Moral Leadership: Getting to the Heart of School Improvement (Jossey Bass Education Series)

With this book, Sergiovanni has assembled a "covenant of shared values," a way of "expanding the value structure of and authority bases for leadership" in such a way that the reader can have a "powerful set of ideas for influencing what and how people think and feel." Being an assistant English teacher-I teach English at the middle school level for the City of Naha, Okinawa, Japan-and having aspirations to eventually become a "full-time" teacher at the high school level, I chose to do a review on this book about the roll of leadership in public education. I feel that it is a very good book, both insightful and educational...although I did find it a little "over my head" in some of both content and the context in which it was written. This book, Moral leadership: getting to the heart of school improvement, would make a valuable addition to the guidance resource pool of anyone who cares about our children and the education system that is preparing them to be productive members of adult society.About the Author-- Thomas J. Sergiovanni, Lillian Radford Professor of Education at Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas, has an extensive education history backing up his work: BA degree from the State University of New York in 1958, MA degree from Teachers College, Columbia University in 1959, and his Ed.d. Degree from the University of Rochester in 1966. He has also built up quite an impressive work and experience history as well: he was an elementary school teacher from 1958 to 1964, a science consultant in New York state, a teacher in the teacher education program at the State University of New York, and he gave nineteen years of service to the faculty of educational administration at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign starting in 1966 (he chaired the department for seven years). He now teaches at the Trinity University in the leadership program and in the five-year teacher education program. He is the director of the Trinity Principals' Center as well as being the senior fellow at the Center for Educational Leadership. He has served in an editorial capacity for several teaching and leadership publications and has also published many other books about leadership and schooling: "Schooling for Tomorrow: Directing Reforms to Issues that count (1989, with John Moore), Value-Added Leadership: How to Get Extraordinary Performance in Schools (1990), and The Principalship: A Reflective Practice Perspective (1991, second addition)," are a few among his recent works. Along with all of this experience and education, Sergiovanni also apparently has "broad interest in school leadership and the supervision and evaluation of teaching," to bring to his aid in creating valuable resource materials for those involved in education. Target Audience of the Book-- According to the author, in the introduction of the book, this work was basically intended to serve as a guide for developing moral leadership in schools, from

There are some profound ideas in this book about how a school should be run. I particulary enjoyed the "substitutions for leadership". If you are a school administrator you should probably read this book.