The man who would not be superintendent : struggling with on-the-job socialization

Abstract

Some alternative educational leadership literature being written today, based on such theories as feminism, critical theory, and postmodernism, are challenging traditional, hierarchical, patriarchal, and bureaucratic organizational and management models that have been dominant in public education since the turn of the century. Today?s beginning superintendents committed to these alternative perspectives may experience struggles during the socialization and role transition periods of their entry into traditionally constructed public school organizations. From this phenomenological investigation of five beginning, outsider superintendents, categories emerged from the observational and interview data that revealed the unique situations of each superintendent and how each constructed his or her social reality. Findings indicated a greater interest in adaptation to rather than construction of a new vision of a superintendency.