Currently, scholars and practitioners seek to improve leadership programs so that educational leaders can more effectively support adult development—especially since it is connected to improved student achievement. Interview findings presented here stem from a larger mixed methods study. This research investigated how a university course on leadership for adult development influenced participating leaders’ thinking and on-the-ground practices years after course completion. Findings describe students’ reported course learnings, ways that they translated learnings to practice, and obstacles that they still encounter. This investigation offers insight into how leadership coursework can help leaders support adult development in schools and build systemic and school structures that would better enable them to build capacity.

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Given the complexity of contemporary leadership, scholars and practitioners seek to improve preparation programs so that school leaders can more effectively support adult development. This article describes longitudinal research investigating how a university course on leadership for adult development (Leadership for Transformational Learning [LTL]) influenced graduates’ conceptions of leadership immediately after the course and years later. This article describes (a) course goals, structures, and curricula; (b) changes in thinking that leaders attributed to LTL; and (c) course ideas and practices that leaders named as essential to their current thinking and work. This investigation offers insight into how university courses can support leaders’ internal growth.

This article extends mixed-methods longitudinal research with school and district leaders (2008–present) about their most pressing leadership challenges. Here—through in-depth, qualitative interviews—we explore how a subsample of 30 principals described and understood their internal experiences of addressing pressing challenges. More specifically, using an adaptive/ technical lens, social-emotional frameworks, and constructive-developmental theory, we illuminate how principals‘ social-emotional and developmental capacities influenced their leadership, and highlight findings with in-depth mini-cases. By focusing on the inner workings of principals’ leadership for managing change, this article offers implications for professional practice and school-wide change locally and globally, leadership preparation, policy, and future research.

In this essay, Eleanor Drago-Severson and Jessica Blum-DeStefano add a new dimension to the literature on social justice in education and constructive-developmental theory by exploring how adult developmental theory can shed new light on the challenges and opportunities of teaching and leading for social justice. Drawing from their decades of research and teaching about leadership that supports educators' internal capacity building, they posit that adults' qualitatively different ways of knowing—or developmental meaning-making systems—will influence how they understand diversity of all kinds, as well as what it means to teach and/or lead for social justice. Given the imperatives of equity and access in educational institutions, US society, and the world, this essay aims to help us better understand how to support diverse adults in their efforts to serve all students well and to work more collaboratively and productively across lines of difference.