Abstracts Category : Other

The Principal's Roles in Building Capacity for Change

by Sara Griffiths Butler

This qualitative dissertation explores how the principals leadership roles build capacity for change and how chaos theory contributes to this understanding. The roles studied include distributive leadership, moral leadership, social justice leadership, democratic leadership, and instructional leadership. The tenets of chaos theory examined include change as nonlinear, feedback loops and fractals, turbulence, complexity, strange attractors, and the butterfly effect. The research participants include three urban Texas high school principals. Each principal had a tenure of three or more years, at a campus with a population of at least 50% children of color, and had structures in place on campus to implement change. Grounded theory was used to code data, including principal interviews, observations, and artifacts. Findings show that capacity building is foundational to school improvement, principal roles are key to a change processs success, and chaos theory can contribute to and highlight our understandings of a campus change process. These findings can better inform principals, principal preparation programs, and districts on meeting the needs of all children.Advisors/Committee Members: Gordon, Stephen P. (advisor), Boone, Michael (committee member), O'Malley, Michael P. (committee member), Reardon, Robert F. (committee member).