The major theme of The Principalship is leadership based on reflective practice and moral authority. This book also emphasizes school culture, standards, and building community. This edition aims to inform future principals about the decisions they will make about their practice and how those decisions will affect students and teachers. Extensively updated with new emphasis given to diversity as a part of community building, school character as an important ingredient in school effectiveness, new definitions of school effectiveness, and a new view of the process of change. For anyone interested in educational administration.
As is usual, I have difficulty reviewing textbooks, especially textbooks that my teacher assigns but never really actually teaches from. (Technically he had us look at certain pages and we also each will use one of the case studies at the end of each chapter but still.) I can say, at most, that this book delves into the actuality of the education world without keeping its head in the class. However, for a book about the principalship, Sergiovanni spends a lot of time talking about the teaching profession rather than the principalship. Yes, they both are related but...
3.5 Yes, it is a textbook and quite heady, but I appreciated the effort to give implementation scenarios at the end of each chapter. Reading this text has helped me better understand (to some degree anyway) what I think my administration is trying to do.
This books began to define what I knew to be true about leadership in schools. It translates to the coporate world as well. I live by Sergiovanni's philosophy of leadership.