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- Tonkin Elected Chair of the Board of the Center for Applied Linguistics
2/13/2013 - Eppes, Milanovic and DePanfilo Publish in the Academic Journal of Science
2/12/2013 - Lynne Lipkind's Recent Work in Publishing
2/12/2013 - Fang Publishes Journal Article on Traffic Modeling of Various Types of Interchanges
2/5/2013
Accolades: Judith Houle
Posted 4/19/2006
- Judith Houle, assistant professor in the Department of Educational Leadership, ENHP, presented a paper titled The Principal as a Spiritual Leader: Credibility and Efficacy in the Schoolhouse at the American Association of School Administrators National Conference on Education on Feb. 24. The paper, co-authored with alumna Ruth Levy (Ed.D., 2005), was presented as a part of the conference-within-a-conference strand co-hosted by the National Council of Professors of Administration that outlined a case study examining the personal leadership behaviors and characteristics of elementary school principals who have been nominated or selected for Connecticut’s National Distinguished Principal of the Year Award.
Kouzes and Posner’s (1997) model of leader-constituent relationships and Marcic’s (1997) model of leadership spirituality were used to develop an understanding of the relationship between credibility and spirituality in principals deemed as outstanding leaders by their professional organization. This study examined how these characteristics of credibility and spirituality played themselves out in the practice of elementary school leaders -- whether or not a sample of leaders who had been recognized as exemplary by their professional organization possessed these characteristics and demonstrated them in their schools. These characteristics were examined by collecting data from the principals, their full-time teachers, and comparing the results of the two.
Several characteristics emerged as essential components of effective principals. Those in the study and their teachers see respect as the single most important characteristic that principals must believe in and model in their every action. Beyond respect, trust, honesty, and integrity were characteristics of great importance.
Houle and Levy’s paper presented the full results of the study with implications for practice, leadership development, and future research. Issues for the preparation of school leaders in graduate educational leadership programs were also explored. - Houle and another alumna, Priscilla Gimas (Ed.D. 2004), published an article, “Building Capacity for Ethical Leadership in Graduate Educational Leadership Preparation Programs,” in the Spring 2006 edition of the Journal of Scholarship & Practice, a peer-reviewed publication of the American Association of School Administrators.
The article presents data from a qualitative case study of two accredited graduate educational leadership programs to see how faculty and students perceived that ethical standards for educational leaders were addressed. The ethical dimensions explored in the study emanated from the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (integrity, fairness, and ethical behavior, and the work of Kouzes and Posner on knowledge of self and self efficacy). The article presents data from the study along with implications for the use of personal and group reflection necessary to build the capacity for ethical practice as educational leaders.
