Instructional Leadership

In instructional leadership, the principal’s role is deeply involved with setting the school’s direction. The “mission” dimension focuses on the principal’s role in cooperating with staff, ensuring the school continuously runs on clear, measurable, and time-based goals that result is the academic progress of students. Principals are responsible for communicating goals, which should be widely known and supported throughout the school.

The process of goal development is not considered; its importance is less critical than meeting performance outcomes. This is a weakness in the model. The research simply accepts that goals should be set by the principal, in collaboration with staff, to achieve effectiveness.

Ensuring that the staff incorporates performance goals into their daily routines is crucial in instructional leadership. Vague, ill-defined goals must be put aside, in favor of clear a dividing line between academically focused efforts and “teaching to the test.”

A great example of the problems standardized testing can cause in a school was recorded in a study by Hallinger & Murphy in 2005. Teachers in “effective” California elementary schools were observed while teaching. One teacher had a unique activity center located at the back of the class, but researchers observed that students were not working at the center during the class period.

When questioned, the teacher stated that, although she genuinely liked the activity center, she had no time to use it, since the class hadn’t made the required ] progress in basic subjects. She then reported that her principal expected teachers to spend more time on reading, spelling, writing, and math than were necessary to achieve the expected progress in basic subjects. The principal restated this expectation almost verbatim when asked.

The following bullet points delineate best practices for using instructional leadership to define a school’s mission:

• The administrators’ objectives are clearly expressed and modeled, in writing, all around the school. Teachers and administrators all use the same language to discuss academic priorities.
• Teachers give priority status to the schools mission in their lesson planning and implementation.
• The goal are well-articulated, actively backed, and modeled by the school’s administrators.

Instructional leaders can apply this research to their mission-building strategies. The questions that this principal asked themselves while defining the school’s goals were:

• Are the goals clear and easily understandable?
• Are they written down and known by everyone in the school?
• Do the goals apply in the day-to-day activities at the school?
• Do I constantly and actively reinforce and explain these goals?
• Do the goals have the support of the rest of the school?

Managing the Instructional Program

This second dimension focuses on coordination and control of the school’s curriculum, and all instructional elements. Three leadership functions: supervising and evaluating instruction, coordinating the curriculum, and monitoring student progress are incorporated here. Managing the instructional program requires the principal’s active participation in stimulating, supervising, guiding, and monitoring teaching and learning in the school. The principal must possess expertise as well as commitment, getting “neck-deep” in the school’s instruction and curriculum.

In the California school example noted above, teachers were questioned on how they monitored student progress. Several teachers said the principal knew the reading level and academic progress of almost all students in the elementary school. This kind of personal engagement is not possible in every school, but reflects the degree of the principal’s involvement in observing and managing the school’s instruction and curriculum.

Promoting a Positive School Learning Climate

The third dimension of instructional leadership supports several academic strategies for success:

• Protecting instructional time
• Promoting professional development
• Maintaining high visibility of administrators
• Incentives for teacher success
• Developing high standards
• Providing incentives for learning to students

The broadest in scope and purpose, promoting a positive school learning climate brings alive the widely held belief that effective schools create an “academic press,” by developing high standards of learning, as well as greater expectations from both students and teachers. These schools pursue a culture of continued improvement, where rewards complement the aims and practices of the school. The principal should model the values and practices that create continuous development and improvement of teaching and learning.

According to research, schools that make a positive difference in the learning levels are led by principals who make a positive contribution to staff effectiveness and students under their charge. In the 1980s, instructional leadership was often depicted as “hands-on” leadership in classroom matters. The majority of recent studies report that the involvement of principals in classroom instruction are indirect, and carried out through building a school culture and leading by example.

However, most scholars now find that a principal’s impact on student learning is small, but has an important place in statistical data. Even marginal impact is vital to acheiving desired outcomes, because policy makers still use these findings to justify their emphasis on the selection and training of school leaders as a strategy for school improvement. The role of the principal in shaping the school’s vision and mission is described as the most influential “avenue of effects.”

School context has been found to have a significant effect on the success of a principal’s instructional leadership. Instructional leadership effectiveness should be viewed as an independent effort, but also as dependent on the learning environment.

Successful instructional leaders work with other stakeholders to shape the school to fit its mission. Instructional leaders directly influence the quality of school outcomes by aligning the school’s academic standards, timetables, and curriculum, with the school’s mission. Leaders are more effective when they are clear about missions, and manage activities that fall in line with practices needed for effectiveness.

The lack of clarity of the role of the principal in instructional leadership has been a problem. Instructional leadership has rarely defined practices and behaviors that the principal should model, making it hard to determine what needs to be considered for effective instructional leadership. Assigning clear duties to principals will help to ensure instructional leadership is carried out properly. Once principals and school leaders understand their roles, they can begin the task of leading their schools toward higher success.

