School leaders play an important role in setting the vision for a school, reducing teacher turnover, and improving student achievement. Find my peer-reviewed work on principal priorities here. Find the CESA 2020 Principal Survey here. Find my first report on supportive leadership here.
Using a nationally-representative dataset, Albert Cheng and I consider principal preparation and priorities by sector. We find principals of Christian schools are substantially more likely to emphasize personal growth and significantly less likely to emphasize vocational preparation and academic achievement than peers in other sectors.
For CESA’s 2020 Principal Survey, Albert Cheng, Katie Wiens, and I analyze a survey of principals and consider prior experience, training, and aims of education. “Fostering religious or spiritual development,” “Encouraging education excellence,” “Building basic literacy skills,” and “Promoting specific moral values” were most commonly listed as the first or second most important goals for education.
Using data from the Flourishing School Culture Instrument (FSCI), I find evidence of a statistically significant and meaningful correlation between teachers’ perceptions of supportive leadership and self-reported wellness.
Using data from the pilot year of the FSCI, Lynn Swaner and I find an important connection between leadership and catalytic improvement communities (CIC). Teachers who feel supported by their leadership feel more invested in their schools and report higher levels of wellness. Lynn Swaner, Cindy Dodds, and I also prepared a leadership report based on FSCI research, Leadership for Flourishing Schools.
Selected publications on leadership.
Lee, M. H., & Cheng, A. The preparation and practice of Protestant school leadership: Evidence from a nationally representative U.S. sample.
Lee, M. H., Cheng, A., & Wiens, K. 2020 principal survey.
Lee, M. H.. The value of supportive leadership.
Swaner, L. E., Dodds, C., & Lee, M. H. Leadership for flourishing schools.
Matthew H. Lee 