Theses and Dissertations

Date of Award

2020

Document Type

Dissertation - NSU Access Only

Degree Name

Doctor of Education (EdD)

Department

Abraham S. Fischler College of Education and School of Criminal Justice

Advisor

Karen Kimball

Committee Member

Jo Campbell

Committee Member

Kimberly Durham

Keywords

Transformational and Instructional Leadership, high poverty student populations, curriculum and instruction, motives, values

Abstract

The problem to be addressed by this study was determining why some middle schools were outperforming others with similar grade-level configurations and high poverty student populations and to determine what components of Instructional and Transformational Leadership styles were impacting these academic performances.

The participants were from two schools located in the Southern Network in Louisiana. This study identified and explained the practices and behaviors used by principals in the Southern Network of Louisiana to achieve the level of performance and growth in relation to Instructional and Transformational Leadership. The schools chosen for this study were the only two high poverty middle schools containing Grade 6 in the Southern Network that had shown an increase in school performance scores from 2013-2017.

Data were gathered from interviews and observations of the sample of principals to identify common Transformational and Instructional Leadership practices and to identify strategies that other principals could immediately apply in their own schools. Student archived performance data were used to triangulate the collected interview and observation data for a wider view of how leadership practices impacted student achievement.

Transformational Leadership, developed by Burns (1978), is a style of leadership that uses the motives, values, and goals of the followers to perform above and beyond what they originally think may be possible for the collective benefit of the organization. Hallinger (2003) described Instructional Leadership as the role of the principal as it related to curriculum and instruction and the improvement of academic outcomes.

The intended audience of this study who benefitted were principals of high poverty middle schools, administrators, and educators looking for Transformational and Instructional Leadership practices to improve academic performance of the school.

Download
To access this thesis/dissertation you must have a valid nova.edu OR mynsu.nova.edu email address and create an account for NSUWorks.

Free My Thesis

If you are the author of this work and would like to grant permission to make it openly accessible to all, please click the Free My Thesis button.

Share

COinS
 
Dissertation of Distinction