Welcome

Chapter 1: Principal Leadership for a Student-Centered Learning Environment

The Effective Schools movement advanced the belief that school practices and policies can make a positive difference, even for children from low-income homes. In this article, Thomas and Bainbridge write that the popular mantra, “All Children Can Learn” has been interpreted simplistically in ways that undermine struggling schools’ attempts to adopt more effective practices. They name four fallacies and three unintended consequences of this misunderstanding.

      The four fallacies of the simplistic interpretation:

  • The fallacy that all children can learn: at the same level and in the same amount of time.
  • The fallacy of the principal as the sole instructional leader.
  • The fallacy of setting standards on the basis of exceptions; and
  • The fallacy of uniform standards for all children.

The three unintended consequences of the simplistic interpretation:

  • Establishing accountability based on state-developed tests.
  • Downplaying the need for early intervention for children who live in poverty.
  • Using punishment as a motivator to improve schools.

After each student reads the article independently, the class will form seven work groups, one for each fallacy and unintended consequences. The group will re-read the article sections that relate to their topic, discuss their topic to determine its meaning, and decide whether they agree or disagree with the authors.

Each group will then prepare a 2-minute presentation about how their fallacy or unintended consequence may be used to further underserve diverse students. The group will conclude their presentation with examples from schools to illustrate what might be happening in schools if their topic were understood accurately and acted on correctly and suggest relevant educational and social policy recommendations.

After the seven presentations, the class will discuss how they as teachers and future principals can accurately explain to other educators what “All children can learn” should mean and how their understanding and instructional practices can support every child’s academic learning to higher levels.

Teachers interact differently with students whom they expect to succeed – as compared with those whom they do not expect to succeed. Teachers’ expectations can affect the performance of the children they teach.

Read the article and answer the following questions:

  1. Describe Rosenthal’s experiment and his findings about how teachers’ expectations about students “on the verge of an intense intellectual bloom” influenced both the teachers’ behaviors and the students’ academic progress and IQ.
  2. Review Robert Pianta’s “7 Way Teachers Can Change Their Expectations” and rate yourself from 1 (lowest) to 5 (highest) on each of these behaviors. Identity the three in which you believe you are currently the most competent and the three behaviors that you believe you need to work on.
  3. Discuss your self-assessment with a partner. Describe an incident about your best or worst teacher, bosses, or supervisors from the “Reflect” activity. You’re your partner about a time your use of one of these behaviors led to one (or more) students’ increased learning and achievement.
  4. As a class, discuss the article and how the self-assessment is going to influence your teaching practice. When and how can you begin strengthening those teaching behaviors in which you need the most growth?

This classic and still relevant article explains that school wide policies are the foundation for practices that promote student behaviors that lead to achievement and positive self-concept. The authors write that teachers’ and administrators’ beliefs about students’ performance are more likely to become part of the school’s policies and classroom practices when they are expressed through a school norm of staff responsibility for student learning. Schools express these norms in school policy (regarding school function and structure and policies on student progress) and classroom practices (establishing an academically demanding climate; conducting an orderly well-managed classroom; ensuring student academic success; implementing instructional practices that promote student achievement; and providing opportunities for student responsibility and leadership).

  1. After reading the article individually, students will form four groups to further consider school policies and practices that convey academic press (Figure 2, p. 24): (1) policies on school function and structure; (2) policies on student progress; (3) classroom practices on establishing an academically demanding climate and conducting an orderly well-managed classroom; and (4) ensuring student academic success, implementing instructional practices that promote student achievement, and providing opportunities for student responsibility and leadership (p. 23). Each group will re-read the sections describing their topic areas and prepare a 2-minute presentation defining their topic and giving examples of what their area looks like and sounds like in schools.
  2. After the presentations, the class as a whole will discuss the academic press policies and practices that they routinely see – or do NOT see – in their current work sites – and what principals might do to create more academic press – and student success – in their schools.

Positive teacher-student relationships can support students’ academic and social development at all levels of schooling. This is especially true for low-income students.

  1. After reading the article individually, the class will form two groups. One group will re-read the section on “Academic Outcomes” and the other group will re-read the section on “Social Outcomes”. Each group will develop a 10-bullet list of the positive outcomes for students in their area that result from strong, positive teacher-student relationships – with special note of how they help low-income students. Each group will present their list to the class, describing each point orally.
  2. After the presentations, the class as a whole will discuss the school policies and practices that help foster positive teacher-student relations – and the policies and practices that discourage them.

