Assistant Professor
Phone: 860.832.2576
Fax: 860.832.2109
Email: watsonshl@ccsu.edu
Office: HB 333.0000
Sheldon Watson is an Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership in the School of Education and Professional Studies at Central Connecticut State University. He teaches graduate level courses in both the Sixth Year and Doctoral programs in the Department of Educational Leadership. Dr. Watson earned his Ph.D. in Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis from the University of Missouri – Columbia. His dissertation, Teacher collaboration and school reform: Distributing leadership through the use of professional learning teams, has been nominated as the outstanding dissertation of 2005 by the Administration, Organization, and Leadership division of the American Educational Research Association. Dr. Watson has published a forthcoming journal article in Educational Administration Quarterly, is the author of several book chapters on organizational learning and school leadership, and has regularly presented his research at national conferences. He serves on the editorial board of the Journal of School Leadership.
Dr. Watson’s research interests focus on collaboration, organizational learning, teacher quality, and educational policy. His work on collaboration applies the research lens of Distributed Leadership to the study of how educators interact with one another to accomplish shared objectives, as well as how schools and districts structure these interactions. Dr. Watson is a specialist in qualitative research, particularly discourse and interaction analysis, and grounded theory. His current research projects include an investigation of the use and implementation of Distributed Leadership practices in Connecticut public schools; studying the practice and role conception of superintendents throughout lower New England as a regional component of a national study of the superintendency; and investigations into teacher quality in two contexts – the state of Missouri’s alternative teacher certification programs, and a new Teaching American History program at CCSU. In past lives Dr. Watson has been a junior high school social studies teacher and an archaeologist.