Educational Leadership

Abstract

Effective school studies, for the most part, have focused on different individual school-level independent variables influencing student achievement and have largely neglected examining contextual variables within the school or school community that may evolve as a result of responding to statewide accountability pressures, including examining how these contextual variables impact student achievement. Further, few studies in the school effectiveness literature provide clear and practical definitions of school-level curricular leadership (Brown, Claudet, & Olivarez, 2003; Bossert, 1998;Hoy & Ferguson, 1985;Teddlie & Reynolds, 2000). The purpose of this study was to develop and initially test a multidimensional model exploring relationships between curricular leadership culture (CLC) and school effectiveness (SE) to examine any identifiable contextual variables that may mediate this relationship in different school settings and to develop an instrument -the Curricular Leadership Culture Inventory (CLCI) -that can be administered to teachers and school administrators to identify educator perceptions of links between the quality of school-level curricular leadership culture and school overall effectiveness.