A New Era in the Professional Development of School Administrators: Lessons from Emerging Programmes
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/09578238910004004 |
| Date | 01 February 1989 |
| Published date | 01 February 1989 |
| Author | Joseph Murphy,Philip Hallinger |
| Subject Matter | Education |
Journal of
Educational
Administration
27,2
22
A New Era in the Professional
Development of School
Administrators: Lessons from
Emerging Programmes
by
Joseph Murphy and Philip Hallinger
Vanderbilt
University,
Nashville,
Tennessee,
USA
The entire area of administrator training is, at present, undergoing
thorough scrutiny. Questions have been raised about the adequacy of
university-based training programmes. In addition, for perhaps the first
time in the history of educational administration, the topic of staff
development for principals and superintendents is receiving serious
consideration. New programmes to provide systematic professional
growth opportunities to school administrators are being developed by
an ever-increasing number of
groups,
including principals themselves,
state departments of education, federally sponsored laboratories and
centres, professional associations, colleges of education and school
districts. The National Commission on Excellence in Educational
Administration was established
by
UCEA in 1985 to conduct a thorough
review of issues surrounding the training of school administrators.
Our
goal in
this article is to show what
is
occurring
in
this new era of administrator
training.
We
are particularly interested in examining the principles of
this
new era
of training that distinguish it from the status quo.
We
also wish to point out what
we see as the major lessons of the new training era for those involved in the
development of training programmes for school administrators. Our approach is
straightforward.
We
examined eleven approaches to training that are, we believe,
representative of this new era of training. Descriptions of each approach listed
in Figure 1 were developed for a forthcoming book on the topic of administrative
training[1].
This article represents an analysis and synthesis of those eleven
representative models of training.
We
begin this article with an analysis of the pressures for
change
in our methods
of
training
school administrators
—
why the new era of
turmoil?
Next, we discuss
briefly the areas of weakness in educational training programmes in general
—
an analysis of
the
status quo or traditional approaches to
training.
In the third part,
The article is made up almost entirely from the concluding chapter of our book on
Approaches
to
Administrative Training, State University of New York Press, 1987. We are indebted to the various
chapter authors of that book. It is their work that made this review possible.
Development
of School
Administrators
23
State Programmes
— Maryland Professional Development Academy
— The North Carolina Leadership Institute for Principals
— The Institute of Educational Administration — Australia
Professional Association Programmes
— The American Association of School Administrator's Model for Preparing School
Administrators'
— The Center for Advancing Principalship Excellence (UCEA)
University/Laboratory and Centre Programmes
— Far West Laboratory Peer-Assisted Leadership Program
— The Harvard Principals' Center
— The Australian Administrative Staff College
— The Vanderbilt Principals' Center
— Lewis and Clark College's Summer Institute for Beginning School Administrators
— The IDEA Collegial Support Group Model Figure 1.
Administrator Training
Programmes Reviewed
we devote considerable attention to the common aspects of the eleven emerging
approaches listed in Figure 1 — an analysis of the principles that separate the
new movement in training from the status quo. Finally, in the conclusion, we
consider some of the problems involved in the new movement in training. Before
we
begin our
analysis,
a
few points should
be
made.
First, we use the word training
throughout this article in a very broad sense, to denote any experience designed
to promote the professional development of programme participants.
We
are well
aware of current efforts to distinguish training from professional development and
education. However, we believe that training serves as a reasonable rubric for
the approaches presented in Figure 1. Secondly, a caveat on the generalisations
drawn in
the third part of the article is necessary.
As Miklos[2]
has noted, variations
in training programmes make the formulation of generalisations difficult. Therefore,
it is important to make clear that the commonalities and principles we describe
are not to be found in each of the eleven models reviewed, but that they
do
reveal
new themes and directions embedded in these approaches when viewed
collectively. Thirdly, the status quo can almost always be made to look anaemic
in
comparison with
new and
improved
products.
Although it
is
difficult
to
circumvent
what
Mann[3]
has rightly described as the
basic
paradigm of
building new
knowledge
on the "sharp criticism of (someone else's) practice", we do not want to leave
the reader with the impression that the old model of training has failed and now
needs to be discarded in favour of a newer one. We agree with Crowson and
McPherson and Culbertson[4] that much of the legacy of the theory movement
should be retained. We see the need to develop better training models from the
best of both worlds.
Finally, we would be remiss if we did not delimit the scope of our charge. We
are concerned primarily with understanding the impetus behind the new movement
in administrator training and in discerning the insights that emerging approaches
hold for the development of improved professional development programmes. For
excellent reviews of: (1) the state of the art in administrative training, see the
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