Joseph F. Murphy is the Frank W. Mayborn Chair and associate dean at Peabody College of Education at Vanderbilt University. He has also been a faculty member at the University of Illinois and The Ohio State University where he was the William Ray Flesher Professor of Education. In the public schools he has served as an administrator at the school district and state levels including an appointment as the executive assistant to the chief deputy superintendent of public instruction in California. His most recent appointment was as the founding president of the Ohio Principals Leadership Academy. At the university level he has served as department chair and associate dean. He is past vice president of the American Educational Research Association and was the founding chair of the Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium (ISLLC). He is co-editor of the AERA Handbook on Educational Administration (1999) and editor of the National Society for the Study of Education (NSSE) yearbook The Educational Leadership Challenge (2002).
In this book, the author offers a new vision of the purpose of leadership preparation programmes, and a series of principles to guide the development of the knowledge base, instructional strategies and structures in defining future programmes. The design presented is based on: lessons learned from an extensive review of training programmes over the last 100 years; an in-depth investigation into the problems currently plaguing preparation programmes, and an examination of the important changes likely to shape the future of education and educational leadership.
