What is Istructional Leadership?

What is an Instructional Leader?

As defined by Hoy & Hoy, an instructional leader is a principal that is “responsible for developing a school climate that is conducive to providing the very best practices” They suggest that the “principal forge a partnership with teachers with the primary goal of the improvement of the teaching and learning.” (Hoy & Hoy, 2003) Principals cannot be instructional leaders from behind their desks. This requires the principals to step out of the office and become part of the teaching and learning that is taking place in the school everyday. Principals, as instructional leaders, “need to spend time in classrooms as colleagues, engage teachers in conversations about learning and teaching.”(Hoy & Hoy, 2003) Being a good instructional leader means being a good cooperator, colleague, expert, and team player. These are traits that must be traded from the traditional ways of the principal role.

How has the role of the principal changed?

In the 1950’s the role of the principal was simply managers of the school as administrators. As the educational world moved in to the 1960’s the principals became more like “street-level bureaucrats”, meaning they were making policies and getting things done. (Lockwood) In the 1970’s the principal became known as the “change agent”. This took all the attention to the principals and how effective were they being in their buildings. Finally in the 1980’s the role as the instructional leader was born. It was now that “principals were now viewed as key to creating conditions in the school as a whole that would support improvements in student achievement.” (Lockwood)

Today, however, the role of the principal as the instructional leader has changed even more. Today, the principal is key in leading learning communities. The National Association of Elementary School Principals said that instructional leaders have six roles:

• Making student and adult learning the priority
• Setting high expectations for performance
• Gearing content and instruction to standards
• Creating a culture of continuous learning for adults
• Using multiple sources of data to assess learning and,
• Activating the community’s support for school success.

These roles help the principal to do what is best for kids. Choosing the “best-practices” for the success of all stakeholders involved in the school. Some even consider the instructional leader to have shifted to a role of a “learning leader”. Lashway( 2003) quotes Liethwood and Riehl(2003) who identified some core roles of “best-practices”: setting direction, developing people, redesigning the organization. They also listed these that would be more specific to schools: creating and sustaining a competitive school, empowering others to make significant decisions, providing instructional leadership, developing and executing strategic plans.

What should an Instructional Leader look like?

Joseph and Jo Blasé did a study in 2000 where teachers were asked to describe the behaviors of principals that had a positive influence on student learning. The results came back with two themes. Positive principals are ones that talk with teachers and promote professional development of those teachers. These teachers felt that good principals had certain behaviors that made them successful as well. These included: “making suggestions, giving feedback, modeling effective instruction, soliciting opinions, supporting collaboration, providing professional development opportunities, and giving praise for effective teaching.” (Lashway, 2002)

In the article by Graseck (2005), he gives a list of what good administrators do. He says that “effective school administers know that their actions can enhance teacher happiness, which in turn contributes to improving the quality of the learning environment. He says good administrators do the following:

1. Listen to their teachers
2. Seek advice from the teachers
3. Sympathize with teachers and their vocational struggles
4. Embrace their teachers
5. Recognize that teachers are the backbone of the school
6. Build community with the staff
7. Trust their teachers and involve them in decision making
8. Articulate a defensible educational vision
9. Exhibit a passion for educational excellence
10. Teach, even in a classroom, remaining on the same side of the teacher

Richard DuFour says that teachers need a leader that encourages, recognizes and celebrates the progress they make as teachers. They also want a leader that will confront teachers that fail to fulfill their responsibilities. (DuFour, 2002).

The Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium (ISLLC) have six standards that they use to define a good instructional leader. The themes are as follows:

· Facilitating shared vision

· Sustaining a school culture conducive to student and staff learning

· Managing the organization for a safe, efficientm, and effective educational environment

· Collaborating with families and community members

· Acting with integrity, fairness, and in an ethical manner

· Influencing the larger political, social, economic, legal, and community context

I have been extremely privileged to work under such a leader. My principal has done a fairly good job at meeting the above list of traits. She too has developed those skills over the time that I have worked with her. Principals do not all start out knowing and doing it all. I believe that if we as principals want to exemplify the traits of an instructional leader we too must recognize our areas that need to grow and develop and focus on doing so each year. The leader of my school continues to do so each year. She has developed a good repoire with the faculty and staff. She has earned a sense of respect from those of us that have been there for an extended period of time. She was put in my school eight years ago to clean up a disaster area of a school environment. She had to makes some extremely hard decisions and deal with much resistance to change over those first few years.

Lashway quotes Elmore’s identified key players in reform:

1. Policymakers
2. Researchers and program developers
3. Superintendents and central office staff
4. Principals
5. Teachers

He says that the role of these is vital for any change to take place. The role of the principal is to be responsible for designing and implementing a well-focused school improvement plan. Principals must first “create coherence in improvement efforts” (Lashway, 2002). We usually see this as creating the “vision” of the school. This means that all of the stakeholders understand and work toward the common goal. The instructional leader then becomes the “organizational glue” that keeps things on track. (Elmore, 2000)

Next, the principal has to “achieve a finely tuned balance of mandate and empowerment” (Lashway, 2002) This may mean that the principal makes it clear that change is not an option and that teachers may have to give up some of their personal preferences to do what is best for kids. It also means that the effective leader creates a safe place for these teachers to implement the change without fear of repercussions when a mistake was made.

