Principles of Principals

On Evolving Leadership Styles in Education, Then and Now In 1936, Kurt Lewin published Principles of Topological Psychology .   In this seminal work, he posited the heuristic equation B = f(P, E) where B is denoted as a person’s behavior as a function of P, or a person ’s E, meaning environment .   The pioneering formula gave rise to the notion that an individual’s present situation was gravely important when considering their behaviors, more so than one’s past.   When Dr. Lewin and his colleagues wrote on patterns of aggressive behavior and used elementary-aged student groups for analysis, it may be beneficial to consider the present circumstances of those children’s lives and the lives of the authors and how it informed their behaviors during the experimentation, documentation and publication of the results.   This will advise both the revolutionary notions they put forward, and the between-war industrialization of the world’s major powers.   I...

Big picture to small, here are 5 key questions that can guide nearly every single leadership scenario a school administrator will encounter. Every. Single. One. Seriously? Seriously. What is it that I want my (district, charter, staff, parents, students, child) to be able to know and do? How will I know that my (district, charter, staff, parents, students, child) is able to do it? What's one thing that I can do, or have done, that contributes to the success of the (project, lesson, assessment, evaluation)? When I reflect on that one thing I did, how can I improve? What happens when my (district, charter, staff, parents, students, child) doesn't perform? Let's scaffold shall we? Question one is pretty simple, straight forward. It emphasizes doing.  Taking the proper tools and acting. Question two demands some form of accountability . For the classroom, this might look like an artifact or assessment. At the 30,000 foot view, we could be talking about a...

I submit the following in hopes that my colleagues will respond in kind and seek to save our schools in similar fashion. How to Save the Traditional University, From the Inside Out By Clayton Christensen and Henry Eyring A survey of media reports on higher education might easily lead those of us working in the field to wonder: When did students and their parents start seeing college as a gantlet rather than as an exciting pathway to opportunity? When did policy makers stop seeing higher education as a valuable public investment? When did tenure become a guarantee only of a declining real wage? When did I start playing for a losing team? We believe that the answer to these questions is "never," or at least "not yet." Traditional colleges and universities continue to play an invaluable role in our society, all the more so as the world changes. Three of their functions are, for now, irreplaceable. One is the discovery of knowledge. Though the proportion of ba...