This study follows leadership candidates through the first phase of a comprehensive effort to reform master’s-level principal preparation at a large, urban California university. The reforms placed an 18-month field experience at the center of candidates’ preparation. Researchers sought to capture the changes over time in candidates’ beliefs about school leadership, commitment to the work of school leadership, knowledge of leadership practices that support improved teaching and learning, and capacity to apply those practices. The results reveal marked changes in the majority of candidates’ understandings of school leadership. They came to see the work as complex, with all aspects interrelated. They developed deeper recognition of the leader’s role in fostering trust and relationships, encouraging collaboration, and building leadership capacity within schools. They conceptualized data as powerful evidence to stimulate urgency for change, and they articulated greater confidence as leaders and change agents. Finally, candidates demonstrated increased understanding of, and ability to enact, specific leadership practices aimed at improving learning results for students in their schools.

Conflict, though often unsettling, is a natural part of collective human experience. It can leave participants ill at ease, so it is often avoided and suppressed. Yet conflict, when well managed, breathes life and energy into relationships and can cause individuals to be more innovative and productive. Conflict is present within our schools whether we like it or not. Educators must find ways to legitimize critique and controversy within organizational life. This article examines constructive conflict within the context of a comprehensive Midwestern high school engaged in significant reform efforts. Here conflict is employed as a means to promote individual and organizational learning and growth.

The information age is upon us. In schools across the country, administrators are making important decisions about how best to employ computer technology. This case study of an expert educational administrator looks at computer use from a problem‐solving perspective, focusing on the relationship between how this school leader thinks about and acts on technological capacity. It examines the personal attributes and perceptions that underlie his effective application of technology and finds them interwoven with the same cognitive and behavior skills he employs across his problem solving. It explores the connections he makes between school and community and between administrative and instructional technology.

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