Redesigning Educational Leadership Preparation for Equity

Strategies for Innovation and Improvement

Michelle D. Young, Ann O'Doherty, Kathleen M.W. Cunningham

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9781000453942
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Delivering equity for PK-12 learners is an essential aim for educational leadership preparation programs. This book serves as a resource for equity-focused design and redesign thorough innovation, improvement and impact.

Based on direct experience while also drawing from innovative exemplars, and unpacking a decade of program improvement practice, this book explores how to foster partnerships and pipelines, recruit and select candidates, map the curriculum, develop powerful learning experiences, create field experiences, design program evaluation, and support faculty learning. Chapters open with a vignette that presents scenarios in which many faculty members find themselves, particularly when programs are in need of improvement. Drawing on years of experience facilitating redesign, the authors offer both processes and resources to assist faculty, including diagnostic tools, sample agendas, templates, guiding questions, and suggested protocols.

Whether facing new accreditation requirements, state program approval changes, institutional redesign challenges or as part of a grant funded redesign, this book is a critical resource for educational leadership faculty and program coordinators looking to garner the appropriate resources, ask the right questions, and follow reliable processes in program design and continuous improvement toward equity.

Chapter resources and templates available for download online at https://www.routledge.com/9780367673543 on the tab that is entitled "Support Material." Please also join Redesign.Improve.Innovate—an online forum focused on preparation and practice improvement found here: www.RedesignImproveInnovate.org.

1

GETTING READY FOR PROGRAM DESIGN

10.4324/9781003130970-2

Georgia Smith, a faculty member at State University (SU), sat in the fifth row of a convention center meeting room listening to a panel of education leaders. Every year since taking her position at SU, she attended this statewide leadership conference and considered it an important opportunity to connect with the field. The presenters in this particular session focused on how leaders enacting culturally sustaining, collaborative practices were meeting the learning needs of PK-12 students. They asked the state's preparation programs to develop more school and district leaders with the knowledge, skills, and ability to share power, learn from families and communities, and collaboratively shape culture and lead the systemic changes needed to improve student learning.

At the same time, the presenters acknowledged the high rates of leadership and teacher turnover as well as the decreasing number of candidates applying to lead struggling schools. This was clearly a complex problem with many contributing factors and no straightforward solutions.

The topic was not new to Georgia; she led courses on leading for school improvement, stayed current in research, and engaged in ongoing revisions to her teaching to match the needs of the aspiring leaders in her classes. Yet, as she sat and listened to the speakers, she began to wonder how well she and her faculty colleagues prepared their students to lead and transform schools into the culturally sustaining learning environments the panelists were describing. As the session ended, Georgia gathered her belongings and made her way through the crowded halls, thinking about the courses offered in her program. She felt a bit stumped and almost embarrassed as she realized she knew very little—beyond course titles—about what happened in the rest of her preparation program.

As Georgia waited in line for a cup of coffee, she sighed deeply. From behind her, Aletha Strong, a colleague from another university, responded: “Uh oh, I recognize that feeling. How are you doing, Georgia?” After exchanging a few pleasantries, Georgia shared her revelation and the gnawing feeling that the SU program was not meeting the needs of its graduate students. Aletha nodded her head, “Georgia, you may be on to something.” Aletha, Georgia learned, was currently facilitating a program redesign process in her institution. The work began in response to concerns not unlike Georgia's and was shaping up to be what Aletha described as “a program that is definitely going to make a difference for our graduates and the students they serve.”

Georgia felt her spirits lift a bit and knew she needed more time with Aletha. “Aletha, I would love to learn more about the process you are using to redesign your program. Can I take you for coffee sometime soon?” Aletha happily agreed, “How about tomorrow afternoon? My last session ends at 2:45 pm. How about you?” “Perfect,” said Georgia, “Let's meet here again?” Before they parted, Aletha asked Georgia if she was attending the conference alone, which she was. “In the future, you might want to encourage your colleagues to attend these events as a team. Program redesign is a group effort. If you are going to embark on this journey, you will want them by your side from the beginning.”

Most preparation programs have graduated school and district leaders for decades. Over this span of time, the organizations their graduates lead have experienced seismic shifts in curriculum, teaching expectations, measurement of progress, and community demographics. As the contexts of schools and districts change, preparation programs must change as well to ensure that every program candidate graduates with a readiness to lead for equity and to collaboratively shift and improve practices within the complex context of today.

