Blazing New Trails - Connexions

218 CRITICAL ISSUES IN SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT
model of leadership accurately conceptualizes the traits and actions that constitute the
prerequisites required for leadership in character education reform efforts.
Servant leadership is a leadership style exemplified by leaders’ priority on serving
within the organizational context (Greenleaf, 1977). The servant leader must ensure that the
highest priority needs of other people are being served, and that the best test to determine if
that is occurring is to ask:
Are those served growing as individuals? Are they healthier, wiser, freer, more
autonomous, and more likely themselves to become servants? What is the effect on the
least privileged of society? Will they benefit or at least not be further deprived?
(Spears, 2001, para. 8)
According to Drummond et al. (2002), servant leadership in its purest form, “advocates the
power of persuasion and the seeking of consensus so that the mind of the servant leader and
the needs of the employees, customers, constituents, and community, become the most
important reason for the organization’s existence” (p. 21). In the school context, servant
leadership affords leadership prerequisites for effective leadership: leading so that all school
constituents benefit, managing to maintain organizational health so school goals can be met,
and relating to people persuasively through collaboration and consensus-building. Pellicer
(1999) aptly described the servant aspect of leadership, noting:
Leaders are servants to their followers in that they seek to remove the obstacles that
prevent them from doing their jobs and give them the freedom and incentive to live up
to their potential, while completing themselves as human beings. (p. 8)
As the servant leader of the school campus, the principal has the potential to make staff,
students, and parents “want to be better terms of what they do and who they are as human
beings” (Pellicer, 1999, p. 13). As to the school leader’s greatest attribute, Pellicer (1999)
noted that he believed, “The ability to make the people around them want to be better is the
greatest attribute any leader could ever possess” (p. 13). According to Bolman and Deal
(2001), “A caring school system requires servant leaders who serve the best interests of the
institution and its stakeholders. This implies a profound and challenging responsibility for
leaders to understand the needs and concern of those they serve” (p. 26). The guiding
leadership principle that is concerned about facilitating the personal growth and welfare of all
school constituents succinctly encapsulates the driving purpose of school leadership
committed to the implementation of character education programs.
EFFICACY BELIEFS FRAMEWORK
In addition to principal leadership, an understanding of the theoretical underpinnings
of efficacy is critical to this study as well. Tschannen-Moran and Gareis (2005) noted that the
awareness of efficacy beliefs provides beneficial determinations in several areas of the
school-wide program of which character education is a part. To illustrate, efficacy belief
levels would determine which school and district goals are placed in improvement plans,
determine which professional development areas are chosen for teachers and administrators,
and determine which support mechanisms administrators would establish based on their own
strengths and weaknesses. Administering a character education efficacy instrument to
educational administrators would surface an administrator’s self-knowledge regarding
character education implementation. Awareness of administrators’ perceived ability beliefs