Coloring Outside the Lines: Mentoring Women into School Leadership (Suny Series in Women in Education)
Mentoring women into school leadership has become a popular idea over the last decade. Although there are books on the subject, few, if any, deal specifically with mentoring women in public education. This trio of authors (from three different colleges of education) wants to persuade more women to seek leadership positions in public schools, where administrative positions are currently around 90 percent male. Ironically, superintendents generally rise from the ranks of teachers, 70 percent of whom are female. The authors argue that this under-representation can be connected to the lack of mentoring of women. In this study, they interview 55 mentors and their female prot g s at the level of assistant principal or higher within a K-12 grade range. The authors describe how the various mentoring pairs worked together for at least one year and discuss how successful the mentoring was. While no single "right way" of mentoring was discovered, the practice of mentoring was found to be a key factor in women gaining leadership positions. Suitable primarily for academic libraries and public libraries with large education collections.DTerry Christner, Hutchinson P.L., KSCopyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.