Daisy Arredondo Rucinski, Ph.D.

Daisy Arredondo Rucinski is professor emerita of educational leadership and policy at The University of Alabama. She teaches graduate classes in educational leadership, supervision, school policy, and instructional leadership. She conducts research on instructional supervision for improved student learning, teacher evaluation and professional development policy, reform, reflection and cognitive development in supervisory and leadership practices that support the restructuring and reculturing of public schools.         
Before joining the faculty at the University of Alabama, Dr. Arredondo Rucinski was associate professor and director of educational leadership studies at Seattle University. She has also served as assistant, associate professor, and/or as program coordinator at West Virginia University, the University of Missouri-Columbia, and at Valdosta State University (GA). During 2004-2005, Dr. Arredondo Rucinski was a Fulbright Senior Scholar at Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile in Santiago. During the spring of that year, she also spent three weeks on the University of AL campus conducting research on an assessment instrument for reflective practice and ethical leadership (REMAS) with Professor Patricia Bauch. This instrument is used in research by students and by other university faculty.  REMAS is available from this site, from the University of Maryland Test Bank, and/or from the authors. (Please contact the first author for permission to use it and for instructions on use.)

Prior to her work in higher education, Dr. Arredondo Rucinski was a full time educational consultant in teaching strategies and in instructional supervision. She is co-author of Tactics for Thinking (with Robert Marzano, ASCD, 1986) and of Dimensions of Learning  (with Marzano and others, ASCD 1992, 1996). She has held major consultancy roles throughout the United States, Canada, Chile, Panama, Russia, and the Ukraine. Prior to becoming an educational consultant, Dr. Arredondo Rucinski was associate superintendent for instruction in Lincoln, NE, and in Walla Walla, WA.  Additional educational experiences include:  high school assistant principal, administrative assistant to the principal, and high school biology, Spanish, and algebra teacher in Seattle area schools.

Dr. Arredondo Rucinski received her bachelor’s degree in biology in 1970, her master’s degree in population biology in 1974, and a Ph.D. in education in 1983, all from the University of Washington.  Her dissertation research focused on the relationship between the principal’s instructional supervision and the school’s overall effectiveness.

In addition to the books described above, Dr. Arredondo Rucinski has published numerous papers on instructional methodology, integrated curriculum, mentor-mentee relationships, reflective practice, ethical leadership for social justice, staff development, school effectiveness, school management practices, and improving student thinking and learning skills; she has an edited book coming out soon (Summer 2016), Real World Professional Learning Communities: Their Use and Effects, from Rowman and Littlefield.
​(See full CV.)