Bruce Sheppard

Memorial University of Newfoundland · Educational Leadership

Within the context of an apparent transnational agenda of accountability, standardization, and increased government control of public education in many countries, including Canada, a growing number of constituencies question the legitimacy of school boards and argue for their elimination. Herein the authors report results of their pan Canadian stud...

In this paper we compare the use of research and other evidence in the decision-making practices of two groups of education policy elites, situated in different contexts – provincial education ministries and school districts. Data are derived from two pan-Canadian studies: Galway (2006) and Sheppard, Galway, Brown and Wiens (2013). The findings sho...

Within this context of accountability, standardization, and increased government control, there is a growing constituency in Canada and elsewhere who question the legitimacy of school boards and who therefore argue for their elimination (Alsbury, 2008; Beckham, Klaymeier-Wills & Weeks, 2011; Berends, Bodily & Kirby, 2002; Fusarelli, Kowalski & Pete...

Contemporary research has suggested that bullying is essentially a problem of relationships. If so, can leadership that utilizes a distributed model based upon respect and caring, collaboration and collegiality create a school climate that diminishes the prevalence of bullying? To answer the question, data were collected from 4200 students and 1400...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to extend the understanding of distributed leadership to the school district level as the authors examine how leadership for twenty-first century learning is distributed within public schools and school districts as they strive to transform their school classrooms from primarily teacher-directed toward more st...

Across Canada there have been numerous recent examples of incidents where the political and ideological interests of provincial governments have run counter to the mandates of school districts. In this pan-Canadian study, focus groups were conducted with school board trustees and school district superintendents to examine the relationships between...

Method Results Discussion References

In this article we report on the results of an innovative research partnership with the largest school district in one Canadian province where we are exploring how educational leadership practices and the factors that influence these practices interact to impact student learning. This article makes a clear connection between leadership and student...

The study reported in this paper advances the understanding of distributed leadership in schools, the role of the school principal in the facilitation of distributed leadership and its impact upon teachers' morale and enthusiasm for their work. While both the empirical base and practical application of distributed leadership has grown phenomenally...

Establishing structures to facilitate collaborative leadership is essential to the development of a high-performing professional learning community. To enable districts to function in such a manner, the first step is to identify the structures that inhibit it and to replace them with facilitating ones. In this chapter we draw from the research lite...

Professional learning is critical to organizational effectiveness. Schools and school districts are composed of individuals, and these organizations learn and change only as individuals learn. Unfortunately, the traditional models of professional development have not really been successful in fostering individual professional learning or in changin...

There is little doubt that schools no longer function as closed systems as was largely the case until the latter part of the twentieth century and that they have become a part of a large complex adaptive system. Having accepted that reality, we recognize that the traditional approach to strategic planning—consulting selected stakeholders (assessmen...

School districts tend to operate as traditional hierarchical bureaucracies that are highly resistant to collaborative leadership and processes necessary for organizational learning. The literature review and this district case study reveal that, paradoxically, it is only by accepting this reality that school districts can move toward more collabora...

Confidence in public education has declined over the last few decades with the accumulated effect of increased centralized authoritarian control of the education system by governments. This trend of increased government control appears to run counter to the existing empirical evidence that highlights the importance of collaborative leadership that...

School districts matter, but only effective districts have a positive impact on student learning. After having spent five years researching and working in one school district, the authors outline five understandings related to the complexity of school district leadership and the role of the district superintendent in transforming a district into a...

Effective school districts function as complex adaptive learning organizations that work with multiple partners to mitigate the varied systemic factors that frequently inhibit student learning. This chapter reveals the challenges and successes of a school district that experienced considerable success functioning in this manner. The district was ev...

School District Leadership Matters challenges policy makers, administrators, and academics in the field of educational leadership to reassess their traditional approaches to learning, working, and planning. The authors believe that government restructuring, standards-based reforms, and centrally imposed strategic planning have been painfully ineffe...

This study focused on a specific change related to the integration of information and communication technology (ICT) into teaching and learning in 15 case study schools in order to explore how leadership influences organizational learning, and to determine if those schools that engaged more frequently in organizational learning behaviours were more...

A study of school-level change in 13 Newfoundland schools found a positive relationship among team leadership, organizational learning, and classroom practices. Subsequent research found that within team leadership, at least one leader must be recognized as a champion for change; external interventions may be necessary in schools without team leade...

A study identified several problems encountered by nine Newfoundland schools while converting to a team leadership model: time restraints, school management concerns, limited perceptions of leadership, district interference, personnel changes, apathy, dysfunctional politics, goal-setting difficulties, reduced professional-development opportunities,...

This paper describes case studies involving two Canadian high schools. These schools, recognized nationally and provincially as outstanding schools in dealing with multiple changes, provided a venue to explore the conditions that contribute to successful change. The research is based on the assumption that organizational learning is a valid framewo...

This paper reports on the experiences of schools that are attempting to change into dynamic, responsive, data-driven organizations that allow for learning at all levels. It identifies aspects of leadership that appear to be significant and discusses the problems the schools encountered. The sample for the study, conducted from 1995 to 1997, was com...

Focuses on findings from studies investigating leadership for change in schools and districts which indicate that teacher- librarians must be mirror-images of other teachers if they are to have credibility with teachers and principals. Discusses the essential characteristics of knowledge base; technical skills; personal, interpersonal and team skil...

Teacher-librarians in a learning organization must function both as members of teams engaged in organizational learning and as leaders of leaders. Teacher-librarians must be a mirror image of teachers, plus contribute more to the school. This paper examines the characteristics of the work of teachers and teacher-librarians in four major categories:...

The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between instructional leadership and selected school-level characteristics essential to the development of successful schools. Data were collected from a random sample of teachers (n=624) and subjected to multiple regression analysis. This study found that statistically significant positiv...