| Preface | vii |
| Acknowledgments | x |
| About the Authors | xi |
1 | What Is Special About Assistant Principals? | 1 |
| Unanswered Questions and Continuing Dilemmas | 3 |
| What Do Assistant Principals Do? The Nature of the Tasks and Roles | 5 |
| Role Ambiguity | 7 |
| Role Conflict and Overload | 7 |
| Job Satisfaction and "Dissatisfaction" | 9 |
| Career Incentives | 10 |
| Policy Concerns in the Assistant Principal Role | 12 |
| Recruiting and Retaining Leaders | 12 |
| Identifying Appropriate Training and Selection Systems | 13 |
| Encouraging Innovators | 14 |
| Encouraging Instructional Leaders | 16 |
| Providing Equal Opportunity | 17 |
| Empowerment and Participatory Management | 20 |
| The Plateaued Assistant | 22 |
| Recent Realizations and Developments Affecting the Assistant | 23 |
| Summary | 25 |
| Discussion Questions and Activities | 25 |
2 | How Do Assistant Principals Get Their Jobs? | 27 |
| The Case of Tim George | 27 |
| The Case of Alicia Brown | 32 |
| How Assistant Principals Learn About the Role | 34 |
| Career Decision-Making | 34 |
| Anticipating the Roles | 35 |
| Role Model Learning | 36 |
| Task Learning | 36 |
| Professional Socialization: The Mix of Formal and Informal Training | 37 |
| Aspiration Building and Self-Selection | 39 |
| The Formal Selection Process | 40 |
| The Informal Assessment Process | 42 |
| Ambiguous and Negotiated Expectations | 43 |
| Recent Trends Affecting Recruitment Into the Position | 44 |
| Crisis Recruitment | 44 |
| Early Exiting | 45 |
| Balancing "The Look" in School Sites | 45 |
| Summary | 46 |
| Discussion Questions and Activities | 47 |
3 | Progress in Understanding the Assistant Principal's Role | 49 |
| Research on the Work and Work Arrangements | 50 |
| Research on the Socialization of the Assistant Principal | 52 |
| Constraints on Behavior and Values: Assumptive Worlds | 55 |
| Right and Responsibility to Initiate | 55 |
| Acceptable and Unacceptable Values | 56 |
| Patterns of Expected Behavior | 57 |
| School Site Conditions Affecting Political Relationships | 58 |
| Implications of Assumptive Worlds | 58 |
| Orientations to the Position | 61 |
| Details From the Case Studies | 62 |
| New Research Insights | 67 |
| Factors Affecting Assistant Principals | 68 |
| A Focus on the Career Assistant Principal | 68 |
| Career Assistant Principals' Rewards and Satisfactions | 70 |
| Research on Styles of Achieving | 71 |
| Research on Emotional Work | 73 |
| An International Perspective | 75 |
| Summarizing Insights From Complexities | 76 |
| Discussion Questions and Activities | 77 |
4 | Opportunities for Improving the Assistant Principalship | 79 |
| Training and Certification Policies | 80 |
| University and Professional Training | 82 |
| Staff Development | 85 |
| Assistant Principal Conferences | 87 |
| Selection Policies | 88 |
| Instructional Leadership | 94 |
| Achieving Equity in Administration | 96 |
| Satisfiers, Supports, and Coping Strategies | 103 |
| So What Does Give Satisfaction, Long-Term? | 106 |
| Progress in Valuing the Role | 107 |
| Opening Up the Realm of Emotion and Moral Purpose | 110 |
| Facing Fundamental Dilemmas | 111 |
| Reforms | 111 |
| Summary | 115 |
| Discussion Questions and Activities | 116 |
5 | A New and Different Assistant Principalship | 119 |
| Specific Alterations in the Current System | 121 |
| Defining Roles, Tasks, and Functions | 121 |
| Participatory Management | 125 |
| Affiliation-Support Groups | 126 |
| Discretionary Power and Recognition | 127 |
| Reassessing the Value of Assistant Principals | 129 |
| Promoting the Value of Assistant Principal Functions | 129 |
| Preparation, Recruitment, and Selection | 131 |
| University and Professional Training | 131 |
| Sponsors, Role Models, and Mentors | 133 |
| Internships | 135 |
| Recruitment and Selection | 135 |
| Certification | 138 |
| Staff Development, Workshops, Celebrations, and Special Conferences | 139 |
| A Deeper Cut: Changing Professional and Cultural Assumptions | 141 |
| Reconceptualizing Assumptions About Administration | 142 |
| Shifting Dominant Views of Schooling | 142 |
| Alternative Leadership Theories and Models | 145 |
| Transformative Leadership | 146 |
| Leaders as Critical Humanists | 146 |
| Intentional Leadership | 148 |
| Feminist Perspectives on Leadership | 149 |
| Emotionally Engaged, Relational, and Caring Leadership | 152 |
| Viewing Administration as Leadership of Identity-Negotiation Organizations | 153 |
| Leadership as Expanding Schools' Social Capital | 154 |
| Power-Sensitive Leadership | 155 |
| Social Justice Leadership | 156 |
| Policy Advocacy Leadership | 157 |
| Looking at Equity in the Profession Through Cultural and Political Lenses | 159 |
| Purposefully Examining Fundamental Dilemmas | 163 |
| Reframing and Re-visioning Fundamental Assumptions of Schooling | 165 |
| Training for New Metaphors and Theories for Enacting Leadership | 167 |
| Summary | 170 |
| Discussion Questions and Activities | 172 |
| References | 175 |
| Index | 186 |