As promised in the introduction of this five part series on leadership is the following list of references that I used, and occasionally cited, to inform my thinking for and ultimately construct the Leading for Effective Learning monograph. Hyperlinks throughout the monograph also should be considered as critical references for educational leadership considerations.
References:
Arlin, P.K. (1975). Cognitive development in adulthood. Developmental Psychology, 11,5, 602-606.
Campbell, R. F., Cunningham, L. L., Nystrand, R. O., & Usdan, M. D. (1990). The organization and control of American schools. Columbus, OH: Merrill Publishing Company.
Carlsen, W.S. (1991). Questioning in classrooms: A sociolinguistic perspective. Review of Educational Research. 61 (2), 157-178.
Chapman, J. (1990). School based decision-making and management. London: Falmer.
Codeiro, P. (1992). Whole learning. Katonah, New York: Richard C. Owen Publishers, Inc.
Cuban, L. (1992). Curriculum stability and change. In Jackson, P. (Ed.), Handbook of research on curriculum. New York: Macmillan, pp. 216-247.
Damon, W. (1995). Greater expectations. New York: The Free Press.
Drake, T. L. & Roe, W. H. (1986). The principalship. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company.
DePree, M. (1989). Leadership is an art. New York, New York: Dell Publishing.
Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education. New York: Macmillan.
Dodd, A.W. (1995). Engaging students: what I learned along the way. Educational Leadership, 53, 1, 65-67.
Freire, P. (1993). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: The Continuum Publishing Company.
Fullan, M.G. (1989). Implementing educational change. What we know. Washington, D.C.: Population and Human Resource Department, World Bank.
Fullan, M. G. (1992). Visions that blind. Educational Leadership, 49, 5, 19-20.
Fullan, M. G. (1991). The new meaning of educational change. New York: Teachers College Press.
Holly, P., Southworth, G. (1989). The developing school. London: The Falmer Press.
Kimbrough, R. B. & Burkett, C. W. (1990). The principalship: Concepts and practices. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Lyman, L., Foyle, H.C. (1990). Cooperative grouping for interactive learning. Washington, D.C.: National Education Association.
McClure, R.M., Seidel, S., Wallace, D. (1992, August). Personal reflection and leadership for improved schools. Connecting reflection and action for student success. Symposium conducted for the principal/teacher-leader meeting of the National Education Association, Washington, D.C.
Murphy, J. & Louis, K. S. (1994). Reshaping the principalship. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
Newman, J.M. (1985). Whole language: theory in use. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Education Books, Inc.
Osterman, K & Kottkamp, R. (1993). Reflective practice for educators: Improving schooling through professional development. Newbury Park, CA: Corwin Press.
Piaget, J. (1954). The construction of reality in the child. New York: Basic Books.
Richardson, V. (1990). Significant and worthwhile change in teaching practice. Educational Research, 19, 7, 10-18.
Sarason, S.B. (1996). Revisiting The culture of school and the problem of change. New York: Teachers College Press.
Sergiovanni, T. J. (1995). The principalship: A reflective practice perspective. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
Shanahan, T. (Ed.). (1994). Teachers thinking, teachers knowing. Urbana, Illinois: National Council of Teachers of English.
Schulman, J. (1995). The making of a blue ribbon school. Principal,74,3, 34-35.
Snipper Arnold, G.C. (1995). Teacher dialogues: A constructivist model of staff development. Journal of Staff Development, 16, 4, 34-37.
