Preparing School Leaders: Understanding, Experiencing, and Implementing Collaboration, 6(6)

Abstract

Educational leaders have been increasingly called to lead and participate in collaborative governance structures with little explicit instruction in facilitating the collaborative process. This study explored a two-course sequence in an educational administrator preparation program that was designed to immerse students in understanding, experiencing, and implementing collaborative decision making in school governance. Analysis of interviews with students, instructor observations, and student written cases document that immersion of students in collaborative processes at three levels is effective in increasing educational leaders’ understanding and facilitating their implementation of collaborative governance in schools.