Department of Educational Leadership and Research Methodology

This study aims to identify [or create] equitable accountability systems that can be used to drive sustainable school improvement. In this context, equitable accountability is defined as a measure more of the school’s impact on student achievement and less a measure of the socio-economic status of the students enrolled in the school. To do this, the study begins with a review of the history and current state of school accountability policies in the US and its relation to the concepts of school improvement, between accountability and student achievement, a review of accountability policy in each state and the possible future model of accountability policy. This study uses both qualitative and quantitative methods with a policy analysis informing state correlational comparisons, which in turn informed the models to be applied to the Florida data to identify how they perform (correlate), culminating in the development of a new school accountability model. The policy analysis revealed current school accountability in all 50 states and the District of Columbia as well as the relationship between socio-economic status and school accountability in each where data were available. Five of these state models were shown to be significantly less related to socio-economic status than Florida. However, only two of these models performed similarly when applied to Florida data. Finally, a model was proposed that included aspects from these states and available literature that performed similarly to these two states. This study represents an important first step in a larger policy discussion of how to hold schools accountable for their impact on students and not a measure of the demographics of the students they are serving.

This qualitative grounded theory study updated the framework, including a definition, of Appreciative Administration. Bloom et al. (2013) first introduced the concept of Appreciative Education in a New Directions for Student Services article. Appreciative Education’s framework is harnessed by the power of the organizational development theory of Appreciative Inquiry (Cooperrider & Srivastva, 1987), the relationship-building theory-to-practice framework of Appreciative Advising (Bloom & Martin, 2002; Bloom et al., 2008), and an Appreciative Mindset. Bloom and McClellan (2016) coined the phrase Appreciative Administration to describe how higher education administrators could lead their organizations by harnessing the power of Appreciative Education. To date, there is no research on how higher education administrators are using Appreciative Education in their administrative practices.
The purpose of this grounded theory study was to examine how higher education administrators infuse the Appreciative Education framework into their daily administrative practices. The study included 21 professionals, who met the following criteria: (1) had at least one full-time person reporting to them; (2) had participated in a formal Appreciative Education training. The experiences of the 21 study participants were captured through semi-structured 60-minute Zoom interviews. Subsequently, eight of the 21 participants participated in a focus group via Zoom to provide feedback on the study’s initial themes and sub-themes. Data was analyzed through three rounds of coding: (1) initial coding, (2) focused coding, and (3) theoretical coding.

This quantitative study sought to determine the efficacy and mindset perceptions of current school leaders and teachers within public high schools. This study highlighted a discrepancy in efficacy and mindset among educators for each other. Firstly, school leaders feel they make a difference, but teachers do not hold the same level of belief in leadership’s ability to make a difference. School leader perceptions of self-efficacy have increased significantly since 2008. Lastly, teachers’ perceptions of school leader efficacy and teacher mindset correlated, meaning a significant portion of variance in teacher perceptions of school leadership efficacy can be predicted by the mindset held by the teacher toward capacity to grow in ability and talent. However, school leaders’ perceptions of self-efficacy and teacher mindset did not correlate, suggesting school leader self-efficacy beliefs do not predict their beliefs in teacher growth potential. Over the years, the terms “efficacy” and “mindset” have been thoroughly researched; however, never in a context surrounding school leaders’ and teachers’ perceptions of each other’s capabilities. Therefore, this study sought to explore and compare school leaders’ and teachers’ perceptions of efficacy and mindset for each other to gain insight into the workplace environment within educational 9-12 systems.