ABSTRACT
Defi ning good leadership and good leadership preparation has been a challenge for those who have educated and guided generations of school administrators for over 100 years in the United States and elsewhere. Although the principalship as a profession did not begin to formalize until aft er the Civil War, some evidence of training school leaders dates back to the early part of the 19th century (Murphy, 1998, 2006). For school superintendents, formal preparation specifi c to educational leadership did not come until aft er the 1920s, given the emphasis on a business model of school leadership during the Industrial Era (Callahan, 1996). Most of the extant literature on leadership preparation in education in the United States deals with master’s or doctoral degree programs designed to prepare principals and assistant principals. In this chapter we review the literature that focuses on delivery models and discussions of delivery of principal preparation programs, since there has been very little research on delivery of superintendent programs. No distinction is made in the literature between doctoral programs and master’s programs, though, in practice, we are aware that diff erent principles may guide such programs.
