Seven Strong Claims About Successful School Leadership (original) (raw)
Related papers
2008
Executive summary 1 Introduction 2 Important themes from previous overview studies 3 School context and responsive leadership Learning-centred leadership Distributed leadership Adapting to new policy agendas Some caveats Conclusion: some key issues References Executive summary This review has been conducted as one part of the National College for School Leadership's (NCSL) review of provision (ROP) process. It seeks to summarise the current state of knowledge about effective school leadership, and it starts by setting out some key overarching themes. These involve the identification of several core leadership practices: − Setting direction: vision, goals and high performance expectations − Developing people: individualised support/consideration, emotional understanding and support, intellectual stimulation and modelling − Redesigning the organisation: building a collaborative culture, restructuring the organisation, productive relations with families and communities, connecting school and the wider environment − Managing the learning programme: staffing, providing teaching support, monitoring, buffering staff from distractions to core work − Leadership behaviours: optimistic, positive and improvement-oriented − Clear priorities and well-developed management structures and systems These practices are generally conducted in relationship with a more complicated set of issues, which include the following. School context and responsive leadership: effective school leaders are generally able to 'read the context' in order to deploy a repertoire of skills appropriately and, since that context is multi-layered and complex, they need good diagnostic tools to identify the clues and signals and to analyse what they find. Learning-centred leadership: school leaders' knowledge of and commitment to technical excellence in teaching has also been shown to have a critical impact. Effective school leaders demonstrate skills in modelling, monitoring and learning-centred dialogue and they use these approaches to work on teachers' motivation and resilience. They generally develop a culture of openness, hold many 'strategic conversations', using good diagnostic questioning and foster a pupil voice. Distributed leadership: good organisational structures provide clear roles for senior leadership teams and middle leaders, and effective leaders model good leadership to other leaders, engaging in collaborative leadership with new partnership projects, encouraging networking and good communication within and outside their own school.
Research into the impact of school leadership on pupil outcomes: policy and research contexts
School Leadership & Management, 2008
This paper extends the introduction to our study of successful school leadership and how it influences pupil outcomes begun in our Editorial introduction. Critical to an appreciation especially of the external validity of our results is an understanding of the policy context in which the English leaders in our study found themselves; this is a policy context dominated by concerns for external accountability and increases in the academic performance of pupils. In addition to describing this context, the paper summarizes the framework which guided the early stage of our research and outlines our mixed-methods research design.
Exploring the impact of school leadership on pupil outcomes
International Journal of Educational Management, 2011
PurposeThis study aims to explore the impact of school leadership, particularly that of the principal (head teacher), on school improvement in England.Design/methodology/approachThe study adopts a mixed‐methods (MM), longitudinal design to investigate the leadership of a sample of academically effective and improving schools identified from analyses of national assessment and examination data sets. In addition, questionnaire surveys of principals and key staff and 20 qualitative school case studies were conducted. The paper reports results from the questionnaire analyses and changes in measures of school performance over three school years using data from 378 primary and 362 secondary schools. Confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation models (SEM) test direct and indirect effects of school leadership and school and classroom processes in predicting changes in schools' academic results.FindingsThe analyses identified robust underlying dimensions of leadership and schoo...
2011
Purpose – This study aims to explore the impact of school leadership, particularly that of the principal (head teacher), on school improvement in England. Design/methodology/approach – The study adopts a mixed-methods (MM), longitudinal design to investigate the leadership of a sample of academically effective and improving schools identified from analyses of national assessment and examination data sets. In addition, questionnaire surveys of principals and key staff and 20 qualitative school case studies were conducted. The paper reports results from the questionnaire analyses and changes in measures of school performance over three school years using data from 378 primary and 362 secondary schools. Confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation models (SEM) test direct and indirect effects of school leadership and school and classroom processes in predicting changes in schools’ academic results. Findings – The analyses identified robust underlying dimensions of leadership and school and classroom processes and highlighted strategies and actions that school principals and staff had adopted to raise pupil attainment. The SEM models reveal both direct and indirect effects of leadership on a range of school and classroom processes that in turn predicted changes (improvements) in schools’ academic performance. Originality/value – This original empirical study presents new results on the leadership of a large sample of effective and improving primary and secondary schools in England. A dynamic model is presented predicting changes in schools’ academic performance over three years and identifying direct effects of leadership on school and