Leadership stories: what novices learn by crafting the stories of experienced school administrators

Abstract

Describes research undertaken to study the kinds of understandings and reflections in which administrators‐in‐training engage by writing the story of an experienced administrator. Explains how 17 graduate students in educational administration carried out multiple interviews with practising school administrators concerning their personal biography, professional biography and a discrete incident of professional practice. Reports the findings that novices did get to hear about some of the grey areas in which educational administrators typically operate. The stories provided basic assumptions and details about how experienced administrators performed in specific situations and circumstances and illustrated some of the explicit rules used by administrators to manage problems as well as the more tacit knowledge and assumptions embedded in practice. States that this led students to reflect on their own approaches to practice.