Principal leadership can have a measurable and positive effect on teacher effectiveness and students’ academic success. Without effective school leaders, most educational goals would be very difficult to achieve.

Table of Contents:
The Principal as Leader: An Overview, p. 4
Introduction. The School Principal as Leader, Five Key Practices, pp. 5–11
A Profile in Leadership: How One Principal Transformed a School, pp. 12–17
A Scholar’s View of the Principal-Teacher Connection, pp. 18–20
Reflections on Leadership From a Teacher, pp. 21–22

  1. The class will separate into four groups. All groups will read the Overview (p. 4) and Introduction, The School Principal as Leader, and Five Key Practices (pp. 5–12). Groups 1 and 2 will also read A Profile in Leadership (pp. 12–17) and Groups 3 and 4 will also read Scholar’s View (pp. 18–20) and Reflections from a Teacher (pp. 21–22).
  2. Groups 1 and 2’s purpose in reading is to be able to answer and discuss the following questions:
    • What is the role of principal leadership in a school’s success?
    • What are the five key practices that effective principals use to positively impact school climate, teacher effectiveness, and students’ academic achievement – and what do they “look like and sound like” if operating well in schools?
  1. Groups 3 and 4’s purpose for reading is to be able to answer and discuss the following questions:
    • What behaviors or factors distinguish high-performing schools from low-performing schools?
    • What is the teachers’ role in a school’s success?
    • What does it mean when the author writes, “The real payoff comes when individual variables combine to reach critical mass. Creating the conditions under which that can occur is the job of the principal.” (p. 4).
    • How can principals collaborate with teachers to improve schools for adults and students?
  1. After reading and discussing their sections, the class as a whole will discuss the reading and their responses to the questions.

By focusing on teamwork, individualized instruction, and ongoing assessment, Faubion Elementary School, a K-6 public school in Portland, Oregon, is improving the achievement of minority and low-income students. High expectations (and high supports) for children’s academic and affective “life skills” development create a successful school where children are achieving well. Seventy-five percent of the children qualify for Free or Reduced-price Lunch and 97 percent of the 5th graders met or exceeded the state standards for Reading and Math in 2005.

Review the video and consider the following:

  1. What practices do teachers at this school use to express their high expectations for every child’s academic and social success?
  2. What practices do teachers at this school use to provide high support for students?
  3. How would middle and high school teachers adapt these practices so they would work well with older students?

Mr. John Welburn, the principal of Hunter High Schools lets us observe his day as he greets students in the morning, monitors events as he walks through the halls, greets students, works individually with teachers to help them set professional goals, and is highly visible throughout the day and into the evening activities. The way Welburn meets his responsibilities contributes to the school as a safe and orderly learning environment.

The class will separate into five teams. The class will view the video, looking for all the things that Mr. Welburn does that contribute to his school as a safe and orderly environment. After the video, the teams will compile their observations into a complete list.

The teams will report their list to the whole class, adding items to the list. As a whole, the class will discuss how the following behaviors make Welburn’s school safe for teachers and students:

    • Being visible in the halls before, during, and after school.
    • “Shuffling students to class.”
    • Giving tardy students a way to avoid “a ticket” if they pick up trash.
    • Talking with students about a sports’ score.
    • Not scheduling meetings or doing paperwork in his office while students are in the halls or cafeteria so he can monitor students.
    • Meeting individually with teachers to discuss goals and strategies.
    • Addressing building issues.
    • Responding to various student concerns throughout the day.
    • Informing a parent by phone regarding a student’s suspension after an altercation.
    • Monitoring the school stadium set up for evening football game.
    • Attending students’ sports events and school performances.

Oldham County, Kentucky, is home to Oldham County High School of 1,500 students of increasing diversity. A teacher, student, counselor, and prior student personally involved with the changing demographics speak about their experiences. Tensions have arisen.

View the video and discuss the following questions:

  1.  How do the tensions generated by the increasingly diverse student body appear in the school?
  2. From what you see and hear in this video, what may the school doing – or not doing – to remedy this situation?
  3. How is the present condition of Oldham County High School affecting the teaching and learning environment?
  4. If you were the principal, what would you do to improve the relationships and climate at Oldham County High School.

