This study focuses on the role of urban school principals as multicultural leaders. Using cross-case analysis, the authors describe what 6 practicing principals do in regard to multicultural leadership. The findings suggest that although multicultural preparation was lacking for these principals, some did engage in work that promoted diversity in their daily activities. All principals dealt with multicultural issues, usually focusing on individual students or specific programs to accommodate immigrants or refugees. Although some principals held high expectations for all, others were less aware of the connection between affirming diversity and student achievement. Recommendations are made to support principals in their work.

This article explores the competing demands imposed by the ethics of care and justice in an urban high school. Beginning with theoretical constructs of each ethic, the author contrasts care and justice as ideal types and discusses the tensions in educational administration around negotiating the two ethics. Presenting the specific case of a multiethnic urban high school grappling with attendance and truancy problems, the author describes the various perspectives of students, teachers, administrators, and staff members with respect to their school as caregiving and justice seeking. The findings of the study suggest that school members negotiate, rather than reconcile, the ethics of care and justice in actual practice.

The paper discusses the complex layers that make up a school culture and their effect on a rather routine organizational decision, namely, handling truancy, a problem that if left unchecked increases the likelihood of a student's dropping out. The researcher probes the multiple meanings of truancy in policy and practice by applying three lenses of organizational culture: the school as a whole, as subcultures, and as fragmented and ambiguous. The findings suggest that institutional realities at the organizational level unify members, but there are inconsistencies which can be detected at the subcultural and individual levels. Meanings are multiple and individually interpreted. Thus, members are able to exercise greater flexibility within the organization while, at the same time, demonstrating the greater autonomous action necessary in multiethnic urban settings. Further, the multiplicity of cultures suggests cultures other than race or ethnicity. The researcher proposes the utility of multiple lenses to facilitate understanding school culture.

This article describes the ways in which mentoring provides the means for women of color to gain entry and access into educational administration. Briefly, the authors sketch the mentoring relationships of their respondents of color and explore how issues of race and gender might have affected careers in educational administration and how mentoring aided in negotiating their way within Whitemale-dominated organizations.

This paper explores the proposition that educational management is a gendered construction. The author utilizes Scott's analytic model, which distinguishes gender as sexual difference, denoted by cultural symbols, signs, and representations; and gender as a signifier of power, identified by four different types of social relationships. Against this model, the author casts a gender-specific metaphor (“leader as mother”) and a gender-neutral one (“leader as visionary”). Applying model to metaphor offers a mechanism to expose gendered assumptions about educational management. Such an analytic device forces an examination of educational management with women at the center, rather than at the periphery, of the construction.