| The placement of National Board Certified Teachers (NBCTs) in school leadership roles emerged as a feature of comprehensive reform models and school improvement initiatives. Educational practitioners must verify the saliency of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) process in preparing NBCTs for school leadership, particularly how NBCTs demonstrate leadership behavior in the principalship role. These prompts inspired the central research questions of this study. How did an NBCT demonstrate leadership behavior in the principalship? What perceived role (if any) did the NBPTS process play in developing those leadership behaviors? I designed this single-case study to examine the leadership behaviors of one NBCT who ascended to the principalship.;Therefore, I investigated the influence of the NBPTS process to determine its role in developing the participant's leadership behaviors. In my initial analysis, I applied Pitner's (1988) conceptual path models to describe, categorize, and analyze, the leadership behaviors of the NBCT participant. These models depicted leadership behaviors as direct, mediated, reciprocal, and antecedent (DMRA). In my second analysis of the data, I pursued a thematic approach. I analyzed the data for code words and phrases that ultimately signaled the emergence of four major themes: setting the vision and mission, school and community relationships, religion, spirituality, and faith, and the 5 core propositions approach to school leadership. The four themes were instrumental in answering the central research questions of the study.;I used multiple interviews, observations, a survey, and documents to collect data. The resulting wide range of data captured a detailed picture of the participant, the school's operations, and provided an indication of the extent to which survey respondents corroborated the participants' perceptions. Findings indicated that the NBCT participant used each DMRA leadership approach; however those behaviors were subordinate to the five core propositions of the NBPTS. I concluded that the NBPTS process was vital to development of the participant's knowledge relative to curricula, instruction, assessment, and reflection; all were important components of the participant's school leadership behaviors. The findings represent a step toward confirming the unintended effect of the NBPTS process in preparing the participant for the principalship. |