Claude Steele, Dean for the School of Education at Stanford University, and his colleagues discovered that even when stereotypes are not uttered aloud, the phenomenon of stereotype threat, or the fear of confirming a negative stereotype, can be a stigma that affects attitudes and behaviors. In this interview, Dr. Steele explains the concept of stereotype threat and its antidote “identity safety.”

After viewing the video, answer and discuss the following questions as a class:

  1. What is “Stereotype Threat” and how does it affect minority (race, ethnicity, gender, other) students?
  2. Why might stereotype threat be especially damaging to high-achieving students?
  3. Identify possible group stereotypes and school situations in which the stereotype might apply to them and cause poor performance due to stereotype threat.
  4. How can teachers build a sense of “identity safety” in their classrooms?
  5. Discuss the relationship between stereotype threat, “identity safety,” and a safe and orderly learning environment.

Dr. Wayne Hammond, CEO Resilience Initiative, Calgary, Canada, talks about resilience in school and how it affects students’ academic success. Hammond believes we need to start looking at our students’ strengths if we are to help them reach their academic potential. Children have developmental strengths that allow them to take on challenges in constructive ways. Canada (like the U.S.) has academically smart children who are socially vulnerable.

Listen to the video and answer the following questions:

  1. How can listening to children’s stories help educators know how to best support them?
  2. How can teachers viewing their students as individual children with strengths and “stories,” of worth, allow teachers to behave differently with them and allow children to bring out their potential?
  3. How do the seven core characteristics: social connectedness (healthy relationships), manage ambiguity (handle stress), adaptability (able to learn from their mistakes), a sense of agency (kids have a sense of belonging to something to which they add value), moral directedness (sense of what is right and wrong to guide their actions), and having a strength-based aptitudes (develop a strong sense of hope and optimism act and succeed), and emotional connectedness (in tune with how they and others feel and act with respect towards self and others) – allow children to take on life challenges?
  4. Why is social-emotional learning an essential part of educating children?
  5. How can educators collaboratively create an “ecology around children and youth that makes it increasingly difficult for certain high risk problems to survive” and an environment that allows kids to build their resilience and be taught?
  6. What can educators do to help children develop these seven core values?

Sam Goldstein is a neuro-psychologist who works with troubled children in a community mental health clinic. He used to believe that if he found what was wrong and fixed it, he was doing his job. Now he believes that the increased stress, pressure, and demands on the children of today has caused an alarming increase in childhood depression, health disorders and school problems. Numerous scientific studies of children facing great adversity have demonstrated just how important the power of resilience is for successful growth. Resilience embraces the ability of a child to deal effectively with stress and pressure, to cope with everyday challenges, to bounce back from disappointments, adversity and trauma, to develop clear and realistic goals, to solve problems, to relate comfortably with others and to treat one’s self and others with respect. Day-to-day interactions between educators and children can build their resilience.

After viewing the video, consider the following questions:

  1. What adversity or challenge would you hope to avoid in order for you to have a “good day.”
  2. What adversity or challenge do your most struggling students have to face when they come to your class?
  3. How do you educators instill in your students how to deal with a mistake? How do you go about solving a problem? How are you connected to others in ways that build their resilience?
  4. How as a principal might you instill resilience in your struggling teachers?
  • YouTube: View From the Top: Thomas Friedman (Time: 59:15 minutes)

Stanfordbusiness (May 31, 2012).
Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPks6U7t3xs

Future teachers will have to prepare their students to succeed in a radically different world than the one they grew up in. Author and New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman speaks to a Stanford audience about the themes in his latest book, That Used to be Us. He acknowledges American’s sense of resignation that our best days are behind us – and identifies what is wrong, why things have gone wrong, and what we need to do better. What does it mean to teachers and their students that the world we are living in has dramatically changed, the global “curve” has risen, and “average is officially over”?

View the video and respond to the following questions:

  1. Explain how Friedman believes America is in slow decline because we have misread our environment.
  2. Discuss how the biggest trend in world today – the merger of globalization and the IT (Information Technology) revolution – creates huge challenges for education challenge.
  3. Identify ways in which we as a society have moved from connected to hyper-connected world and the implications for living, education, and finding well-paid employment.
  4. Explain the implications for teachers, education, students, and their future employment when faced with the new reality that “average is officially over.”
  5. Describe the types of value-added skills (beyond critical thinking and problem solving) that teachers will have to help today’s (and tomorrow’s) students learn in school in order for them to gain well-paying employment as adults.
  6. Describe two educational challenges our schools face today if we are to remain atop our global competitors.
  7. Explain what Friedman means by “think like an immigrant,” “think like an artisan,’ “think like Jeff Bezos” (chairman of Amazon), “think like a waitress at Perkins Restaurant in Minneapolis” – and identify the implications for teachers.

