What Makes a Leadership Preparation Program Exemplary?

Abstract

As members of the review committee for the first Exemplary Educational Leadership Preparation (EELP) Award given by the University Council for Educational Administration (UCEA), we were charged with naming a recipient of the award and ranking the other nominees. We were gratified that 10 excellent educational leadership preparation programs were nominated, but once we began the process, it soon became apparent that simply ranking these programs was not the best way to proceed because of at least two reasons. First, as some programs were stronger in certain areas than others, and no one program was the best in everything, it was difficult for us to agree upon a consensual rank order. Instead, we found that we were more likely to reach an agreement by clustering the programs into three categories-those that were strong, but for one reason or another fell short of being exemplary (perhaps because of a limited number of faculty); those that seemed on the cusp of excellence, but lacked sufficient evidence of success because they were still in the early years of their development; and finally, those that we could all agree deserved to be called exemplary. The second reason we opted to avoid a simple rank order is that it was clear that different programs could take different paths to success and by trying to identify the best program, it could lead to the false impression that there was a single best approach to becoming exemplary. Our field has suffered through too many attempts at creating a "one best model" (Jacobson, 1990), and we did not want to give credence to this idea. One size does not fit all, and in reading the applications, it became increasingly clear that context was critical to how a preparation program could best serve its community. What works best in Chicago might have to take an entirely different focus and form in San Antonio and vice versa, yet both could easily earn the accolade of "exemplary."

How Exemplary Educational Leadership Preparation Programs Hone the Interpersonal-Intrapersonal (i2) Skills of Future Leaders

“…The award competition is national and seeks nominations from any university-based leadership preparation program. Each year, a committee of senior scholars in educational leadership is convened to review applications and assess applicant programs' designs and practices for "exemplary" status-in some years, multiple programs win while in other years, no program is recognized with the award (Jacobson, McCarthy, & Pounder, 2015). A complete application includes: (a) a description aligning the program with UCEA's Program Quality Criteria (Young, Orr, & Tucker, 2012), (b) course syllabi, (c) a description of the program's field experiences, (d) evidence of program effectiveness and impact, and (e) each program faculty member's curriculum vitae (UCEA, 2018).…”

“Quality Leadership Matters”: A Research-Based Survey of Graduate Programming

“…An action-oriented vision, this highlights the learning and success of all preschool kindergarten through twelfth grade (PreK–12) students within diverse schools and inequitable circumstances. More than this, it accentuates personalized learning environments within adaptive, flexible, modern organizations (e.g., Greer et al, 2015; Jacobson, McCarthy, & Pounder, 2015; Lumby, Walker, Bryant, Bush, & Bjork, 2009; Orr, 2011; Orr & Orphanos, 2011; Pounder, 2012; Preis, Grogan, Sherman, & Beaty, 2007; Tucker, Anderson, Reynolds, & Mawhinney, 2016; Young & Perrone, 2016). In the scholarship, quality is a multifaceted, complex concept we think merits unpacking.…”

“…The Journal of Research on Leadership Education ( JRLE ) attends to this focus while providing an online venue for leadership program preparation to be aired on a global platform: “ JRLE has fostered the understanding that more strategically designed and focused preparation can yield improvement in leader practices” (Young, 2015b, p. 395). In fact, wanting to know what makes leadership programs not only responsive but also beneficial for aspiring leaders, faculty members study exemplary systems of design and delivery and publish outcomes (e.g., Jacobson et al, 2015). Educational Administration Quarterly ( EAQ ) also devotes space to these issues (see Orr [2011] on graduate experiences in and beyond leadership preparation).…”

“…Exercising this vision of leadership, faculty exert control by making decisions about the design, delivery, and assessment of programs and by contributing to the research. Writing that envelopes quality standards within conceptions of contemporary leadership include impactful studies, such as by Darling-Hammond, Meyerson, LaPointe, and Orr (2009); Jacobson et al (2015); and Leithwood et al (1996). Building on these 1996 and 2009 articles, Orr’s (2011) survey study of 17 programs found that school leadership preparation influences signifiers of success.…”

“…UCEA’s committee for the first Exemplary Educational Leadership Preparation Award is another example of rigor within the literature. Jacobson et al (2015) were charged with naming an award recipient. They ranked 10 institutions nominated for having top EDL/EDA programs using these quality program indicators: student recruitment and selection, program personnel and effectiveness, district partnership, curriculum, teaching and learning, and clinical experience.…”