About

Ellie Drago-Severson is a Professor of Education Leadership at Teachers College, Columbia University, where she also serves as the Director of the Ph.D. Program in Education Leadership. Her scholarly interests focus on leadership for adult development, supporting teachers, principals, assistant principals, superintendents, and other educational leaders in their professional and personal growth within K-12 schools and adult education settings both domestically and internationally. She specializes in designing learning environments that foster adult and leadership development, coaching for growth, adult learning and literacy, enhancing doctoral research training, and qualitative research methodology. Drago-Severson holds a B.A. from Long Island University, an Ed.M. and Ed.D. in Human Development and Psychology from Harvard Graduate School of Education, and completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship at Harvard University. Her extensive publication record includes books, articles, and book chapters on leadership, adult development, and educational change, with notable works such as 'Helping Educators Grow,' 'Leading Change Together,' and 'Growing as Social Justice Leaders.' Her research emphasizes a developmental approach to leadership and social justice, focusing on supporting educational leaders in their capacity to foster equity and transformation in educational settings.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Sociology
• Law
• Law and economics
• Economics

Selected publications

• Connections Bring Us Closer to Equity and Justice.

  Learning Professional · 2020 · 2 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  Publisher

• Building a developmental culture of feedback

  Journal of Professional Capital and Community · 2018-01-09 · 11 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Purpose This paper draws from more than 25 years of research with aspiring and practicing educational leaders to present six strategies for building a culture of feedback in schools, teams, districts, professional learning opportunities, and other educational settings. These strategies reflect key elements of the authors’ new, developmental approach to feedback. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach Through the lens of adult developmental theory, the authors highlight foundational learnings from open-ended survey research with 14 educational leaders about their experiences giving and receiving feedback, and prior qualitative, mixed-method, and longitudinal research with principals, assistant principals, teachers, superintendents, and other educational leaders. Findings The authors share six developmentally oriented strategies for establishing trust and building conditions for authentic, generative feedback: finding value in mistakes, modeling vulnerability, caring for the (inter)personal, clarifying expectations, sharing developmental ideas, and building an infrastructure for collaboration. Practical implications This work has implications for leadership and leadership preparation, especially given contemporary emphases on collaboration and high-stakes evaluations as tools for ongoing improvement, enhancing professional capital, and internal, individual, and system-wide capacity building. Originality/value Because a developmental perspective has been noticeably missing from the wider feedback literature and leadership preparation curricula, this work extends and enhances tenets from different fields (e.g. business, developmental psychology, educational leadership and educational leadership preparation), while also addressing urgent calls for educational reform; leadership preparation, development, and practice; and professional capital building.

  PublisherDOI

• Make Time to Recharge: Growth and Renewal Play Key Roles in Sustaining School Leaders.

  ˜The œJournal of staff development · 2015-08-01 · 3 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  Publisher

• Change No to Yes: Leaders Find Creative Ways to Overcome Obstacles to Adult Learning.

  ˜The œJournal of staff development · 2014-08-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  Publisher

• Tell Me so I Can Hear: A Development Approach to Feedback and Collaboration.

  ˜The œJournal of staff development · 2014-12-01 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  Publisher

• Leadership for Transformational Learning

  Journal of Research on Leadership Education · 2014-03-18 · 29 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Given the complexity of contemporary leadership, scholars and practitioners seek to improve preparation programs so that school leaders can more effectively support adult development. This article describes longitudinal research investigating how a university course on leadership for adult development ( Leadership for Transformational Learning [LTL]) influenced graduates’ conceptions of leadership immediately after the course and years later. This article describes (a) course goals, structures, and curricula; (b) changes in thinking that leaders attributed to LTL; and (c) course ideas and practices that leaders named as essential to their current thinking and work. This investigation offers insight into how university courses can support leaders’ internal growth.

  PublisherDOI

• New Mindsets

  Advances in educational technologies and instructional design book series · 2014-01-01 · 5 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  The authors situate this chapter within the context of contemporary educational leadership where leaders face technical and adaptive challenges that are increasing in complexity and quantity. In many cases, these are challenges for which they could not have been prepared (e.g., new accountability measures). While adult learning and adult developmental theories have been employed widely to support adults' learning and development in other sectors, they are only recently being employed to inform the practice and preparation of school leaders. Therefore, the authors describe seminal theories of adult learning and development as a promising foundation to improve curriculum and learning spaces for aspiring and practicing leaders. These theoretical lenses are helpful for curriculum design and content in Pre-K-20 learning centers and also higher education. Put simply, research establishes that employing these will more fully equip leaders to support other adults' learning and development in their communities in order to meet complex educational challenges.

  PublisherDOI

• School Leadership for Adult Development: The Dramatic Difference It Can Make

  2011-01-01 · 2 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Jessica Blum‐DeStefano

  6 shared

• Deborah Brooks-Lawrence

  1 shared

• Patricia Maslin‐Ostrowski

  Florida Atlantic University

  1 shared

Awards & honors

• National Staff Development Council's 2004 "Book of the Year"