Wells,G. (1994). Changing schools from within: Creating communities of inquiry. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Saturday, January 27, 2007
Leading for Effective Learning: IV & V
Part IV & V
Part IV
Leadership and Learning/Instruction:
The school reform agenda has created new initiatives which require the consideration of alternative views of learning and reframed views of leadership. The role of the school leader has begun to be framed, as Murphy & Louis (see reference) suggest, to include multiple components: servant, person in the community, moral agent, organizational architect, social advocate, and educator. “As we move toward the 21st century, principals must be able to forge partnerships and build strategic alliances with parents, with businesses, and with social service agencies. They must lead in the efforts to coordinate the energy and work of all stake holders so that all the children in their schools are well served”. This dynamic role challenges a school leader to leave the top of the management structure of the school organization and become the center attraction in the newly defined “network of human relationships and function as a change agent and resource” (Murphy & Louis quoted in Chapman, 1990, p.227). A primary responsibility of this “change agent” is to promote growth and development of student learning and teacher beliefs about instruction strategies and practices. One of my most favorite educational philosophers, Maxine Greene suggests in her book Releasing the Imagination that “...classrooms ought to be nurturing and thoughtful and just all at once...[and] ought to resound with the voices of young people in dialogues always incomplete because there is always more to be discussed...”. The school leader must channel teacher discussion and focus on the core issue of children learning while recognizing that children must interact during the learning process. This not only provides oral language experiences but also improves the child’s overall retention and understanding of what is being learned. W.S. Carlson tells us to recognize that “the meaning of classroom talk is context dependent and ...contexts are constructed and modified by speakers in the give and take of conversations”.
I had occasion to observe a school leader engaged in dialogue with another teaching team; they explored the traditional classroom where the focus was on books, teachers “teaching”, and other unilateral sources for learning. It became apparent to this collaborative team that successful learning occurred when children were engaged in their learning activities in ways that would be useful to them. During a two week period recently, at random moments, the school leader and this team engaged in some “talk time” as it became available. Cooperatively made goals, group problem solving, students accountable individually and collectively, became the topics they considered for the development of an interactive learning classroom where the atmosphere would be nurturing and supporting for all. Teachers and students would engage in dialogue that established a process for learning with joint responsibilities and mutual growth. They understood it was crucial for children to be part of the development of their learning by engaging in dialogues with adults about common interests. This would allow the child to express personal beliefs and begin to comprehend the adult perspective. Engaging children in their learning, making them the designers of, rather than objects of instruction, and connecting their personal experiences to their needs, would create relevant learning.
This, however, flies in the face of current NCLB guidance. With the school leader assuming a coaching role by guiding and facilitating discourse, this team began to recognize, through reflective dialogue, that children needed to become developers of their education. They no longer would be the object of a lesson taught or information imparted but rather learners who were decision makers, problem solvers, and communicators in their own right. They discussed further that student interactions were the means to enfranchise the learner. Conversations occurring between students provided opportunities for all members of a heterogeneous classroom, having varied abilities and interests, to sparkle in their own right. Like collaborative teaching, collaborative learning, unlocking the capacities of the group, is always more powerful and has greater potential than individual learning. Their discussions incorporated interactive learning approaches: “increase student achievement, improve student self-esteem, improve student understanding and retention of material, and enhance the student’s desire to learn now, and throughout the students life…” as Lyman & Foyle tell us, became a primary concern of this teaching team through the guidance and encouragement of the school leader. Here
I’m reminded of Steven Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Successful People. He tell us that in leadership, as in life, to be successful we must move trough the levels of ‘dependency’ and ‘independency’ to the level of ‘interdependency’ where, embracing collaborative effort and trusting members of our collaborative partnerships we are able to achieve far more than we might striving independently. Would that not also be true of student learning? Yet where is the school leader or district administrator who would empower and enable that culture to thrive in a high stakes assessment driven world?
Part V
Conclusion:
Seymour Sarason asks if it is necessary for each school to have a principal. After gathering many responses the only commonality he was able to discern was that the question itself was an open and interesting one. His single question resulted in the development of many other questions relating to school leaders, their practices, roles, and responsibilities. It is consistently reported that school leaders are critical to the development of a school culture, student learning, and professional growth. Journals and books are filled with the when’s, the how’s, and the why’s of school leadership. Some journals are devoted exclusively to school leaders and their practice; the do’s and don’ts of staff development, instruction, management, and community involvement.
Who the school leader is and what she or he does has direct implication for the growth and improvement of any school. So, the quest of addressing the re-culturing of schools through leadership should always be at the center of any student outcome discussion. As suggested at the onset of this monograph, there seem to be more questions raised than answered. Maybe that’s simply the way it is with school leadership. A role in the middle with much demanded of it, much expected, but little realized! One wonders....
