A study of the five core courses of the Innovative Leadership Program at the University of Alabama: An analysis using student cohorts from 1996 through 2000

The University of Alabama was one of the five original universities that participated in the Danforth Program for the Preparation of School Principles (DPPSP) implemented in 1987. Each university was to prepare a curriculum that reflected the knowledge and skills needed by beginning school principals. A major component of the DPPSP was to have university faculty work with representatives from school districts to reach consensus on what such a curriculum should include. This study was designed to continue the early tradition established by ILP faculty of including the perspectives of program graduates in determining whether the skills and knowledge emphasized in the program were in fact the skills and knowledge required in the roles for which they had prepared. Most of the participants in this study indicated that the content areas presented in the objectives of the five core courses of the University of Alabama Innovative Leadership Program were relevant to their practice and that this content was taught to them. Some study participants asked for greater emphasis to be placed on certain content areas, such as management of local school fiscal affairs, evaluation of professional personnel, management of student discipline, and interviewing and selecting personnel. The author emphasizes the responsibility of the academy to evaluate the current perceived practicality of the knowledge base being taught, to gain insight into what makes that knowledge practical to their practitioners, and to re-examine the scope of that knowledge in order to identify areas of strengths and weaknesses in both delivery and content. The literature review includes the following topics: The Evolution of the Principalship; A Historical Review of the Knowledge Base Themes or Doctrines in American School Administration through 1985; The Post 1985 Dialectic Concerning the Educational Administration Knowledge Base; Examples of University Based Education Leadership Programs; The University of Alabama Innovative Leadership Program and the Danforth Foundation; An Assortment of Authors, Organizations, and Ideas Related to Education Administration Training Program Content; The Standards Movement in Education Administration; and the Role of Ethics in the Principalship.