Effective principals and district leaders know how to assess the culture of a school, set direction, build trust, leverage resources, and enlist the support of students, staff, families, and community members to create schools that engage each and every learner. Preparation programs must prepare the leaders that schools and districts need.

No doubt, contextualizing the work of prospective school leaders in a space of creating equitable schools for diverse populations signalizes the work that colleges and universities can provide. Including curriculum and pedagogy that celebrate the primacy of inclusion, social justice, and equity enables educational leaders to grapple with the kinds of intense issues they will face as educational institutions continue to become more and more diverse.

(Dantley, 2013, p. 598)

To this end, we suggest leadership preparation programs engage in continuous cycles of collaborative inquiry and improvement that inform program design and ensure the development of effective, equity-driven education leaders. Engaging in impactful program design or redesign requires attending to both the knowledge base on effective leadership preparation practices and learning how to lead change processes. Simultaneously employing the lenses of effective leadership preparation practices and change leadership enables one to guide program design and refinements that reflect what we know about preparing effective education leaders, how to implement these practices with fidelity, and how to realize your program's vision and desired goals.

In this chapter, we discuss how you and your colleagues can get ready for a journey through large-scale program change. We begin with a brief review of research linking key elements of leadership preparation to graduate learning and performance. Understanding the research base on leadership preparation will facilitate your redesign in a number of ways. First, you will have a clearer understanding of where and how to focus your time and (very likely scarce) resources during this journey. Second, you will understand and be able to articulate the “why” behind your designs and decisions. Third, you will be able to extend the reach of this important information to your university colleagues, students, field partners, and other key stakeholders. Each subsequent chapter builds on this foundation by sharing research that supports the practices focused on in the chapter (e.g., Chapter Eight, Shaping Field Experiences, shares research on field experiences).

In addition to sharing research on leadership preparation, we offer ideas and resources that will help you “get ready” for program redesign. Specifically, the resources shared will aid you in planning and facilitating the deep collaborative engagement needed for impactful program change. Keep in mind, however, that the steps we outline shouldn't be viewed as a point-by-point road map, but rather as a guidebook for planning your program's journey where there are multiple route options and pit stops along the way.

Build Your Knowledge Base on Effective Leadership Preparation

One question raised by critics of higher education leadership preparation is whether or not preparation matters. This question has been answered: It most certainly does (Fuller, Young et al., 2011; Grissom et al., 2019). Furthermore, education researchers have made concerted efforts to understand the relationship between leadership preparation and graduates' careers, knowledge, skills, and leadership practice. According to Ni, Hollingworth, Rorrer and Pounder (2016), this research has manifested in two major categories: either as program implementation studies or as program outcome studies. Implementation studies tend to focus on “preconditions” and/or “program quality features…” whereas outcome studies focus on the relationship between program features and program outcomes, graduate career outcomes, and leader practices. Importantly, research indicates that highly effective leadership preparation programs have distinguishable program features associated with impactful leadership practice (Fuller, Young et al., 2011; Khalifa, 2018).

Researcher Darling-Hammond and her colleagues (2007) determined that elements of program quality include purposeful recruitment and selection, research-based content, curricular coherence, intentionally structured field-based internships, authentic problem-based learning strategies, cohort structures, mentoring and coaching, and collaboration. The words qualifying several of these program features are important. That is, it isn't enough to have a process for candidate recruitment and selection; it must be purposeful and aligned with the vision of your program. Similarly, the coherence of a program's curriculum is just as essential as it being research-based.

In their recent research, Ni et al. (2019) found that program rigor and relevance (i.e., research-based curriculum, curricular coherence and instructional strategies) and the quality of the internship experience (i.e., intentionally structured field-based internships) were statistically significant and related to leadership learning outcomes. Furthermore, they found that faculty quality, a program element that is often left off the list of quality program features, was also statistically significant and related to program graduates' leadership learning outcomes.

While we will go into greater depth on each of the quality program features in later chapters, we o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Resources
• About the Authors
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Getting Ready for Program Design
• 2 Fostering Preparation Partnerships and Leadership Pathways
• 3 Beginning with the End in Mind
• 4 Designing and Implementing a Strategic Plan
• 5 Mapping the Curriculum
• 6 Fostering Powerful Learning Experiences
• 7 Delivering Learning Experiences
• 8 Shaping Field Experiences
• 9 Building Supportive Program Structures
• 10 Assessing Candidate Learning
• 11 Recruiting and Selecting
• 12 Evaluating the Program
• 13 Supporting Faculty Learning and Organizational Change
• Conclusion
• Index