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PREPARATION OF SCHOOL LEADERS

Creating an Induction Model for School Administrators:

Collaborative Efforts to Build Ongoing Support for School Leaders

Within the University’s Regional Network

Vernon T. Farrington, William Grobe,

Hal L. Holloman, and Marjorie C. Ringler

ABSTRACT

A growing body of research supports the need for public school principals to be effective
instructional leaders (Fullan, 2002; Leithwood, Louis, Anderson, & Wahlstrom, 2004; Waters
& Grubb, 2004; Waters, Marzano, & McNulty, 2003). The increasing pressure of
accountability has combined with numerous traditional expectations for school principals to
create new paradigms for school leadership. With an increasing number of leadership
vacancies, new principals are often selected for difficult assignments without significant prior
leadership experience in schools. Often without adequate induction support from local school
districts, fast-tracked principals are extremely vulnerable to burnout and/or derailment during
this crucible of leadership.
In this chapter, we focus on an exploratory effort at East Carolina University (ECU) to
create induction support structures for new principals. This includes a conceptual framework
based on regional service and utilizes a collaborative model to include recent graduates who
are currently facing the many challenges of leadership. This initiative addresses the need to
expand the continuum of leadership support beyond current pre-service learning experiences
and take advantage of the learning-curve environment. By design, this effort is a work in
progress, seeking to incorporate participant feedback to build relevancy and create a network
of support for school leadership needs across Eastern North Carolina.

INTRODUCTION

The public school principalship has been a challenging position filled with many
uncertainties and job-related frustrations. In recent years, however, a significant convergence
of additional variables has increased this pressure dramatically (Farrington, 2008; Klinker,
2007; Shainker & Brown, 2008). In addition to the broad scope of traditional expectations,
new accountability standards have focused attention on the role of the principal as the
instructional leader of the school. This recent interest in instructional leadership may be
viewed by some practitioners as a very positive, and long overdue, step in the evolution of the
public school principalship.
While researchers have highlighted this need for instructional leadership by school
principals in the past several years (Fullan, 2002; Waters & Grubb, 2004; Waters et al., 2003),
a new consideration has emerged related to the growth and sustainability of new principals in
the accountability age. Fullan (2001) noted that when caught between competing paradigms

Vernon T. Farrington, East Carolina University
William Grobe, East Carolina University
Hal L. Holloman, East Carolina University
Marjorie C. Ringler, East Carolina University