtwide as a result of sparse connections among and between educators. Evidence was used in an instrumental, yet superficial, manner leading to weak interpretation of evidence and resulting in limited understanding of underlying problems and available solutions. Research limitations/implications: The paper suggests the importance of using social network analyses to examine the diffusion of evidence, as well as the need to better understand how evidence is defined and used. Practical implications: It is necessary to pay greater attention to how educators acquire evidence, as well as the ways in which it is used to impact school-based decisions in low-performing schools and districts. Moreover, the work suggests the influence of the district office on school-level reform. Originality/value: The paper contributes to the research on low-performing schools and accountability policy by examining the larger districtwide context and integrates social network, survey, and interview data. (Contains 1 table and 6 figures.)

This case study investigated a m-learning initiative by a large school district in the United States to provide iPod touch devices 24/7 to teachers and students of English Language Learners. We described the initiative and presented the research findings of its implementation for two years at elementary and middle school levels. The results revealed the iPod touch was used to support language and content learning, provide differentiated instructional support, and extend learning time from classroom to home. However, several challenges were identified such as significant time demand on the teachers, technical issues, the need for professional training and dedicated support staff. Implications for teachers, instructional technologists, school administrators, and researchers were discussed.

Many school administrator candidates enter the principalship with great potential, but sometimes lack the critical guidance to ensure success. With the many challenges facing principals daily, it is imperative for new and seasoned principals alike to remain informed, rejuvenated, and passionate about providing students with a quality education and supporting high quality teachers and an effective staff. \"Principal Induction\" focuses on the importance of an effective induction process in the recruitment, development, and retention of school principals. The first of its kind, this standards-based format seamlessly weaves the new Educational Leadership Constituent Council (ELCC) standards--resulting from the work of ten leading educational organizations interested in school leadership and improvement--into the principal induction process. Developing this unique approach, while providing encouragement and support, the author produces case studies, professional development activities and how-to's for: (1) Improving schools by enhancing the human and leadership qualities of administrators; (2) Promoting positive school culture; (3) Creating collaborative teams to support all stakeholders; and (4) Addressing inconsistent follow-up and unreliable accountability systems in a structured, productive manner. By cultivating their own individual growth and development through an effective induction program, school leaders will revitalize their professional and personal lives, and move from surviving to flourishing during their principalship years. Following a foreword by Michael Martin and a preface, this book contains ten chapters: (1) Induction: The Big Picture; (2) A Partnership Model for Administration Induction Success; (3) How Do You Stay Focused on the School Vision When the Walls Are Falling Down?; (4) The Best We Can Be; (5) How Do I Run This Place?; (6) I Have to Work With Them?; (7) It May Be Legal, But Is It Right??; (8) Mama Told Me There'd Be Days Like This; (9) The Internship: Preservice Administrators Looking to the Future; and(10) For the Future. The book concludes with a list of suggested readings; a list of references; and an index.

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to explore the tensions between external accountability obligations, educator's professional values, and student needs. Strategic, cognitive, and moral dimensions of this tension are captured with the central category of integrity.Design methodology approach - This is a mixed methods study that compares five exceptionally high performing middle schools with four exceptionally low performing middle schools in the state of California (USA), controlling for demographics, school context factors, and below average performance range.Findings - It is found that schools under similar circumstances differ on the degree of integrity. Schools with high integrity have a good balance between values and reality, are more cohesive and more open to dissent. In each case, integrity was associated with an expansion of agency that combined moral earnestness with prudent strategizing and actively constructing interpretive frames that maintained a school's sense of self-worth. Integrity develops or survives with a good dose of educational leaders' personal strength, but also depends on leaders' insistence to fully exhaust the moral horizon of an institution which obligates educators to balance equity, system efficiency, child-centeredness and professionalism with prudence.Research limitations implications - This is a case study of nine schools in one state. Explanatory relationships can be explored, but not generalized.Practical implications - The research has implications for leadership. It demonstrates the power of integrity as a key virtue of leadership under accountability pressures. It shows the different ways integrity can be forged in schools and the different ways it can be missed with consequences for school life.Social implications - The paper stresses the point that it is quite conceivable that ideological zeal, Machiavellian strategizing, or eager system conformism may produce more forceful agency than integrity. But as everyday responses they are not as realistic, ethical or productive as the striving for integrity.Originality value - The practitioner literature often points to integrity as a desirable quality when dealing with tensions of the sort addressed in this paper, but little systematic theoretical thinking and empirical exploration of this concept exists. The paper makes an advance in both areas.