Practices That Make a Difference in Principal Leadership
Leithwood (2005) notes that school leaders "need to know where their efforts will have the biggest payoff. But even this knowledge is not enough. Successful leaders also need a substantial repertoire of practices (or skills) to draw on in order to exercise such influence" (p. 7). Two recent studies that identify specific implications for principal practice are described below.
Three Ways Principals of Improving Schools Stand Out
Based on an eight-year study of public elementary school principals for the Consortium on Chicago School Research, Sebring and Bryk's (2000) School Leadership and the Bottom Line in Chicago identifies three key areas in which principals of improving schools "stand out":
- Leadership style
- Reform strategies
- The issues they focus on
According to the study, productive principals are strong managers as well as instructional leaders, characterized by "an inclusive, facilitative orientation; an institutional focus on student learning; efficient management; and a reliance on a combination of pressure and support to motivate others" (p. 441). When these principals direct staff members to make changes, in other words, they can be trusted to provide the necessary resources and to see the project through.
Four strategies for reform shared by principals of improving schools in the study were as follows:
- Productive principals begin by addressing a few highly visible problems that can be resolved quickly. This strategy shows staff members that principals are serious about making necessary changes.
- Productive principals focus on long-term changes to the instructional core. They make organizational changes that promote best practices, provide targeted staff development, and "stay on top of the myriad day-to-day decisions that must be made about the schedule, assemblies, parents' meetings, and so on, in order to maximize instructional time and resources for learning" (p. 441).
- Productive principals collaborate with others to develop—and monitor progress toward—a "comprehensive, coherent plan for school development." Productive principals in the study worked closely with parents, teachers, and others in the school community to establish goals and strategies for improvement in five key areas: school leadership, parent involvement, professional development and collaboration, student-centered learning climate, and classroom instruction.
- Productive principals attack incoherence. School improvement plans help principals ensure that strategies are aligned with goals and that practices are implemented according to a timeline. Principals follow up on goals to make sure they are being implemented and are working.
Schools in the study that did not demonstrate improvement were characterized by high levels of incoherence among different aspects of the reform program, staff development that appeared disconnected from school improvement plans, and lack of trust among students, parents, teachers, and administrators.
For a more indepth discussion of steps principals can take to build trust within schools, see two previous issues of By Request: Building Trusting Relationships for School Improvement: Implications for Principals and Teachers, and Building Trust with Schools and Diverse Families: A Foundation for Lasting Partnerships, available online at www.nwrel.org/request/.
Successful Instructional Leaders: Practices and Priorities
In a much smaller study of leadership practices in schools implementing the America's Choice reform model, Supovitz and Poglinco (2001) used principal interviews, survey data, and site visits to identify a set of behaviors characteristic of effective instructional leaders. Their findings, largely consistent with earlier research on instructional leadership (see Cotton, 2003, for example), included the following.
Effective instructional leaders:
Create a safe environment for teachers to take risks, experiment, and continue learning. Distinguishing clearly between evaluative classroom visits and visits geared toward instructional coaching, for example, helped principals in the study build more supportive relationships with teachers and foster "an environment that valued the exploration and improvement of the craft of teaching..." (p. 9).
Emphasize collaboration and communication. Instructional leaders in the study "saw collaboration and communication not as ends in themselves, but as important processes for spreading a culture of instructional improvement" (p. 9). They focused on strengthening relationships, engaging staff members in joint projects, and developing "expertise across the building" (p. 10).
Develop other leaders. As promoted in transformational models of leadership, many of the strong instructional leaders in this study emphasized the importance of developing leadership committees among teachers and "distributing leadership responsibilities across the staff" (p. 10). This not only allowed them to develop and draw on others' expertise, but freed up more time for the principals themselves to visit classrooms and focus on instructional matters.
Use symbolic acts to reinforce "visions of instructional focus." "Statements or acts that shake up a school's faculty can unshackle them from deeply ingrained ways of doing business and help them to see possibilities that were unimaginable before," contend Supovitz and Poglinco (p. 11). One principal held a wake for an old practice that had outlived its purpose at the school, asking teachers to file past a paper shredder set in a cardboard coffin to pass old checklists "into the great beyond." Another repeatedly drew teachers' attention to "what appeared to be a wildly ambitious goal" for student improvement—to raise test scores from 10 percent of students performing at grade level to 90 percent; within three years, nearly 60 percent of students had met standards, and teachers continue to work toward what is now an "imaginable" goal.
Develop a consistent set of expectations and incentives for teachers that keeps the entire staff focused on meeting schoolwide goals. Principals identified as effective instructional leaders were clear with teachers about their expectations, and publicly acknowledged teachers' efforts to implement new strategies in their classrooms. As one principal in the study commented, "we do everything within our power to give teachers the opportunity to do what they need and hold them accountable for doing it" (p. 12).
Four recommendations for "rearranging priorities as a principal" emerged from this study:
- Participate frequently—and meaningfully—in classrooms. Eighty-eight percent of principals in this study who were identified as strong instructional leaders visited classrooms on a daily or almost daily basis. The remaining 12 percent visited classrooms at least once or twice a week. During class visits, effective principals "focused more on talking with students and examining students' work than they did on teachers' behavior" (p. 13). Based on this information, they were able not only to assess student performance, but to identify more specifically the areas in which they could be of assistance to teachers.
- Allocate regular blocks of time for instructional, managerial, and political matters. Several of the successful principals noted that they will only schedule meetings and do paperwork early in the morning or after classes are out in the afternoon. This not only sends a message to parents and teachers that student learning is their priority, but ensures that crises and administrative details are not allowed to eat away the time they need to give to instructional matters.
- Facilitate teacher development of content-area knowledge. Although many principals in the study expressed a need to expand their own content area knowledge, particularly at the secondary level, "they recognized their primary role as facilitators of the acquisition of content and pedagogical content knowledge of their teachers" (p. 12).
- Reconceptualize the principal-teacher relationship to spend more time in the classroom observing instruction and student work. Support teachers as much as possible, including enhancing teachers' skills to improve student learning.
Several themes consistent with the larger research base on school leadership emerge from these studies. The most obvious, perhaps, is that relationships matter. Effective principals build trust with and among staff, students, families, and other members of the school community. They work collaboratively with parents, teachers, and other stakeholders to establish a common mission, a clear focus, and specific goals. In doing so, they also foster shared leadership, develop staff capacity for change, and establish a climate of continuous improvement and accountability across the school building. In all of these ways, principals exert direct influence over the quality of teaching and learning in their schools.
As Principal Melissa Sandven remarked during our interview, "Principals need to create a culture of continuous learning while supporting teachers in the process." In order to do this, however, they must have the skills, the resources, and the time to attend effectively to both the management and instructional ends of the job. Helping principals find ways to "lead bifocally" (Alvy & Robbins, 2005) within the unique leadership context of their schools is fundamental to all students' learning and to the whole community's success.
In the following section, we offer a few final suggestions for supporting principals' efforts, taken from a number of research studies. We also offer some ideas from several Oregon teachers on how principals can be effective leaders.
