Organizational Behavior for School Leadership ─ Leveraging Your School for Success

This textbook explores the evolution of leadership and organizational behavior theory from traditional, modern, and contemporary perspectives. Rich end-of-chapter case studies and guiding questions help readers understand organizational behavior in their own educational settings, and provides insights to help educational leaders become more effective practitioners. Leading Successful Schools provides a set of useful conceptual lenses by which educational leaders can gain a deeper understand their work settings, learn how to make appropriate choices about people, school operations, and the community, and improve student and teacher outcomes.

Leslie S. Kaplan, a retired school administrator in Newport News, Virginia, is a full-time education writer and an adjunct research professor at Old Dominion University. She has provided middle and high school instructional leadership as well as central office leadership as a director of program development. Kaplan's scholarly publications appear in numerous professional journals. Kaplan is co-editor of the Journal for Effective Schools, and also serves on the NASSP Bulletin Editorial Board. She is a past president of the Virginia Counselors' Association and the Virginia Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

William A. Owings is Professor of Educational Leadership at Old Dominion University. Owings has worked as a public school teacher, an elementary and high school principal, assistant superintendent, and superintendent of schools. His scholarly publications, include books on educational leadership and school finance as well as articles in NASSP Bulletin, Journal of School Leadership, Journal of Effective Schools, Phi Delta Kappan, Teachers College Record, and the Journal of Education Finance. Owings is currently the editor of the Journal for Effective Schools, and is on the Journal of Education Finance Editorial Advisory Board. Owings and Kaplan share the 2008 Virginia Educational Research Association Charles Edgar Clear Research Award for Consistent and Substantial Contributions to Educational Research and Scholarship.