Leadership -- Psychological aspects

The extant literature on school leadership is bifurcated around the question: Are
leaders important, or, is leadership important? Many who think leaders are important, do
so because they believe the school’s tone, values, and aspirations start with “a” leader,
the principal. However, there are those who believe leadership is not really about a
single leader, but about a collective practice among people who work together, with a
focus on accomplishing a shared goal. While leadership teams have been studied in a
variety of contexts, little research is available on the cumulative effect of a school team’s
ability to think collectively to raise student performance. Noteworthy however, is that
this study makes the assumption that the sum total of individual agility as measure by
instruments designed to assess individual agility equates to an accurate measure of team
agility. This study was designed to better understand the relationship between a school
leadership team’s cognitive and behavioral agility, school climate, and student
achievement in a population of middle schools in Broward County, Florida. Theoretically, the study provides a model in support of the collective leadership
approach in moving schools toward improved student achievement. A non-experimental,
quantitative research design was utilized and The Strategic Thinking Questionnaire
(STQ) and Strategic Leadership Questionnaire (SLQ) were used to assess cognitive and
behavioral agility, respectively. Climate data, analyzed as a mediator, was extracted from
the schools’ Annual Customer Survey. Student achievement was measured as overall
school performance on standardized assessments as part of the State of Florida school
accountability system. The STQ and SLQ were administered by way of a survey and
descriptive statistics, correlation and mediation analysis were used to analyze data.
The research did not point to any statistically significant correlations between
school leadership teams’ cognitive and behavior agility as they relate to predicting
student achievement; even with school climate acting as a mediator. This may be due in
part to the assumption that agility data captured is an accurate reflection of team
functioning. The study provides opportunities for additional research on the efficacy of
leadership teams in K-12 education.

The focus of this study was to determine if university student leaders’ cognitive and behavioral agility is related to organizational member commitment and if this relationship is moderated by alterable and non-alterable variables. The empirical results from this study are based on the responses of 37 student leaders who occupy leadership positions in organizations and clubs in their respective university. Cognitive agility was measured by the student leader’s use of systems thinking, reframing, and reflection. Student leader behavioral agility was assessed by a minimum of three organizational members rating the student leader’s use of leader influence actions (transforming, managing, bonding, bridging, and bartering) in carrying out their functions. Organizational member commitment was measured by organization member’s level of commitment with the goals and values of the organization using the Organizational Commitment Questionnaire (OCQ).

Haiti, the poorest country in the western hemisphere, has suffered through
centuries of disenfranchisement, poverty, slavery, environmental disasters, internecine
racial prejudice, and foreign infringement. Its people won independence from France in
1804 but only at the cost of huge human and financial losses. Since then, Haiti has
known little freedom or democracy. In 1991, the first truly democratically elected
president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was elected (with a 67% majority). Nine months later,
he was deposed by a military coup d'état. During that time and the chaotic years that
followed, groups of human rights observers traveled to Haiti in an attempt to record and
report publically, officially, what was actually happening to the Haitian people and their
institutions. Although much has been written about the country during that period, there
have been no studies focused on the human rights observers who were intimately
involved with the people and the country. These groups and other groups participating in similar situations have not been studied and, yet, research in that area might provide
important insights in the field of social justice. It is important to identify what encourages individuals to become a part of the effort to make a positive difference in the lives of others, in the most adverse situations, the process by which human rights observers become engaged, and how that engagement affects their lives both during and after their in-country experiences. The purpose of this phenomenological study is to see if there are commonalities (e.g., socio-cultural influence, self-directed learning readiness, etc.) among the initial in-country experiences of several human rights observers and further to discover what, if any, effect those experiences had on their leadership styles.
The study identified socio-cultural influences (self-directed learning readiness and
familial, religious, educational impact); motivational factors; methods of processing the
experience (immediate responses of connectedness/love and reasoned responses
involving individual and group reflection); and multiple outcomes (spiritualty, social
action, and creativity). The overarching findings included identification of
transformational learning in the participants and the evolution of their leadership from the servant model into a transformational/chaos model, including reflection in and on action as an operating context.