Building Leadership Capacity in Rural Schools: A Regional University Partnership

The roles of school building and district administrators in rural areas have expanded in the last decade. Expanded responsibilities are amplified in rural school districts where there are fewer administrators to assume a multiplicity of roles. Additionally, educator shortages make it increasingly challenging to recruit and retain school leaders. While larger school districts in metropolitan areas have developed ongoing professional development and support programs to help school leaders meet the ever shifting and complex expectations placed upon them, school administrators in relatively rural regions receive less support. The purpose of this quantitative study was to explore leadership constructs believed to influence development of school leaders’ administrative, adaptive, and enabling leadership behaviors and outputs in largely rural contexts.