Instructional Leadership in the Content Areas

Case Studies for Leading Curriculum and Instruction

Jo Beth Jimerson, Sarah Quebec Fuentes, Jo Beth Jimerson, Sarah Quebec Fuentes

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781138578838
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351263665
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Co-published with University Council for Educational Administration (UCEA), this textbook prepares aspiring educational leaders for the important and challenging task of supporting instruction in their schools. Instructional Leadership in the Content Areas equips leaders—who might not have content backgrounds that align with those of the teachers they supervise—with research-based practices and knowledge specific to a range of subject areas. Presenting over 20 problems-based cases at the elementary, middle, and high school levels and across seven areas of content, this book deepens knowledge of exemplary instruction, improves feedback dialogues, and helps leaders work effectively alongside teachers and instructional specialists. Rich with activities, resources, and discussion questions, this casebook provides a broad overview of instructional leadership and the tools for school leaders to improve and support classroom practices across all content areas in intentional ways that support career-long professional growth.

Case facilitation notes are available here: www.routledge.com/9781138578845

Chapter 1

Introduction: The Importance of Strengthening Instructional Leadership

Jo Beth Jimerson and Sarah Quebec Fuentes

School leaders contribute to instructional improvement directly by providing useful feedback related to pedagogy, content, and standards and indirectly by sustaining a healthy and supportive culture of learning for teachers, staff, and self (Hitt & Tucker, 2016; Leithwood, Harris, & Hopkins, 2008; Louis et al., 2010). They serve as gatekeepers during recruiting and hiring, and play critical roles in teachers’ professional growth. They assure appropriate staffing and resources. They design schedules that provide time for collaborative inquiry. They implement, support, and sustain a culture conducive to learning (Louis, Dretzke, & Wahlstrom, 2010). One of the most important ways school leaders develop and support quality teaching is to function as instructional leaders.

The Importance of Instructional Leadership

Instructional leadership implies a primary focus on classroom practice, as opposed to managerial tasks. As the authors of Learning from Leadership: Investigating the Links to Improved Student Learning note, “specific leadership practices required to establish and maintain that focus are poorly defined” (Louis et al., 2010, p. 11). They explain:

The main underlying assumption [of instructional leadership] is that instruction will improve if leaders provide detailed feedback to teachers, including suggestions for change. It follows that leaders must have the time, the knowledge, and the consultative skills needed to provide teachers—in all the relevant grade levels and subject areas—with valid, useful advice about their instructional practices. While these assumptions have an attractive ring to them, they rest on shaky ground, at best; the evidence to date suggests that few principals have made the time and demonstrated the ability to provide high-quality instructional feedback to teachers. (p. 11)

In preparation for this collection of cases, we interviewed teachers and school leaders about their experiences providing and/or receiving instructional feedback. What they shared with us fit with this portrait of the complex nature of instructional leadership. Some leaders shared that they felt better able to give useful and specific instructional feedback to teachers with whom they share a common content area and/or grade-level expertise. For example, Karen, an elementary principal with a secondary science teaching background, reflected:

When I first got [to the elementary level], I could not tell you what the five components of literacy were. I know them now. When they would do guided reading, I didn’t know what to look for … So it was much more difficult to talk about intervention or about targeted learning for students because I didn’t know what the targets were. I’m better at that, but it’s still difficult. I could walk into a science room and know right away whether or not—at a high school—whether they were at the right level of rigor, and now I have to go and look every time. Even then, I can’t tell you, is this a prerequisite skill or is this their final learning area because I don’t know how literacy development progresses as innately.

In a similar vein, Isaiah, a former secondary mathematics teacher, now a high school assistant principal, talked about the struggle between the kinds of feedback he wanted to offer, and the kinds of feedback he could offer:

With math, I can give you feedback not only on instruction I’m seeing, but also on instructional content, on the mistakes that are made, on misconceptions the kids are having about the content, or misconceptions the teacher doesn’t know the kids will have … I can actually look at the question right away and say, “OK, that was a good question.” But I’m not able to do that with social studies. I’m not able to know when the teacher is teaching the content in the right way.

This theme—of dedicated leaders wanting to support improved instruction but facing challenges in doing so—ran throughout our conversations. In attempts to provide feedback, leaders sometimes retreated to broader issues of general practice (e.g., student engagement or pacing). For example, Tracy, a first-grade teacher, explained that the feedback she received from her leader, who did not have a background in early childhood education, was general and vague: “This was a great lesson. Good use of manipulatives.” Simone, a high school French teacher working toward principal certification, also commented on this disparity:

I think [school leaders] mostly would focus on strategies that they could see were being used that weren’t necessarily about the language. You know, they’d see you’re using collaboration among your students or you’re giving student choice on this area, or, “I liked how the students were volunteering answers,” that sort of thing. It just didn’t have anything to do with language in particular. Or even language-specific strategies—I think they wouldn’t have recognized them.

