This article is a summary of a report prepared for the University Council for Educational Administration Program Improvement Project for the Wallace Foundation. This explores the research base for educational leadership preparation programs, specifically examining literature on program features. The review covers context, candidates, faculty, curriculum, design, delivery, pedagogy, internships, student assessment, mentoring and coaching, comprehensive leadership development, and program evaluation. In addition to summarizing the major findings in these program feature areas, the article provides a critical evaluation of the substantive and methodological gaps and future research directions.

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to expand the current conversation on and research into the potential use of technology as a means of transforming mentoring processes and those engaged in them. The authors examine the manner in which technology is being integrated into mentoring endeavors and the advantages and disadvantages of this tool, arguing that the particular attributes of e-mentoring make it an ideal platform for enhancing mentoring processes and outcomes through the use of new mentoring perspectives. They describe a specific mentoring perspective that could be adopted as a means of critically examining some of the opportunities and challenges of using technology as a tool for transformational mentoring, with an emphasis on mentoring in educational environments. Design/methodology/approach -This conceptual paper uses a constructionist perspective to mentoring as a lens to examine how technology influences the mentoring process and investigates the implications of transformational e-mentoring for educational professionals. Findings -The paper contends that e-mentoring may extend mentoring's horizons to include increasingly broad and diverse constellations of mentors for protégés. With proper guidance, the relationships made possible through e-mentoring can fulfill many mentoring functions and transform both mentors and protégés as they learn from one other. Research limitations/implications -Other than descriptions of mentoring programs that use technological tools, very little research on the outcomes of e-mentoring is available. The paper calls for a greater focus on the outcomes of e-mentoring in future research. Practical implications -The paper discusses the advantages and disadvantages of e-mentoring, presents recommendations for using new technologies to enhance mentoring programs in education and argues for the need to reconsider the purposes and structures of such programs. Originality/value -The paper lays the groundwork for a better understanding of technology's role in mentoring in today's complex, rapidly changing knowledge society.

Purpose – Mixed methods research can provide a fruitful line of inquiry for educational leadership, program evaluation, and policy analysis; however, mixed methods research requires a metatheory that allows for mixing what have traditionally been considered incompatible qualitative and quantitative inquiry. The purpose of this paper is to apply Jürgen Habermas’s Theory of Communicative Action as that metatheoretical justification. Design/methodology/approach – After reviewing the traditional quantitative/qualitative divide based on incompatible ontologies, the author argues for a pragmatist stance toward educational leadership inquiry. Such a stance allows for mixing methods because it privileges methodology and epistemology in social inquiry, rather than ontological theories of reality. Using Habermas’s metatheory, the author shows how truth claims are linguistically mediated; how they make reference to objective, subjective, and normative formal worlds; and how they are always fallible and revisable. Findings – The author argues that Habermas’s metatheory allows (and requires) integration of qualitative and quantitative approaches to fully understand social phenomena. Such integration is possible if researchers attempt to make methodological decisions explicit by linking methodology (and thus methodical decisions) to all three formal worlds, and articulating the rationale for doing so. The author also argues that making the entire corpus of claims bound within a line of social inquiry subject to critical examination promotes the validity of inquiry. Originality/value – This paper contributes to the discussion on mixed methods research by applying a particular strand of pragmatism. This is an advance in the extant literature, which argues for a pragmatist stance on mixed methods research, but has not yet conceptualized a metatheoretical position supporting this stance.

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Joe McGinnis, principal of Jackson High School, is caught in the conflict between community values, parents' rights, teacher speech, public health policy, and his own positioning within the community and faculty. He must decide whether and how to discipline a teacher and former mentor who, in the absence of a clear school district policy, supplied a student with information regarding sexual health. The parents claim the teacher exceeded her duties by providing morality education that contradicted parental and community values. The teacher asserts she acted in the best interest of the student's health and academic future. This case poses questions about professional ethics and morality, community governance and school health education policies, school human resource rules, and school power. Keywords sex education policy, education leadership, human resources Case SettingJackson High School is the only high school located in a rural school district and is composed of approximately 650 students. The socially conservative community is made up of a high number of church-going families. However, a developer has Dolder-Holland et al. 25constructed new neighborhoods in the school district, and rural Jackson is transitioning into a suburb for professional families from Grove City. With that growth has come increased diversity of community members' political, religious, and social affiliations and belief systems.Jackson's school board adopted an "abstinence only" sex education program within the health curriculum to reflect the community's wishes and federal policies. However, in the past 10 years, Jackson has had a slow increase in the number of unintended teen pregnancies. Given the limited resources in the area, the girls who have become pregnant have attended Jackson until giving birth, but very few have continued their schooling after becoming mothers. There has been relatively little impact on the young men involved in the pregnancies. Some in Jackson's diversifying population have voiced concern about the rise of teen pregnancy and have suggested revision of the "abstinence only" program. However, those individuals are still in the minority, and the established Jackson community tends to dismiss the concerns. Instead, most Jackson residents avoid this contentious education issue by focusing on school improvement efforts and raising test scores. To these residents, sex just isn't something to be discussed in their own school experiences-at least not in the classroom. And many parents trusted the school counselor, Rhonda Louis, to discuss this delicate subject.Ms. Louis felt good about guiding students toward abstinence. Not only was it a popular position with parents in their community and with school administration, but over her long tenure at the school, she had seen the challenges experienced by girls who became pregnant in high school. Ms. Louis had worked with several girls who felt shamed, who dropped out, and who fell far short of their career and personal potential due to the interruption of a teen pregnancy....