Developing Educational Leaders. (Book Reviews).

The hiring of nontraditionally prepared educational leaders from the fields of law, business and the military to direct public school systems mostly in urban areas is a recent phenomenon. One result: University training programs for aspiring school administrators.

In Developing Educational Leaders--A Working Model: The Learning Community in Action, Professors Cynthia J. Norris, Bruce G. Barnett, Margaret R. Basom and Diane M. Yerkes have responded to the threat with a groundbreaking text, which derives from their decade-long research. They deftly combine inquiry, model building and reflective practice to produce what they call "a synergistic model of learning communities and transformational leadership" and a working model for change and reform.

This book should be examined by university practitioners, but it also can be used effectively by those serving in administration or intending to do so. It bridges the chasm among and between individual and community goals and objectives.

The authors build upon their earlier works on learning communities with a strong focus on the cohort as a vehicle for building transformational skills. Individuals, they write, are "intricately interwoven into groups" and into the fabric of the organization and its greater society. The team empowers the individual. The individual emboldens and authenticates the group. The product of this reciprocal process is known as community.

(Developing Educational Leaders--A Working Model: The Learning Community in Action by Cynthia J. Norris, Bruce C. Barnett, Margaret R. Basom and Diane M. Yerkes, Teachers College Press, New York, N.Y., 2002, 168 pp., $22.95 soft-cover)