Instructional, Transformational, and Balanced Leadership
In Educational Leadership (2005), Leithwood describes two models of leadership that "currently vie for most of the attention among practicing educators—instructional and transformational models" (p. 7).
Instructional Leadership Model
The instructional leadership model attempts to draw principals' attention back to teaching and learning, and away from the administrative and managerial tasks that continue to consume most principals' time. This model includes three main categories of practice:
- Defining the school's mission
- Managing the instructional program
- Promoting a positive school learning climate
Practices related to defining the school's mission include overseeing the development of specific school goals and ensuring they are communicated clearly to all members of the school community. The practices central to managing the instructional program are "supervising and evaluating instruction, coordinating the curriculum, and monitoring student progress" (p. 8). At the heart of this model, however, is the final category of practice, promoting a positive school learning climate, which includes "protecting instructional time, promoting professional development, maintaining high visibility, providing incentives for teachers, and providing incentives for learning" (pp. 8-9).
Though the term instructional leadership is used in No Child Left Behind, it is not explicitly defined and may have been informed as well by the literature on transformational leadership, another model that has gained much traction in the educational community in recent years.
Transformational Leadership Model
The transformational leadership model also places strong emphasis on mission building and instructional practice. The main difference between the two models has to do with developing the capacities of others: building staff members' commitment to the organization, cultivating new leaders, and nurturing a climate of continuous learning, reflection, and growth. "All transformational approaches to leadership," as Leithwood notes, "share in common the fundamental aim of fostering capacity development and higher levels of personal commitment to organizational goals on the part of leaders' colleagues" (p. 10). Again, the model includes three broad categories of practice:
- Setting directions
- Developing people
- Redesigning the organization
As in the instructional leadership model, principal practices under setting directions include "building school vision, developing specific goals and priorities, and holding high performance expectations" (Leithwood, p. 10). Developing people emphasizes a principal's role in "providing intellectual stimulation, offering individualized support, and modeling desirable professional practices and values" (p. 10). The final category, redesigning the organization, includes "developing a collaborative school culture, creating structures to foster participation in school decisions, and creating productive community relationships" (p. 10). Redesigning the organization also includes reviewing and refining administrative processes to ensure that policies and processes consistently "reinforce and institutionalize rather than hinder" school improvement (p. 13).
Balanced Leadership Framework
The "balanced leadership framework" (Waters, Marzano, and McNulty, 2003) is based on results of a recent meta-analysis of the 70 most rigorous studies that examine the effects of principal leadership on student achievement. The meta-analysis identified 21 essential leadership responsibilities and 66 associated practices that have a statistically significant effect on student achievement. These responsibilities fall under Leithwood's broad categories of setting directions, developing people, and redesigning the organization. (See Appendix A for the list of 21 essential leadership responsibilities.)
An underlying concept of the balanced leadership framework is that it is not simply enough to know what to do, but principals need to know why, how, and when to do things. Effective principals need to know how to balance pushing for change with keeping structures or practices in place that have worked. They know "when, how, and why to create learning environments that support people, connect them with one another, and provide the knowledge, skills, and resources they need to succeed" (Waters, et al., p.2).
Principals also need to know what level of change they are leading to determine what leadership practices will be most appropriate and effective. Waters and colleagues use the terms "first order" and "second order" to distinguish between the magnitudes of change. "First order" change is consistent with current norms and values, adjustments to the existing structure, built on established programs, and implemented with existing knowledge and skills. It is an extension of what has already been done. "Second order" change on the other hand, is a break with the past, a change from the way of doing things, and requires new knowledge and skills to implement. For example, one of the 21 responsibilities is "Input: the extent to which the principal involves teachers in the design and implementation of important decisions and policies." For first order change, all that may be necessary is providing opportunities for teachers to provide input. But for second order change it would be necessary to involve staff in developing policies and leadership teams.
For a more complete discussion of the 21 responsibilities see Waters, Marzano, and McNulty's Balanced Leadership: What Thirty Years of Research Tells Us About the Effect of Leadership on Student Achievement (2003). To understand how to put the Balanced Leadership framework into practice, see Marzano, Waters, and McNulty's School Leadership That Works: From Research to Results (2005).
