The New Instructional Leadership

ISLLC Standard Two

Rose Ylimaki, Rose M. Ylimaki

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136284304
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Didattica
• Subtopic: Didattica generale

Co-published with UCEA, this exciting new textbook is the first to tackle the ISLLC Standard 2—Instructional Leadership. In light of recent curriculum reforms, accountability policies, and changing demographics, today's leaders must not only have expertise in culture building and supervision skills, but also in adult learning, cultural funds of knowledge, curriculum, and the role of politics. The New Instructional Leadership helps aspiring school leaders examine their beliefs and practices about instructional leadership in relation to ISLLC Standard 2 and provides the theory, learning experiences, and analytical tools for effective leadership in today's world. Chapters cover issues of collaboration, curricular programming, motivation, supervision, accountability, capacity building, use of technology, monitoring, and evaluation.

Special Features:

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• Case Studies—encourage readers to reflect and actively engage with instructional leadership beliefs and practices.

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• Fieldwork and Extended Reflections —a range of inquiry activities provide students with opportunities to consider problems of practice related to the standard.

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• Strategies for Leaders—offers students practical and accessible ideas in order to transform their practice to address the complex challenges facing contemporary schools.

Theoretically grounded and research-based, this unique volume will help aspiring and current leaders to understand instructional leadership and help them to sustain strong curricular and instructional programs in their increasingly diverse schools and communities.

Chapter 1

Introduction: Overview of ISLLC Standard 2 and the New Instructional Leadership

Rose M. Ylimaki

A 2007 report by Linda Darling-Hammond and colleagues at Stanford University found that exemplary pre- and in-service development programs for principals have a set of common components, including a comprehensive and coherent curriculum aligned to state and professional standards. Similarly, Ken Leithwood, Karen Seashore Louis, Stephen Anderson, and Kyla Wahlstrom (2004) noted three core system elements that determine the quality of school leadership—standards, training, and context/conditions. This volume is a resource for developing principals in Standard 2 Instructional Leadership with particular attention to the broader conditions that sur round principals’ work today and into the future. In so doing, this volume goes beyond traditional managerial paradigms used to prepare instructional leadership to consider the personal and socio-cultural and political aspects of today’s leadership work. Standard 2 and its specific functions are identified below. Each function is fully described in subsequent chapters.

Standard 2

An education leader promotes the success of every student by advocating, nurturing, and sustaining a school culture and instructional program conducive to student learning and staff professional growth.

Functions

A.	Nurture and sustain a culture of collaboration, trust, learning, and high expectations
B.	Create a comprehensive, rigorous, and coherent curricular program
C.	Create a personalized and motivating learning environment for students
D.	Supervise instruction
E.	Develop assessment and accountability systems to monitor student progress
F.	Develop the instructional and leadership capacity of staff
G.	Maximize time spent on quality instruction
H.	Promote the use of the most effective and appropriate technologies to support teaching and learning
I.	Monitor and evaluate the impact of the instructional program

These instructional leadership functions are grounded in effective schools literature described below.

Instructional Leadership Literature

Many scholars (e.g. Bossert et al., 1982; Edmonds, 1979; Hallinger & Murphy, 1986) have provided extensive research support for the importance of instructional leadership and its core functions. Across this literature, instructional leaders were described as strong, directive leaders who had been successful at “turning their schools around” (Bossert et al., 1982; Edmonds, 1979; Hallinger & Murphy, 1986). Hallinger and Murphy (1986) identified three broad categories of instructional leadership practice:

1. defining the school mission

2. managing the instructional program promoting school climate.

3. promoting school climate.

Associated with these broad categories are a total of 21 more specific functions such as supervising instruction, culture building, and fostering deep understandings of subject matter content. Similarly, Hallinger and Murphy (1986) conducted a survey of principals and identified instructional leadership tasks that distinguished low-performing and high-performing schools. According to Murphy’s findings, effective instructional leaders:

1. develop mission and goals

2. promote quality instruction through supervision

3. promote a positive learning culture through rewards, high expectations and professional development

4. develop a safe and orderly environment with appropriate economic and community resources.

Other studies (Blasé & Blasé, 1998) likewise identified principal’s instructional leadership behaviors that contributed to improvements in classroom practice. These instructional leadership behaviors dominated leadership certification training for decades. Yet the most fully tested instructional leadership models (e.g. Hallinger & Murphy, 1986) were developed in the mid-1980s prior to the recent intensified accountability systems, teacher/leader evaluation systems, economic downturn, technological advances, demographic shifts, and decentralization trends toward collaboration.

One of the major impediments to effective school leadership is trying to carry the burden alone. This point was captured by Lambert (2003) who contends that, “The days of the lone instructional leader are over. We no longer believe that one administrator can serve as the instructional leader for the entire school without the substantial participation of other educators” (p. 37). Thus, several different writers have attempted to integrate these constructs into a variant they refer to as “shared instructional leadership” (Jackson, 2000; Lambert, 2003; Marks & Printy, 2003). Recent studies have also demonstrated that “instructional” leadership is not the exclusive domain of the principal since teachers and other support professionals play a vital leadership role in the improvement of teaching and learning (e.g. Hallinger, 2004; Jackson, 2000; Marks & Printy, 2003). Such a shared or integrated model conceptualizes instructional leadership as a capacity for school improvement in which the principal models appropriate instructional leadership behaviors and invites teachers and others to join their efforts to change and improve their teaching practices.