Leadership models can be expected to appeal to some administrators more than others, based on their personality traits. A wider range of skills and styles cannot be accommodated by one person, because a leader already has his or her own preferences, influenced by their personality. The natural differences in personality among various leaders result in preferences that operate below the level of the leader’s awareness. It is also not humanly possible for leaders to comply with such varied and complex requirements.

As a result of personality differences, a leader develops judgments, and responds to his or her environment by focusing on certain leadership aspects more than others. Variations caused by factors such as age, upbringing, and gender have been shown to affect the way personality is developed and expressed. Practices are also influenced by the interaction between personality and contextual aspects associated with the workplace. Examples of these contextual aspects include the perceived nature of work, the leadership experience, the school level, and the leader’s position.

So which is the best way forward? It would seem wise that school leader and administrators first acknowledge their inborn, natural tendencies toward some practices over others. They should then reflect on whether these preferences affect their leadership practices. Honesty and transparency in admitting personality differences would motivate the leaders to consider ways to satisfy the various needs of their schools. Self-awareness is a necessary step in the development of tendencies in the leader that complement effective team-building.

Delegation is a pillar of leadership, considered by many researchers as a vital component for leadership success. Research has shown that delegation is dependent on personality preferences, which translate to foregone conclusions in leadership behavior and in competence. The leader’s preferences are heavily influenced by what is natural, comfortable, and enjoyable for the leader.

School leaders should consider reshaping their school leadership responsibilities in a manner that considers the administrator’s preferences, thus attempting more modest efforts, based on sound research. While this may be more supportive of a differentiated rather than instructional leadership style, the importance of including varying differences of opinion is vital for any leadership model.

As schools seek to redefine themselves as learning communities, its members must work together in a friendly, cooperative fashion, by challenging and engaging with each other. Jungian theory finds that diversity generates synergy and innovation. Most leadership researchers and theorists have noted that human differences provide the creative tension needed in the forward movement and growth of any institution. Models of leadership that ignore the nature of leaders tend to be far less effective.

As school principals work to close the achievement gap in learning, they should strive to build a conscious understanding of their own natural preferences, in relation to instructional leadership. Human differences are often depicted as weaknesses, and are quickly pushed aside. Seeking to address them in a meaningful way, instead of dismissing them, can be a seed for success in educational leadership.

Click here to read all our posts concerning the Achievement Gap.

Let’s look at invitational leadership, as it relates to various models of leadership. Invitational leadership has this is common with participative/distributed leadership: a belief in promoting active participation of all interested stakeholders, as well as the fundamentals of moral/ethical leadership. However, a closer look reveals that invitational leadership is more inclusive and complete, since it addresses the “total environment” in which leaders function. While invitational leadership believes in allowing active participation of all organizational members, it also seeks to achieve a balance of authority and influence throughout the organization.

The transformational and servant leadership styles have been among the best received and most highly praised over the last few decades. In both models, there are similar principles that call upon leaders to lead in an manner that sets an example for followers. As with invitational leadership, these models attempt to help leaders to support their followers in empowering ways.

Invitational leaders accept the basic tenet of servant leadership that those who lead must be ready and willing to serve, but they go beyond this idea in their attempt to describe the values and roles they must serve in their organizations.

Invitational leadership, in truth, holds many of the same beliefs that describe both transformational and servant leadership. One similarity is that of forming and sharing a vision. Invitational leaders seek to invite their associates to share in a vision of greatness, and offer them a vivid but powerful picture of human effort. The three leadership types also share the elements of trust and respect.

Another shared component between invitational leadership and the two models is that of morals and ethics. Invitational leadership is at the heart a moral activity, intentionally showing respect and trust in the leaders themselves and in others, both personally and professionally. In a similar manner, it seeks to empower followers by asking others in the organization to meet their goals in pursuit of their own success. In other words, encouraging others in their quest for self-fulfillment is a characteristic embedded in the invitational leadership model. The authors conclude that invitational leadership is a mutual commitment between colleagues, instead of a series of orders issued from the top down.

While we see many shared components between the invitational leadership model and participative, transformational, and servant leadership models, there are also a few inbuilt and crucial differences. The first of these are the twin elements of optimism and intentionality. Optimism and intentionality are viewed as important characteristics for effective leaders.

The focused effort on values and principles that apply to policies, programs, places, processes, and people are also important for effectiveness in leadership. We then find that these important and unique qualities make the invitational leadership model an excellent choice, especially in these times of critical student need and increased accountability for school leaders. In light of the problems facing today’s school systems, the invitational leadership model could lead to many positive outcomes. Encouraging everyone in the school setting to participate in goal achievement allows for new ideas and fresh perspectives, which are sorely needed in an educational system that is largely old-fashioned and out of date.