Some leaders, and aspiring leaders, spoke about struggling to confront content-related fears. For example, Simone also admitted that challenges related to content knowledge were entangled with her experiences as a student:

I haven’t gone in[to] a math and science room yet because they kind of intimidate me, and I’ve been kind of telling myself I’ve got to—I need to start doing it so I can see. But math and science were, as a student, my weak areas, and so certainly I don’t know about the best ways to teach math. All I know about math instruction is what I got as a student, which was 20 years ago, you know. It was definitely sit-and-get, you know, and “Here, work these problems, and work these problems for homework.”

Danelle, a former secondary science teacher, admitted that—particularly in her early years as a school leader—supervising teachers outside of science made her feel “very vulnerable and … unqualified.” She explained:

There has got to be a level of trust there between the administrator and the teacher because it’s very easy for that teacher to not want to accept feedback from someone who doesn’t have experience with that grade level or that content area…. I was always hesitant … to provide feedback for subject areas that I don’t know anything about.

School leaders must face these personal and professional challenges, as many teachers with whom we spoke talked about craving specific feedback, particularly in their early years of teaching. For example, Milo, an early career teacher, described his first principal observation:

I was in there teaching my little first-year teacher heart out, and after the class I walked up to her because you know, she took her notes and she left and walked out. So, I went and found her and I was like, “Was it okay?” and she told me that I was one of the best first-year teachers she’d ever seen. I said, “Thank you,” and I was so [disappointed] … Because all I wanted in the world was to know how to deliver the instruction to my students so they could be successful … and [she] just said it was good. They’re like, “This is great for you. My expectation has been met. This is fine,” and I’m like, “No. It’s not good enough.” The hardest thing for me was realizing the disparity between what I was able to do for my students and what they actually needed, and I wanted someone to help me bridge that gap and that’s just not what I got that day. It was very disheartening.

Milo’s story was not unique among those with whom we spoke. Overall, teachers reported that granular, content-specific feedback from school leaders was rare.

Standards for School Leadership

Policy organizations across the United States have a history of collaborating to identify knowledge and skills central to the practice of school leadership. For over 20 years, the Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium (ISLLC), with the support of the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), has worked with organizations such as the American Association of School Administrators, Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, National Association of Secondary School Principals, National Association of Elementary School Principals, National Policy Board for Educational Administration, National School Boards Association, and University Council for Educational Administration, to articulate standards for school leaders (CCSSO, 1996). These standards have consistently addressed issues related to classroom instruction, supervision, and the development of teachers. Previously referred to as the ISLLC Standards, the most recent iteration is the 2015 Professional Standards for Educational Leaders (PSEL) (NPBEA, 2015). Shortly after the release of PSEL, the CCSSO (in collaboration with The Wallace Foundation) released the 2015 Model Principal Supervisor Professional Standards, meant to guide those who select, support, and evaluate school principals (CCSSO, 2015).

Both sets of standards have a comprehensive focus on instructional leadership. One of the first sections in the 2015 Model Principal Supervisor Professional Standards focuses on the importance of developing and supporting principals as instructional leaders (CCSSO, 2015). PSEL includes standards that highlight elements of instructional leadership: “Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment,” “Equity and Cultural Responsiveness,” “Professional Capacity of School Personnel,” “Professional Community for Teachers and Staff,” and “School Improvement.” School leaders are responsible for engaging with teachers in collaborative, evidence-based inquiry to improve classroom practice, and for delivering “actionable feedback about instruction and other professional practice” (NPBEA, 2015, p. 14).

Challenges of Instructional Leadership

Instructional leadership is no easy task, and is but one of many skills that good leaders must develop to support a healthy culture of learning. PSEL denotes a constellation of important skills, including working collaboratively with multiple stakeholder groups; managing budgets and allocating resources of funding, staffing, materials, and time; engaging in strategic planning; advancing a shared mission and vision; and safeguarding the well-being and physical safety of students and staff.

On a principal’s best day, she may allocate time for classroom walk-throughs and debriefing conversations, collaborate with departmental Professional Learning Communities (PLCs), and participate alongside parents at an after-school “math evening.” In between, if questions about instruction arise, she could visit the campus instructional coach. She might even arrange to debrief the walk-through in a three-way conference with the teacher and instructional specialist, to ensure that feedback matches the evidence base pertinent to that content area.

Yet, this ideal rarely fits with the complexities of the school leaders’ job—a job in which leaders may feel pulled in multiple directions and have to regularly decide between competing goods. For example, does a principal meet with the parents of a child who has recently experienced trauma and who have dropped by the school unexpectedly, or does he conduct the two walk-through observations on his schedule? Does a school leader participate in the kindergarten “read-in,” or does she communicate with parents about a playground accident...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of contributors
• Foreword by Michelle D. Young
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Introduction: The Importance of Strengthening Instructional Leadership
• Part I: Elementary School
• Part II: Middle School
• Part III     High School
• Part IV: Whole-School Cross-Disciplinary Efforts
• Index