A growing number of scholars have also expanded instructional leadership to focus on social justice (e.g. Oakes et al., 2012; Scheurich, 1998; Theoharis, 2009; Touchton & Acker-Hocevar, 2001). For instance, Touchton and Acker-Hocevar (2001) examined schools that were restructured to improve academic performance for students from traditionally marginalized groups. Likewise, Dantley and Tillman (2006) examined school restructuring and policy change efforts aimed at transforming procedures that perpetuate social inequalities and marginalization attributable to race, class, gender, and other markers of otherness. Focusing more specifically on the leader, Theoharis (2009) studied principals’ social justice orientations and argued that leaders must create inclusive instructional programs that account for race, class, gender, disability, sexual orientation, and other historically and currently marginalizing conditions (p. 223). These and other social justice leadership studies move the needs of traditionally marginalized groups to the center of instructional leaders’ efforts and push instructional leadership to incorporate dispositions and practices from curriculum studies, critical education studies, and anthropology.

Marshall (2004) argues that leaders must have “more skills beyond scientific management or quick fixes” (p. 43) to address complex educational dilemmas steeped in an array of social, cultural, and political contexts. More specifically, McKenzie and colleagues (2008) posit three goals for educational leaders who seek educational equity and excellence: (a) They must believe that high test scores matter and raise the academic achievement for all students in the school, (b) they must prepare their students to live as critical citizens in society, and (c) they must recognize that both of these goals can be achieved only when leaders assign students to inclusive, heterogeneous classrooms that provide all students with access to a rich and engaging curriculum. In light of this research, instructional leadership preparation has expanded to include a clear focus on social justice and equity as well as pedagogical excellence and learning.

At the same time, even most recent social justice oriented instructional leadership models do not explicitly consider the complex context of policy, cultural politics, or students’/communities’ funds of knowledge (O’Connor, Anthony-Stevens, & González, this volume) as these affect curriculum, instruction, and learning in schools. A few curriculum scholars have examined questions of leadership, with teachers and students most often serving as primary participants (e.g. Breault & Breault, 2005; Dentith, 2004). Drawing from empirical findings of youth leadership and identity among Las Vegas adolescents, Dentith (2004) studied youth leadership and identity among Las Vegas adolescents and argued for a curriculum that problematizes issues of identity, and culture. Similarly, Brady and Dentith (2001) conducted a qualitative study of curriculum leaders (teachers and students) with curriculum leadership defined as a shared phenomenon that has unique expressions at each teaching site. Brady and Dentith’s findings indicate the importance of readiness for leadership, content knowledge, and context. With curriculum leadership defined as a shared phenomenon, Brady and Dentith’s definition assumes that various people who have a stake in curriculum will have a voice in it. However, Brady and Dentith do not give explicit attention to the role of school leadership and the broader cultural context of such curriculum work. As demographics shift across the U.S., Luis Moll and Norma González’ work on funds of knowledge is increasingly relevant for schools (and leaders thereof). In Funds of Knowledge research, teachers entered students’ homes as ethnographers—in effect, as anthropologists studying the students’ cultural “lifeworlds” (the everyday spaces, suffused with social relationships, in which they live, learn, and grow)—in order to investigate the “historically accumulated and culturally developed bodies of knowledge and skills” present in households (Moll et al., 2005, p. 72). Changing contexts for instructional leadership are further described in the next section.

Changing Contexts for Instructional Leadership Standards

Accountability Policy Trends and Cultural Political Shifts

Since the time many instructional leadership studies were conducted in the 1980s and early 1990s, curriculum and instructional decisions have been heavily influenced by accountability policies and cultural political shifts. For example, recent U.S. federal policies (i.e., the No Child Left Behind Act and Race to the Top) require the testing of curriculum standards at each grade level, with serious consequences for schools that fail to make “adequate yearly progress” on state tests over a series of years, including conversion to a charter school or dismissal of the administration. Most states have also adopted more rigorous Common Core Standards aimed at developing students who are ready for college or career and able to compete globally. Moreover, many states and districts have mandated principal and teacher evaluation systems linked, at least in part, with student outcomes. Thus, U.S. schools now operate in a context of high-stakes testing accountability and public visibility as a result of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, its more recent iteration, Race to the Top (2009), related state testing mandates, and the most recent move toward national curriculum standards—Common Core and Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) assessments.

Such policy trends are linked to cultural political shifts toward a particular set of ideologies, beliefs, and values about what we teach in schools (Apple, 2013). Curriculum historian Herbert Kliebard asserts that tensions between what knowledge a society values and what gets taught are universal. He continues, “The route between the knowledge a society values and its incorporation into the curriculum becomes infinitely more tortuous, however, where we take into account the fact that different segments in any society will emphasize different forms of knowledge as most valuable for that society” (Kliebard, 1986).

According to Apple (2004), dominant...