The increased focus on raising standards in education requires leaders to engage in complex decision making about teacher assessment, mandated accountability measures, and the collection and use of large amounts of data. Showcasing exemplary practices of school and district administrators, Decision Making in Educational Leadership covers issues concerning the role of emotion, ethical and legal ramifications, the use of data, and complexity in decision making. Chapter authors in this research-based volume explore what administrators and school leaders actually know about educational problems, how they draw upon and revise theories of action for responding to problems, and which theories are tenable in educational decision making. This important resource provides a broad and international perspective on effective models and methods of educational decision making and shares valuable knowledge about how theory can be translated into practice in a variety of school settings.
Table of Contents:
Preface, Stephanie Chitpin and Colin W. Evers
Part I: Data Driven Decision Making
Chapter 1: The Changing Dynamics of Educational Judgment and Decision Making in a Data Driven World, Andy Hargreaves, Alex Gurn, Beth Morgan and Henry Braun
Chapter 2: Principals’ Evidence-Based Decision Making: Its Nature and Impacts, Jingping Sun
Part II: Emotional and Epistemological Decision Making Structures
Chapter 3: Capturing Principals’ Decision Making Processes in an Online Professional Learning Community, Stephanie Chitpin
Chapter 4: Decision Making as Problem-solving Trajectories, Colin W. Evers
Chapter 5: Emotions, Emotional Intelligence, and Leadership: From Folkpsychology to Neuroscience, Gabriele Lakomski
Part III: Complexity and Decision Making
Chapter 6: On the Job Decision Making: Understanding and Evaluating how Leaders Solve Problems, Viviane Robinson and Rozanne Donald
Chapter 7: Re-Visioning Decision Making in Educational Leadership, Peter Grimmett
Chapter 8: Principals’ Perceptions about Resistance to the Implementation of Major Decisions, Karen Starr
Chapter 9: Trusting our Schools: The ‘Soft’ Side of Decision Making, Dean Fink
Part IV: Ethical and Legal Issues
Chapter 10: Ethical Decision Making in Leadership: A Moral Literacy Perspective, Patrick Jenlink
Chapter 11: Justice and Equity in Educational Provision: The Case of Ontario, Marvin. A. Zuker
Chapter 12: Educational Leadership and Decision Making: Making the Politics and Policy Visible, Howard Stevenson
About the Author :
Stephanie Chitpin is Associate Professor of Leadership, Evaluation, and Curriculum at the Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa, Canada.
Colin W. Evers is Professor of Educational Leadership in the School of Education at the University of New South Wales, Australia.
Review :
"Both the content and processes of educational reform initiatives are the product of decisions. This text offered a wide ranging set of foundational perspectives about how those decisions are typically made and what educational leaders might do to improve them--a serious tool for the reflective leader."
--Kenneth Leithwood, Emeritus Professor, University of Toronto
"In this time of significant educational change across the globe, Chitpin and Evers's volume provides critically important information on the complexity of decision making for today's educational leader. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in a fresh perspective on educational decision making."
-- Amanda Datnow, Professor of Education, University of California, San Diego
"In this very readable text, Chitpin and Evers and their team of new and experienced scholars have contributed substantially to our understanding of the decision-making processes used by educational leaders. This book will be very useful to graduate students in educational leadership as they develop their research agendas, to their faculty advisors, to system leaders charged with the responsibility for developing professional development programs, and to school and school system leaders."
-- John J. Stapleton, Dean Emeritus of Education, University of Manitoba
"Chitpin and Evers have assembled a volume that does a first-rate job of setting the foundation for thoughtful decision making in school settings. This book provides powerful practical insights for transforming schools into the kinds of places that use data wisely to inform leadership practice and classroom pedagogy."
--Sharon D. Kruse, Academic Director and Professor of Educational Leadership, Washington State University Vancouver
