Out With the Old, In With the New: Principal Succession at Liberty High

Abstract

Marie Boden, a 28-year veteran of many teaching and administrative assignments, starts her first high school principalship at Liberty High. With no formal transition plan in place, Marie enters her assignment and experiences more failures than successes. Gradually, she develops a successful role as principal. The case explores her succession experience from a socialization perspective. The appendices offer a visual and narrative socialization model that prospective administrators can use to better understand their own administrative succession experiences. The case may be useful to courses in the principalship, organizational theory, leadership, and personnel.

Heuristic Understanding as a Component of Collaborative, Interdisciplinary, Social Justice Advocacy Research

“…He received his undergraduate degree in psychology and doctoral degree in Educational Leadership from a large urban western university. He focuses his scholarship on how people engage in sensemaking (Weick, 1995;Talbot, 2000;Ogawa, Johnson, Talbot, et al, 2002;Weick, Sutcliffe, & Obstfeld, 2005) in an effort to be successful members of their organizations (e.g., schools), and how organizational change affects enactment of sensemaking strategies. His interests are connected by issues with social justice implications.…”