School Leadership

1. School Leadership Wednesday, November 28, 2012

2. Developing effective teachers and school leaders (Stewart) • “High performing countries build their human resource system by investing energy up front to attract, prepare, and support good teachers, rather than using energy on the back end to reduce teacher attrition and fire weak teachers.” • Developing teachers (“single biggest in-school influence on student achievement”) • Attracting and recruiting • Developing 21st Century teachers • Professional development • Evaluation and compensation: “working conditions… seem more important to teachers in most countries than salary per se” p.111 • Teacher distribution • Career paths and leadership roles

3. Stewart (Cont.) • Developing Effective School Leaders • “When an education system’s performance is weak, strong government intervention is usually needed.” But going from good to great, requires moving away from top-down approaches and building capacity and creativity at the school-level. • Provide training that is different from traditional administrator programs • England: training with 2-year peer support • China: differentiated training for primary and secondary schools • Finland: principals are former teachers and act as lead teachers rather than managers • Singapore: modeled on corporations. Teachers are continually assessed for leadership potential: “select then train” model

4. Stewart (Cont.) • “Educational practices cannot simply be copied wholesale from one country to another; they need to be adapted to different cultural and political settings.” But all high-performing countries: • Invest seriously in human capital • Focus on instructional core and student outcomes • Have created talent identification and development practices • Have established universal systems for continuous improvement

5. Improving School leadership practice (Pont) • Why it matters • Contributes to improved student learning • Bridges educational policy and practice • Links schools to their environments • Challenges • Context matters • Small workforce with high responsibility • Ageing workforce • Unequal gender distribution • An increasingly unattractive job

6. PONT (Cont.) • (Re)define responsibilities: • More autonomy with greater support • Focus on student learning outcomes through goal setting and assessment; supporting, evaluating and developing teacher quality; strategic financial and human resource management; and collaboration with other schools. • Develop school leadership frameworks by defining characteristics and responsibilities of school leaders and developing recruitment, training, and appraisal of these leaders. Should allow room for contextualization. • Distribute school leadership • Encourage and support distribution: broaden concept of school leadership  “leadership teams”. Create incentives for team development and participation, extend training and development to middle-level management, and modify accountability mechanisms. • Support school boards: clarify roles/responsibilities, ensure skills/experience of members fit objectives, provide guidelines for recruitment and selection of members, develop support structures

7. Pont (cont.) • Develop skills • Leadership development as a continuum: initial training, induction programs, in-service training – consider both formal and informal processes • Consistency of provision across institutions: standards, evaluations, and other mechanisms to monitor and regulate training program quality • Appropriate variety of training: experience in real contexts, cohort grouping, mentoring, coaching, peer learning, collaboration between program and schools • Make school leadership an attractive profession • Professionalize recruitment: procedures and criteria should be effective, transparent and consistent and should attract younger candidates with different backgrounds • Provide attractive salaries: competitive with private sector, differentiated from teacher scales • Acknowledge professional organizations of school leaders: dialogue, knowledge sharing, dissemination of best practices • Provide options and support for career development: more flexible and mobile,

8. Exercise 1: 10 minutes • Choose a context (a particular country or region/sector within that country) and develop a job description for the ideal principal. Consider: • The specific challenges facing schools in this particular context • The qualities and qualifications an effective leader must have to produce a successful school environment • The resources the school district will provide to support the success of the new principal

9. EXERCISE 2: 10 minutes • For the same context/sector used in Exercise 1, design a recruiting campaign to attract a new generation of school leaders that fit your ideal qualities outlined in Exercise 1. Things to consider: • Your target audience • The message(s) you want to convey • The media you intend to use • As part of your consultant role on this campaign, you are able to make recommendations to the local/regional school board or national ministry on changes that should be implemented to ensure successful recruitment and retainmentof these candidates (salary recommendations, training programs, etc.)

10. Interesting links • The Principal Story documentary: http://youtu.be/kVBep8tcvBI • The Do’s and Don’ts of Educational Leadership: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upT0oy-kKz4&feature=relmfu • How a Great Leader Motivates: http://youtu.be/KZ3FhXsvOOs • The 10 Differences Between Managers and Leaders: http://youtu.be/8ubRzzirRKs • Singapore’s 21st Century Teaching Strategies: http://youtu.be/M_pIK7ghGw4 • Principal Mentoring: http://youtu.be/AXv5AkJ75Wc • Recruiting and retaining effective principals: http://www.edutopia.org/freshman-principal • Principal recruitment in DC: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/15/AR2008031502083.html

11. Interesting LINKS • The Wallace Foundation: http://www.wallacefoundation.org/knowledge-center/school-leadership/Pages/default.aspx • New Leaders: http://www.newleaders.org • SEDL: http://www.sedl.org/change/leadership/welcome.html