Boundary-spanning leadership in full -service schools: A case study of principals and school-based community directors

My dissertation is a multiple-case study of principals and school-based community directors in four full-service community schools developed as educational reform models in an urban northeastern school district. Full-service schools, “one-stop” educational centers, provide a range of integrated services for children and families. The study explores the boundary management strategies used by the eight leaders. It expands boundary management theory accounting for ways that leaders interact with each other and manage their complex external school environments. It focuses on how these leaders perceive and apply boundary management strategies in their roles as boundary spanning leaders. The questions addressed are: (1) How do four principals and four community directors perceive their full-service community school organizations? (2) How do these leaders perceive their school's external environment? (3) What boundary management strategies do the principals and community directors use to manage their external environment? (4) What strategies do these leaders use when they interact with each other? (5) How do principals and community directors perceive their leadership roles as boundary managers in complex full-service community school organizations?;As school districts and entire states commit to the creation of full-service schools to meet the needs of underserved communities and populations, the need for school leaders who understand the complexities of these educational environments increases. The configuration of four full-service schools in one district is an unusual concentration of such schools allowing for sharing of practices and concerns and making it possible for the case study to highlight topics for a larger population of educators and/or service providers. It contributes rich descriptions of what boundary-spanning leadership is and how it is practiced in actual situations. The findings suggest: (1) Principals and community school directors perceived their full-service schools as being complex and dynamic organizations representative of an open systems approach in school relationships, mood, and climate. They perceived their schools to represent a closed systems approach in school tasks, authority, control, and work styles. (2) They perceived the immediate external environment (community) as having positive forces impacting on their schools. (3) They used boundary spanning strategies appropriate to the specific contexts of their schools to manage the external environment. None of the school leaders used all the boundary spanning strategies. Two schools' leaders used mostly strategies from Category I: Positioning. One school's leaders used Category III: Promoting strategies as they made external connections with the environment. (4) There was only one school whose leaders mostly used Category IV: Partnering strategies that form a partnership continuum compiled from different literature to define partnering relationships and interactions between leaders at each school. (5) The leaders perceived their leadership roles as role models, risk takers, change agents, mediators, independent and interdependent, and boundary managers.