Friday, January 26, 2007
Leading for Effective Learning: II & III
Part II & III
Part II
Leadership and Curriculum:
Education systems today must ensure that students are learning what teachers are teaching, and that teachers are teaching what is, in fact, the “official”, or intended curriculum: the state and/or national standard student outcomes and expectations. This responsibility is clearly on the shoulders of the school leader who must empower and enable teachers and students to learn and grow. The school curriculum is the meat and potatoes of this growth. Often the school leader has had little if any involvement in the development of district curricula, yet is held accountable for its delivery as the vehicle of education and learning. Michael Fullan tells us that “The principal has to become directly involved. He may not know mathematics or science or history; but he can [be], and the teachers can see him as an expert in curriculum planning”. Easy to say but is this really possible? I have known quite a few “principals” in my time and they are simply not equipped to have the depth and breadth of profound knowledge necessary to effectuate this proactive practice. Often I have observed various school leaders attempting to engage professional staff in the development of curriculum during faculty meetings, at district curriculum council meetings, and teaching team planning sessions. The sad reality is that most often teachers have little respect for the school leader’s input in this area. The school leader is viewed as a resource for the management functions of the school but not the instructional practices in the school. The exception has been the school leader who recently came from the classroom and may very often continue to practice the craft of teaching by being in and/or visiting classrooms regularly. It seems, experience of the school leader in the practice of teaching, establishes a credibility that courses, titles, and certifications can at best validate through “official” documentation.
In a future posting I will offer a much more extensive discussion of curriculum. However, you will find that that offering is much more teacher-centered and teacher-directed.
Part III
Leadership and Development:
Developing, promoting, and working to provide a learner-centered school becomes the primary focus of today’s educational leader. Today’s school leaders must have a clear vision of what an ideal teaching and learning environment should be and be able to articulate that vision. An incredibly profound thinker and educator, Seymour Sarason tells us that “[A] person cannot become a principal without first being a teacher for a number of years...unless a principal has had long experience in teaching and managing children in a classroom, he or she cannot appreciate or understand the goals and problems of a teacher...”. Today’s school leader must have an extensive classroom foundation to fully understand and comprehend implications and applications of current learning environments. Further, (s)he must insure a safe school climate, deeply and passionately understand current pedagogy, and be technologically competent while managing and publicly promoting the school. Tom Sergiovanni, a renown educator who has spent his life researching school leadership, recognizes these educational and instructional leaders as having a foundational sense of where the school is going and just how to get there. Rather than mandating direction, the educational leader looks for or creates opportunities that will affect what is going on in the school.
Development depends on experience and can occur naturally or as the result of planned educational programs. The school leader needs to consider the natural opportunities within the school to promote both student and teacher development. Recently an art teacher, who was left without a room for her classes to work in as a result of construction activities within a school I was part of, was encouraged to blend her instructional program with the librarian’s instructional program. As school leader, I facilitated the planning and discussion sessions for these two professionals. With opportunity, encouragement, planning, restructuring of schedules, and consistent administrative support, the art teacher and librarian developed a program that found children working in multi-age groupings for extended periods of time in a learning centered program. Children researched, created, planned and learned while in a hands-on, minds-on educational environment. The classroom teachers, being accreted into this dynamic teaching and learning environment also found themselves learning, growing and developing professionally to the extent that it altered their teaching practice and found them sharing with, and encouraging others to consider this collaborative instruction process for their own classes.