Finally, the research says that the leaders” must model” (Lashway, 2002) Principals will have to be able to recognize good teaching. This includes “lessons that are aligned to standards, creating assessments that are consistent with standards, and evaluating student work for evidence that the standards have been achieved.” (Lashway, 2002)

When I read this it made me aware of the exact place that our faculty is at this very point. For the past week our faculty has been involved in staff development. We are moving toward whole school instruction strategies that a few grade levels experimented with last year. In third grade my team tried several types of instruction which included thematic units and variety of individual instruction to meet the needs of the students in reading and in math. We were the “guinea pigs” last year. Now though we have become the experts. It was an amazing experience this week to watch the other grade levels start to develop their own themes and begin to look at the strategies that we tried that were extremely successful. It was also awesome to see how several “seasoned” teachers began to give up some of their “tried and true” ways of instruction and begin to educate themselves on some of the “best-practices”. Our principal actually addressed the faculty on the last day and basically quoted the concepts presented in this paper. She told the faculty that we need to change and explained that the administrative team would be expecting to see us trying these strategies in our classrooms. She also said that we would be reflecting constantly on how these strategies were working. She was going to set up discussion groups for the teachers to make sure that the focus stayed of the instructional issues we are facing. Our administrative team also participates in all of our staff development that we have at our school. They know what we have learned. I feel it means a lot that they are their learning with us. It shows that they want to model the traits that we need to portray in our classrooms. Lashway quotes Kate Jamentez (2003) by saying that “instructional leaders must internalize exemplars of effective classroom practice so that they can make accurate judgments about, and give feedback to the teachers with whom they work.” I truly feel this is what our administrative team does for our faculty.

Instructional Leadership: Facilitative/ Shared Leadership

Larry Lashway also discusses the ability for effective leaders to play different roles. He says, “ High-achieving schools had principals who boldly led the academic program, set goals, examined curriculum, evaluated teachers, and assessed results.” He also suggests that today’s views of the leadership role of a principal should be more of one that does not direct others but creates a school culture that decisions are made collaboratively.

I believe that these two go hand in hand. In Linda Lambert’s article A Framework for Shared Leadership (2002) she states, “Instructional leadership must be a shared, community undertaking.” The old model of one person in charge,

“Leaves the substantial talents of teachers largely untapped. Improvements achieved under this model are not easily sustainable; when the principal leaves, promising programs often lose momentum and fade away.” (Lambert, 2002) I believe that this is where our school is going. There will be a time, especially in this highly transitional county, when our principal will have to move on to something else. I know that the work that we have done under her guidance will be sustained. It was not just her vision but also the vision of the entire school. The new members that she has hired each year either join in our vision or they find somewhere else to teach. This is not something that she has to deal with; it’s an issue that the faculty will not tolerate. We have expectations of the people we work with and we value the work that we do collaboratively as well as individually.

Conclusion:

The role of the principal has changed dramatically over the past years. As new leaders we are responsible for keeping the momentum. We cannot do this alone. As the leaders of our schools we need to appreciate the values and talents of the people that we work with and utilize these for the success of the students. I know that it is a dated saying, but we are preparing the future. The students that we teach are what the future holds. How well we do now effects how successful they will be. We as educators have a huge responsibility, how under-appreciated it may be, to give our very best each and every day.

References:

DuFour, Richard (2002, May) The Learning-Centered Principal, Educational Leadership,

Vol.59, issue 8, 12-15.

Fink, Elaine and Resnick, Lauren B. (2001, April) Developing Principals as Instructional

Leaders, Phi Delta Kappan, 598-606. Retrieved June 6, 2005 from

http://www.ncsl.org.wk/media/F7B/94/randd-engaged-fink.pdf

Graseck, Paul. (2005, January) Where’s the Ministry In Administration? Attending to the

Souls of Our Schools, Phi Delta Kappan, 373-378.

Hoy, Anita W. and Hoy, Wayne K. (2003) Instructional Leadership: A Learning-

Centered Guide, A Pearson Education Company, Boston, MA. 2-3.

Lambert, Linda (2002, May) A Framework for Shared Leadership, Educational

Leadership, 37-40.

Lashway, Larry. (1995, May) Can Instructional Leaders Be Facilitative Leaders? ERIC

Clearinghouse on Educational Management, ED381893 Retrieved June 7, 2005

from http://www.vtaide.com/png/ERIC/Instructional-Facilitative-Leadership.htm.

Lashway, Larry. (2002, July) Developing Instructional Leaders, ERIC Digest 160,

Retrieved June 6, 2005 from http://www.ericdigests.org/2003-2/leasers.html

Lashway, Larry. (2003, July) Role of the School Leader. Clearinghouse on Educational

Policy and Management, University of Oregon, Retrieved on June 7, 2005 from

http://eric.uoregon.edu/trends_issues/rolelead/index.html

Lockwood, Anne Turnbaugh. The changing Role of Principals: An Interview With Philip

Hallinger, Retrieved on June 6, 2005 from

http://www.ncrel.org/cscd/pubs/lead31/31hallin.htm

What is Effective Leadership for Today’s Schools, Retrieved on June 7, 2005 from

http://www.ed.gov/pubs/EffectiveLeaders/effective-leadership.html