Best Leadership Practices for High-Poverty Schools presents both the practice and theory of best leadership practices in high-poverty schools. Authors Linda Lyman and Christine Villani take a unique approach by inviting readers into two high-poverty elementary schools where they will experience, through in-depth case studies, how two extraordinary principals model and practice their beliefs in the ability and worth of all children. Lyman and Villani demonstrate that a successful learning community for children of low-income families is based on the beliefs and attitudes of the school leader and the entire school community. Preparation programs for school principals typically do not provide for study of the complexity of poverty or the leadership practices that contribute to successful learning and achievement for children in high-poverty schools. The concluding questions that the authors pose provide a guide to developing best leadership practices that make a difference to the learning, achievement, and lives of children who live in poverty.This book offers: an insightful overview of research about leadership strategies and beliefs in high-poverty schools, causes and remedies for the achievement gap, evidence of continuing racial and ethnic prejudice, the widespread deficit thinking that limits learning. The authors challenge leaders, teachers, staff members, and others to examine their own attitudes and beliefs and then to commit to creating successful learning communities for all children from low-income families. This book is written as a resource for aspiring and practicing principals, or anyone interested in improving educational opportunities for children from families living in poverty.
Linda L. Lyman is a Professor at Illinois State University, in the College of Education, Department of Educational Administration and Foundations. Her fourth book will be "Shaping Social Justice Leadership: Insights of Women Educators Worldwide," scheduled to be published in June 2012 by Rowman & Littlefield Education. Co-authors are Dr. Jane Strachan who is recently retired from the University of Waikato, New Zealand, and Dr. Angeliki Lazaridou from the University of Thessaly, Greece. The book contains evocative portraits of 23 women educators and leaders from western and non-western countries around the world whose actions are shaping social justice leadership. Woven from words of their own narratives, the women's voices lift off the page into readers' hearts and minds to inspire and inform. Representing 14 different countries, these members of Women Leading Education Across the Continents (WLE) portray the complexity of 21st century leadership. The chapters develop a range of cultural comparisons, illustrate imperatives for social justice leadership, and examine values, skills, resilience, leadership pathways and actions. The authors invite all educators - women and men - to shape social justice leadership through collective efforts around the globe that create new possibilities for a more just world.
Dr. Lyman's academic credentials include a B.A. in English from Northwestern University; an M.A.T. in Secondary Education from Harvard University; and a Ph.D. in Administration, Curriculum, and Instruction, from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Named a Fulbright scholar in 2005, Dr. Lyman taught about women's leadership in American culture at Aristotle University in Thessaloniki, Greece, and researched leadership practices of Greek women principals. An author of three previous books, Dr. Lyman's research, publications, and presentations focus on leadership, with an emphasis on issues of social justice, including leadership in high poverty schools and issues of gender.
Dr. Lyman's first book, published by Teachers College Press in 2000, was titled "How Do They Know You Care? The Principal's Challenge." The book presents an argument for caring leadership through a portrait that shows what caring leadership looks like in the actions of an exemplary African American male principal. Her second book is "Best Leadership Practices for High Poverty Schools," with co-author Dr. Christine Villani from Southern Connecticut State University. The book, published in 2004 by Scarecrow Education, is a comparative case study of two female minority principals who achieve outstanding results in high poverty schools and whose leadership practices leave deficit thinking about students and their families far behind. She published a third book in 2005, with co-authors Dr. Dianne Ashby, now retired from Illinois State University, and Dr. Jenny Tripses from Bradley University. Published by Rowman & Littlefield Education, "Leaders Who Dare: Pushing the Boundaries" tells the stories of 18 outstanding women leaders from Illinois, focusing on the four primary themes in their leadership successes.