The school leader must also create opportunities for both students and teachers to grow and develop based on their experiences. In another collaborative teaching partnership that was growing in our school, I found myself with the opportunity to foster teacher growth and thereby stimulate student learning. Questions about appropriate content, amount of material to be taught, student expectations, development of lessons, and the general flow of learning electrified the air as I began spending time with this teaching team listening to their concerns. The philosophy of practice was being challenged by both educators of this “inclusive” collaboration. Privately, the general educator shared her feeling that there was a lack of support being offered for her style of teaching, her methods of instruction. Concurrently, the special needs teacher shared her concerns about feeling like an intruder when she was in the classroom with the general educator. She challenged the methods and style of teaching; she expressed concern they were “covering too much information too quickly” to be of any benefit to the children and pointed out quite emphatically that “pages covered were not necessarily content learned!” Most importantly, she felt the children were developing a general dislike for learning. I seized this opportunity to facilitate dialogue, provide information, and expand discussions about the learning environment, learning styles, and philosophies of teaching and learning. Having this teaching team engaged in “frequent, continuous, and increasingly concrete talk about teaching practice”, as Michael Fullan urges, began to impact what was occurring in the classroom. I was able to encourage these practitioners to utilize reflective practice as a means to develop awareness of their actions and consider their actions relative to their intentions. In this manner, this teaching team was afforded the opportunity to grow and develop professionally. It became THEIR responsibility to recognize student needs and provide instruction that would meet student needs. They had ownership!
Part II
Leadership and Curriculum:
Education systems today must ensure that students are learning what teachers are teaching, and that teachers are teaching what is, in fact, the “official”, or intended curriculum: the state and/or national standard student outcomes and expectations. This responsibility is clearly on the shoulders of the school leader who must empower and enable teachers and students to learn and grow. The school curriculum is the meat and potatoes of this growth. Often the school leader has had little if any involvement in the development of district curricula, yet is held accountable for its delivery as the vehicle of education and learning. Michael Fullan tells us that “The principal has to become directly involved. He may not know mathematics or science or history; but he can [be], and the teachers can see him as an expert in curriculum planning”. Easy to say but is this really possible? I have known quite a few “principals” in my time and they are simply not equipped to have the depth and breadth of profound knowledge necessary to effectuate this proactive practice. Often I have observed various school leaders attempting to engage professional staff in the development of curriculum during faculty meetings, at district curriculum council meetings, and teaching team planning sessions. The sad reality is that most often teachers have little respect for the school leader’s input in this area. The school leader is viewed as a resource for the management functions of the school but not the instructional practices in the school. The exception has been the school leader who recently came from the classroom and may very often continue to practice the craft of teaching by being in and/or visiting classrooms regularly. It seems, experience of the school leader in the practice of teaching, establishes a credibility that courses, titles, and certifications can at best validate through “official” documentation.
In a future posting I will offer a much more extensive discussion of curriculum. However, you will find that that offering is much more teacher-centered and teacher-directed.
Part III
Leadership and Development:
Developing, promoting, and working to provide a learner-centered school becomes the primary focus of today’s educational leader. Today’s school leaders must have a clear vision of what an ideal teaching and learning environment should be and be able to articulate that vision. An incredibly profound thinker and educator, Seymour Sarason tells us that “[A] person cannot become a principal without first being a teacher for a number of years...unless a principal has had long experience in teaching and managing children in a classroom, he or she cannot appreciate or understand the goals and problems of a teacher...”. Today’s school leader must have an extensive classroom foundation to fully understand and comprehend implications and applications of current learning environments. Further, (s)he must insure a safe school climate, deeply and passionately understand current pedagogy, and be technologically competent while managing and publicly promoting the school. Tom Sergiovanni, a renown educator who has spent his life researching school leadership, recognizes these educational and instructional leaders as having a foundational sense of where the school is going and just how to get there. Rather than mandating direction, the educational leader looks for or creates opportunities that will affect what is going on in the school.
Development depends on experience and can occur naturally or as the result of planned educational programs. The school leader needs to consider the natural opportunities within the school to promote both student and teacher development. Recently an art teacher, who was left without a room for her classes to work in as a result of construction activities within a school I was part of, was encouraged to blend her instructional program with the librarian’s instructional program. As school leader, I facilitated the planning and discussion sessions for these two professionals. With opportunity, encouragement, planning, restructuring of schedules, and consistent administrative support, the art teacher and librarian developed a program that found children working in multi-age groupings for extended periods of time in a learning centered program. Children researched, created, planned and learned while in a hands-on, minds-on educational environment. The classroom teachers, being accreted into this dynamic teaching and learning environment also found themselves learning, growing and developing professionally to the extent that it altered their teaching practice and found them sharing with, and encouraging others to consider this collaborative instruction process for their own classes.
