Leadership for 21st Century Schools by Dr. Reginald Leon Green, National FORUM of Applied Educational Research Journal 27(1&2) 2014, NATIONAL FORUM JOURNALS (Founded 1982) Dr. William Allan Kritsonis, Editor-in-Chief - www.nationalforum.com NATIONAL FORUM JOURNALS Founded 1982 NATIONAL FORUM JOURNALS are a group of national refereed, juried, peer-reviewed, blind-reviewed professional periodicals. Any article published shall earned five affirmative votes from members of our National Board of Invited Distinguished Jurors and must be recommended for national publication by members of the National Policy Board representing all National FORUM Journals. Journal issues are distributed both nationally and world-wide. Our website features national refereed articles that are published daily within our National FORUM Journals Online Journal Division. Over 1,000 articles are available to scholars and practitioners world-wide. Over 250,000 guests visit our website yearly. About 56,000 articles are downloaded for academic purposes at no charge. We have about an 88% rejection rate. See: www.nationalforum.com Founded in 1982, National FORUM Journals has published the scholarly contributions of over 5,200 professors with over 2,000 articles indexed. Our journals are indexed with many global agencies including Cabell’s Directories, ERIC, EBSCO, SWETS International, Library of Congress National Serials Data Program, and the Copyright Clearance Center, Danvers, Massachusetts. Global Website: www.nationalforum.com

1. Leadership for 21st Century Schools
Journal Themes:
Theme: Researching Proven Practices, Processes and Procedures for Effective School
Leadership
Strand I:Essential Dispositions for Effective School Leadership
Strand II: Instructional Models that Work in Underperforming Schools
Strand III: Leadership Core Competencies for 21st Century School
Strand IV: Standards, Competencies and Accountability Measures
Overview Focus:
Having served at every level of elementary and secondary education I came to realize
that if urban education was going to change in a manner that meets the needs of all students, the
change would have to occur in the office of the principal. Therefore, over the past two (2)
decades I have focused my research on leadership of the principal. That research lead to the
design and implementation of an innovative principal preparation program model based on a
theory that I referenced as the Four Dimensions of Principal Leadership: A Framework for
Leading 21st Century Schools.Myresearch at the University of Memphis on school leadership
revealed that leadership for today’s schools contains for dimensions:
1. Understanding self and others embodies the beliefs, values, and behavior
of the leader which culminates in the leader’s disposition. What a leader
need to know, be able to do and how the leader should behave. For this
dimension the research focused on:
 Dispositions-behavior that leads to leadership effectiveness
 Competencies-areas in which school leaders need to be competent
 Attitude-attitude that school leaders need to have about all children
2. Understanding the complexity of organizational life embodies the culture,
climate, structure of the school organization and the interaction of people in
the school organization. For this dimension the research has focused on:
 Characteristics of Nurturing Schools
 Pick experiences for all students

2. 3. Building bridges through relationships embodies relationships between
and among people inside and outside of the schoolhouse.
 Building positive relationships
 Participatory Governance and Change
4. Engaging in leadership best practices embodies the use of proven
practices that lead to enhanced activities for all students. For this dimension
the research focused on:
 Practices, processes, and procedures for use in transforming
underperforming schools
 Models for instructional Improvement
Collectively the dimensions of the theory offers a change mode for use in
transforming underperforming high poverty schools into high performing schools.
In conjunction with that theory we researched the competencies that principal
should master, the disposition they should exhibit and the type of school climate
they should develop.
This work has been wrapped around standards, competencies and accountability
measures which established a framework for leading twenty-first century schools. I
will include six articles that summarize this work. The articles are:
Articles
A Response to the Call for Effective Leadership in Today’s Schools: Three Essentials,
Preparation, Competencies, and Dispositions
Transforming High Poverty Underperforming Schools: Practices, Processes, and Procedures
Practices Used by National Award Winning Principals to Improve Student Achievement in High
Poverty Schools
Exploring the Effects of 13 Core Competencies on Leader Behavior and its Relationship to
Teacher Job Satisfaction:
An Exploration of Leadership Dispositions Preferred by Effective School Leaders

3. An Investigation of the Attitudes of School Leaders Toward the Inclusion of Students with
Disabilities in the General Education Setting
In addition to these six articles, I will include seven articles that align with one of
the four themes. These seven articles have been submitted by professors in various
universities.
I trust that this information will be of assistance to you as you develop the
introduction.