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This article presents a collaborative inquiry analysis of the school improvement experiences of four persistently low-performing schools. It draws on the experiences of three members of the Laboratory for the Design and Redesign of Schools (LDRS) consortium who helped during their planning for restructuring or restructuring phases and one regional official who oversaw their grant support and school improvement interventions. The authors explore the role of organizational change to improved teaching and learning in the schools. The schools' mixed leadership and organizational capacity and belief in their teaching efficacy limited the benefits of state, district, and regional supports and resources, which school leaders were ill-equipped to coordinate. Combining leadership and organizational development with curricular and instructional reform models would be more promising.

The purpose of this study is to explore the pattern of sustainability of women's leadership roles in watershed management. A quantitative approach did the research. A survey was conducted as a data collection technique. The analysis technique used is the analysis of causality with regression, accompanied by multi-dimensional scaling (MDS) analysis. The quantitative research samples were 120 respondents in 2 cities by purposive sampling (with the criteria of women who actively participated in watershed conservation in urban areas). The results show that women's leadership as environmental activists contribute to the sustainability of watershed management. For the sustainability of women's leadership, it is necessary to integrate social, economic, and ecological dimensions by focusing on aspects of women's empowerment to improve innovation capabilities in change adaptation, access to information and local institutions will support participatory approaches in watershed conservation to increase women's participation.

Much of the existing literature on urban school reform focuses on how the relatively small number of our nation's largest urban districts are approaching school reform with these objectives in mind. However, does smaller district size have any bearing, direct or indirect, on the nature of superintendent leadership? The authors' exploratory research investigates the interplay between superintendent leadership strategies and behaviors, and district reform initiatives in a sample of relatively well-performing, smaller urban districts in California. The authors conducted interviews with superintendents and members of their leadership teams in four urban districts to examine how district size might influence superintendent leadership strategies, reform initiatives, and personal behaviors. The authors found that the personal leadership behaviors and associated operating processes (strategies and tactics for execution) appeared remarkably distinct from what superintendents do (or are expected to do) in very large urban school districts. The implications of these tentative findings are discussed in the conclusion.

This paper involves a comparative study of policymaking related to urban transport in the Gothenburg and Oslo regions. It sets out to show how strong climate leadership relates to the integration of policy measures and governance systems. Methodologically, we apply document analysis and qualitative interviews with key informants. Our clearest finding is the importance of the city's contextual governance framework for integrative climate leadership. The strong components of the leadership in Oslo—involving both horizontal and upward coordination—rely on a well-developed governance framework with operationalised goals, strategies and steering tools. This enables them to utilise multiple types of climate leadership. This contrasts with the lower degree of integration and defensiveness in Gothenburg, in terms of willingness to use effective but politically sensitive policy measures.

Background:For school leaders challenged with meeting the needs of students, staff, parents, and community members, strengths-based leadership approaches have proven beneficial in accomplishing goals of teacher/staff development, addressing school climate, improving relationships between parents and school, and planning interventions for student success. The purpose of the present study is: (a) to offer a description of a multidisciplinary leadership team that employs a school social worker as a school administrator in a sixth–eighth grade middle school; (b) to identify the social worker's view of the strenghs-based approach and how this influences her administrative role; and (c) to consider whether the social worker's unique skills are valued by others in the school community, when the social worker is a member of the school's leadership team.Methods:A case study approach was used in this study.Results:The study identifies key areas in which school leadership can be informed and opportunities for further research on how multidisciplinary teams using strengths-based approaches in intervention could prove beneficial to K–12 educational reform.

This study examined the role of women's political leadership at the community level in China, a context that has experienced recent political and socioeconomic change and has a distinctive rural-urban divide. Drawing on longitudinal data from the China Family Panel Studies (N = 40,918~52,406 person-year observations), we found that female community directors outnumbered male directors in urban China but were much less common in rural areas. Female community directors had higher levels of human capital regardless of rural or urban location. Residents living in female-directed communities reported better mental health, but not physical health or life satisfaction, compared to those living in male-directed communities, and this association was most robust among rural women. For rural women, the mental health benefit of living in female-directed communities was partially explained by reduced personal experience of gender discrimination, suggesting that female leadership fosters ideational change toward women that lowers discriminatory behaviors among constituents.

This article considers the rapid evolution and increased prominence of the C40 Cities Climate Change Leadership Group and its commitment to the development of a new style of thinking, and possibly a new urban construct. This new construct is not yet understood, perhaps due to the fact that it is an inchoate ideal being forged through the work of the network for the future of our cities. Such an assessment is well situated within the political economy of urban sustainability, with its ability to set up an interrogative frame to identify the progressive and regressive possibilities that the C40 signals. This article argues that the C40 cities propose nothing new in their ideas, providing a reinforcement of neoliberal urbanism. We need to deviate from technocratic and "econocratic" approaches toward pathways that emphasize the democratic content of socio-environmental development.

Annotation, Some of today's best urban leaders don't work for the government -- they can be found in nonprofit organizations that serve the working class and poor populations. Based on interviews conducted in major cities including Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, San Francisco, Washington D.C., and New York, this study focuses on exceptional leaders who have developed effective solutions to the complex problems of our inner cities, including education, economic development, and community safety. The book includes profiles of innovators such as Robert Woodson, founder of the Washington, D.C. based National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise, whose work on affordable housing, gang violence, and black entrepreneurship earned a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (the "genius" award); MacArthur Fellowship and Heinz Prize winner Bob Moses, founder of the Algebra Project that prepares low-income students for joining today's technology-dominated workforce; Rheedlen Center head Geoff Canada, who received the Heinz Prize for his "anti-violence among youth" work; and Reverend Eugene Rivers, one of the founders of the Ten-Point Coalition that helped to reduce gang violence in Boston. The New Urban Leadership investigates how and why expert problem solvers chose their career paths, what qualities make them especially successful in their work, and the methods they use to train the next generation of urban leaders

The concepts of political leadership and political representation are applied to urban politics, and based on a case study of four mayors in Denmark, four mayoral representational functions are identified: "representative," "master of ceremonies," "local secretary of state," and "ombudsman." The four functions separate the mayor from the councillors who act only as representatives. With regard to representational focus (who is represented), the case study demonstrates that mayors have a much broader focus than councillors. The different functions and focuses of mayors and councillors are combined into two ideal types of representation, "leader style" and "legislator style."