The school leader must also create opportunities for both students and teachers to grow and develop based on their experiences. In another collaborative teaching partnership that was growing in our school, I found myself with the opportunity to foster teacher growth and thereby stimulate student learning. Questions about appropriate content, amount of material to be taught, student expectations, development of lessons, and the general flow of learning electrified the air as I began spending time with this teaching team listening to their concerns. The philosophy of practice was being challenged by both educators of this “inclusive” collaboration. Privately, the general educator shared her feeling that there was a lack of support being offered for her style of teaching, her methods of instruction. Concurrently, the special needs teacher shared her concerns about feeling like an intruder when she was in the classroom with the general educator. She challenged the methods and style of teaching; she expressed concern they were “covering too much information too quickly” to be of any benefit to the children and pointed out quite emphatically that “pages covered were not necessarily content learned!” Most importantly, she felt the children were developing a general dislike for learning. I seized this opportunity to facilitate dialogue, provide information, and expand discussions about the learning environment, learning styles, and philosophies of teaching and learning. Having this teaching team engaged in “frequent, continuous, and increasingly concrete talk about teaching practice”, as Michael Fullan urges, began to impact what was occurring in the classroom. I was able to encourage these practitioners to utilize reflective practice as a means to develop awareness of their actions and consider their actions relative to their intentions. In this manner, this teaching team was afforded the opportunity to grow and develop professionally. It became THEIR responsibility to recognize student needs and provide instruction that would meet student needs. They had ownership!
Monday, January 15, 2007
Leading for Effective Learning: Part I
If you are a frequent visitor to this site, you may have noticed that THIS blog is not a daily or even weekly ‘journal’ of teaching and learning activities. (There are many of those…some of which you may find in the ‘top 100 Education Blogs’ under Links to Visit on the left side of this page.) Yes, that was the focus of this site from 2003 through the spring of 2006. In June of 2006 all archival files were deleted and this blog took on a rather different purpose…that being to provoke professional thought relative to current educational theory, research, and practice. Continuing with that purpose, a “new year” often energizes initial or renewed focus of initiative. So too, it is with this blog!
This offering is the first of a five part series on leadership that is being posted throughout January 2007. (An extensive list of references will follow the posting of Part V.) In Part I you will find an overview of thought, theory, history, and a brief examination of school culture that research suggests promotes substantive and meaningful student outcomes. Parts II will examine leadership and its impact on curriculum. Part III looks at the components of leadership development. Part IV considers leadership and its relationship to student learning. And finally, Part V offers some concluding thoughts and provocative questions. Enjoy!
Part I:
Introduction
The re-culturing of our current education system to achieve a learner centered education needs proactive, dynamic, competent, thoughtful, knowledgeable leaders to play a primary role in the development of a student focused, learning oriented environment. How and when leadership in schools affects classroom practice and learning for children is an area constantly in need of examination. This five part monograph intends to weave data and concepts of researchers and theorists in education along with some stories of current school leaders practicing their craft, by using the lenses of curriculum, development, learning, and instruction/teacher beliefs, to view a tapestry which vividly displays a learning centered education. Throughout this offering some examination will occur. However, it may be that upon conclusion many more questions will be raised than answered. Leading for Effective Learning will consider the school leader’s involvement in creating and sustaining a student focus, establishing clear goals and high expectations, and promoting a culture that expresses performance excellence.
We all feel that leaders can make a difference in the effectiveness of a school. Yet, an examination of the skills that are necessary to appropriately fulfill the leadership role may be a meaningful and useful activity that is often overlooked. The art of leadership includes people with ideas, values, beliefs, and the ability to articulate those ideas, values, and beliefs. How are those leaders identified? What contributions do they offer to build a collaborative culture in our education systems that will have lasting impact for our schools and our children? And how does this happen systematically? Leadership seems to be a quality noticeable and common in our exemplary schools yet it is often the “high powered, charismatic principal”, as Michael Fullan characterizes a successful school leader, who transforms our schools to be high quality, high performing, and high profile educational oasis in a desert of learning mediocrity. Who the school leader is and what she or he does has direct implication for the growth and improvement of any school. So, the quest of addressing the re-culturing of schools through leadership and the examination of what a twenty-first century school leader embodies continues.
