Principals, Shared Decision Making, and School Reform

When schools adopt shared decision making (SDM), principals' authority is limited. Nevertheless, all six principals in the SDM high schools we studied supported SDM, at least in part because they had chosen to serve in an SDM school. The three principals who were most supportive of SDM also had...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Educational evaluation and policy analysis 1994-10, Vol.16 (3), p.287-301
Main Authors: Weiss, Carol H., Cambone, Joseph
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Administrator Attitudes
Conflict
Democracy
Educational administration
Educational Change
Educational innovation
Educational reform
English teachers
High Schools
Learning
Participative Decision Making
Principals
Reform Efforts
School principals
School Restructuring
Secondary school curricula
Secondary school teachers
Teachers
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Summary:When schools adopt shared decision making (SDM), principals' authority is limited. Nevertheless, all six principals in the SDM high schools we studied supported SDM, at least in part because they had chosen to serve in an SDM school. The three principals who were most supportive of SDM also had ambitious visions of instructional reform. After 1.5 to 2 years, the high schools in which these principals served experienced a heightened level of conflict among the faculty. In large part, the conflict was due to these principals' efforts to use SDM as a vehicle to foster large changes. Teachers resisted major change, and principals became impatient with the participatory process and tried to promote their own versions of reform. Only a modest degree of reform was achieved, but it was more than was achieved by SDM principals without a reform agenda. Reformist principals in non-SDM high schools implemented modest reforms as well, although at the expense of suspicion and antagonism after changes were introduced. We explore the dilemmas that reformist principals face and suggest policy implications.
ISSN:0162-3737
1935-1062
DOI:10.2307/1164401