Background:
Throughout the first half of the twentieth century over five hundred studies were conducted about the nature of leadership with many focusing on education. Most of these investigations looked at traits common to the individual leader. By the 1950’s this avenue was recognized as not providing substantive information about what was really going on with the concept of leadership. Instead, this research pointed out that traits exhibited by a leader in one situation were not necessarily even similar in another situation.
The school principal role began to take shape as a“middle manager” with responsibilities that included meeting the expectations and demands of a superintendent of the school district, teachers, students, parents, and community members. The administrative-managerial aspect of the role extended through the nineteen hundred seventies. The characteristics of the position supported the efficient operation of the school. Maintaining records, preparing reports, developing budgets, scheduling, ordering and monitoring supplies, managing attendance records, enforcing student behavior codes, and administering personnel and buildings characterized the principal as being very uninvolved in teaching and learning; he or she was not an educational leader! Numerous surveys conducted nationally to analyze the principal’s role clearly identified managerial characteristics predominating. These administrative-managerial duties of school leaders made it virtually impossible for the principal to assume an instructional leadership presence in the school. (Consider reading the “classic” ethnography by Harry F. Walcott, The Man in the Principal’s Office, [1973] to gain extensive insight on this topic).
Recognizing that education in general and the school in particular needed educational-instructional, as well as administrative-managerial leadership, emphasis began to be placed on the development of this leadership component. The duties of the principal as instructional leader were being shaped and encouraged in reports, by government agencies, and throughout the literature prepared by professional organizations. Instructional leadership concerned itself with purposes and processes, development and implementation, and the initiation of new ideas. Many researchers, while recognizing that students, teachers, and parents shared in this school leadership process, began to enumerate specific functions of a school principal whose role is one of instructional leader. Some of these accreted components included: working with students and staff to identify goals, helping to create a positive school climate, stimulating and motivating all toward high performance while addressing instructional standards, cooperatively developing assessment and evaluation processes and procedures, and sharing in the formulation of in-service and professional development opportunities for staff.
The reshaping and restructuring of the principal’s responsibilities during the nineteen hundred eighties and nineties caused overload and ambiguity in this leadership role. It became a “middle management” nightmare! It was the building principal who was responsible to the vast array of education stakeholders: students, staff, parents, community members, district leadership, the local board of education, state/federal agencies and their requirements. This diverse education advocacy requires that school leadership, to have any measure of success, must itself be redefined and even re-cultured to fit in the twenty-first century, high expectation, assessment driven schools of today’s education environment. Higher education intuitions, regional groups, independent organizations, and national agencies clearly understand this need and have begun to formulate structures that will accommodate and foster a culture of leadership development. In subsequent sections of Leading for Effective Learning, Parts II through IV we will explore some of the specific components that are the focus of current leadership development.
This offering is the first of a five part series on leadership that is being posted throughout January 2007. (An extensive list of references will follow the posting of Part V.) In Part I you will find an overview of thought, theory, history, and a brief examination of school culture that research suggests promotes substantive and meaningful student outcomes. Parts II will examine leadership and its impact on curriculum. Part III looks at the components of leadership development. Part IV considers leadership and its relationship to student learning. And finally, Part V offers some concluding thoughts and provocative questions. Enjoy!
Part I:
Introduction
The re-culturing of our current education system to achieve a learner centered education needs proactive, dynamic, competent, thoughtful, knowledgeable leaders to play a primary role in the development of a student focused, learning oriented environment. How and when leadership in schools affects classroom practice and learning for children is an area constantly in need of examination. This five part monograph intends to weave data and concepts of researchers and theorists in education along with some stories of current school leaders practicing their craft, by using the lenses of curriculum, development, learning, and instruction/teacher beliefs, to view a tapestry which vividly displays a learning centered education. Throughout this offering some examination will occur. However, it may be that upon conclusion many more questions will be raised than answered. Leading for Effective Learning will consider the school leader’s involvement in creating and sustaining a student focus, establishing clear goals and high expectations, and promoting a culture that expresses performance excellence.
We all feel that leaders can make a difference in the effectiveness of a school. Yet, an examination of the skills that are necessary to appropriately fulfill the leadership role may be a meaningful and useful activity that is often overlooked. The art of leadership includes people with ideas, values, beliefs, and the ability to articulate those ideas, values, and beliefs. How are those leaders identified? What contributions do they offer to build a collaborative culture in our education systems that will have lasting impact for our schools and our children? And how does this happen systematically? Leadership seems to be a quality noticeable and common in our exemplary schools yet it is often the “high powered, charismatic principal”, as Michael Fullan characterizes a successful school leader, who transforms our schools to be high quality, high performing, and high profile educational oasis in a desert of learning mediocrity. Who the school leader is and what she or he does has direct implication for the growth and improvement of any school. So, the quest of addressing the re-culturing of schools through leadership and the examination of what a twenty-first century school leader embodies continues.
Background:
Throughout the first half of the twentieth century over five hundred studies were conducted about the nature of leadership with many focusing on education. Most of these investigations looked at traits common to the individual leader. By the 1950’s this avenue was recognized as not providing substantive information about what was really going on with the concept of leadership. Instead, this research pointed out that traits exhibited by a leader in one situation were not necessarily even similar in another situation.
The school principal role began to take shape as a“middle manager” with responsibilities that included meeting the expectations and demands of a superintendent of the school district, teachers, students, parents, and community members. The administrative-managerial aspect of the role extended through the nineteen hundred seventies. The characteristics of the position supported the efficient operation of the school. Maintaining records, preparing reports, developing budgets, scheduling, ordering and monitoring supplies, managing attendance records, enforcing student behavior codes, and administering personnel and buildings characterized the principal as being very uninvolved in teaching and learning; he or she was not an educational leader! Numerous surveys conducted nationally to analyze the principal’s role clearly identified managerial characteristics predominating. These administrative-managerial duties of school leaders made it virtually impossible for the principal to assume an instructional leadership presence in the school. (Consider reading the “classic” ethnography by Harry F. Walcott, The Man in the Principal’s Office, [1973] to gain extensive insight on this topic).
Recognizing that education in general and the school in particular needed educational-instructional, as well as administrative-managerial leadership, emphasis began to be placed on the development of this leadership component. The duties of the principal as instructional leader were being shaped and encouraged in reports, by government agencies, and throughout the literature prepared by professional organizations. Instructional leadership concerned itself with purposes and processes, development and implementation, and the initiation of new ideas. Many researchers, while recognizing that students, teachers, and parents shared in this school leadership process, began to enumerate specific functions of a school principal whose role is one of instructional leader. Some of these accreted components included: working with students and staff to identify goals, helping to create a positive school climate, stimulating and motivating all toward high performance while addressing instructional standards, cooperatively developing assessment and evaluation processes and procedures, and sharing in the formulation of in-service and professional development opportunities for staff.
The reshaping and restructuring of the principal’s responsibilities during the nineteen hundred eighties and nineties caused overload and ambiguity in this leadership role. It became a “middle management” nightmare! It was the building principal who was responsible to the vast array of education stakeholders: students, staff, parents, community members, district leadership, the local board of education, state/federal agencies and their requirements. This diverse education advocacy requires that school leadership, to have any measure of success, must itself be redefined and even re-cultured to fit in the twenty-first century, high expectation, assessment driven schools of today’s education environment. Higher education intuitions, regional groups, independent organizations, and national agencies clearly understand this need and have begun to formulate structures that will accommodate and foster a culture of leadership development. In subsequent sections of Leading for Effective Learning, Parts II through IV we will explore some of the specific components that are the focus of current leadership development.
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