  • YouTube. (February 23, 2012).  The Four C’s: Making21st Century Education Happen.  EdLeader21 (8 minutes, 13 seconds).  Retrieved from:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghx0vd1oEzM

    What are the 21st century skills that students need to learn in school:  Critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, and communication. See how teachers and students are learning these essential skills. 

A series of prominent educators discuss how teacher education needs to prepare teachers to teach their students 21st century skills. Review the video and respond to the following questions:

  1. Explain why 21st century students will need skills that allow them to critically think, problem solve, communicate, collaborate, and be globally aware.
  2. Discuss the dilemma of preparing teachers for today’s students and how this is a “radical moment” for teacher educators.
  3. Consider the challenges for teacher educators as they plan how to prepare teachers to be effective in the 21st century.
  4. Describe the importance of preparing teachers and principals as broad leaders in collaborative leadership.

Dr. Tony Wagner, author of the Global Achievement Gap, and co-director of Harvard’s Change Leadership Group, has identified what he calls a “global achievement gap” – between even what our best schools are teaching and what our students will need to succeed in the 21st century. Wagner believes we need to reconceptualize teaching and learning for the 21st century. He has identified the seven survival skills for our young people will be successful in college, get and keep a good job, and be a lifelong learner and an informed citizen. How do teachers help students develop these essential capacities?

The essential skills are:
Critical thinking and problem solving
Collaboration across networks and leading by influence
Agility and adaptability
Initiative and entrepreneurialism
Effective oral and written communication
Accessing and analyzing information
Curiosity and imagination

Review this video and respond to the following questions:

  • Explain the meaning of Einstein’s adage for American education: “The formulation of the problem is more important than the solution.”
  • Describe the relevant factors that teachers can use to motivate today’s students to learn these essential skills.
  • Discuss how test prep is interfering with giving students opportunities to learn and master these essential skills.
  • Identify the types of learning activities you have had as a student that have helped you develop and master each of these seven essential skills?
  • Identify the ways you as a student were most and least prepared to act on these seven essential skills.
  • Explain how you as a teacher will use your content to teach students – and have them learn – these seven core competencies.

Chapter 2: Leadership Theory and Practice

School leadership matters. Effective educational leadership makes a difference in improving learning. In fact, greater attention to investing in principal leadership may be a way to create large-scale educational improvement.

The class will separate into five groups, each one responsible for teaching the rest of the class about their assigned readings on principal leadership and student achievement. Each group will also create a graphic highlighting what they see as the five most important ideas in their readings.

Group 1: How Leadership Influences Student Learning (p. 4); and Leadership Effects on Student Learning (p. 5)
Group 2: Leadership: Forms and Fads (pp. 6–7)
Group 3: The Basics of Successful Leadership (pp. 8–9)
Group 4: Understanding the Context (pp. 10–12)
Group 5: How successful leadership influences student learning (pp. 13–14)

After the groups finish teaching the class about their reading portion, the class will discuss:

  1. What are the commonalities to all leadership?
  2. Which of the following leadership behaviors – setting direction, developing people, and making the organization work – are you already practicing (identify your role in your work place and give examples of these leadership behaviors) – and which do you need to learn more about? How will you gain that knowledge and skills?
  3. In what ways does an effective principal influence student learning and achievement?
  4. Why does “context” – organizational, student population, and policy – matter in leadership? Give examples.
  5. Explain Figure 1, Linking Leadership to Learning on page 18 that illustrates the leaders’ role in identifying and supporting learning, structuring the social settings, and mediating the external demands.

The class members are education researchers examining the principal as instructional leader. The entire class will study Figure 1. Leadership Influences on Student Learning (page 12) and generate at least two examples to illustrate what each of the influences might look or sound like in their – or any – school district. They may use their experiences or other parts of this report to identify examples.

In this investigation, class members will form work teams around the following influences:

Group 1: “State Leadership, Policies and Practices” and “District Leadership, Policies, and Practices”
Group 2: “Leaders’ Professional Development Experiences” and “Other Stakeholders”
Group 3: “Student/Family Background” and “Classroom Conditions”
Group 4: “Teachers” and “School Conditions”

After work teams complete their investigation, they will report their findings to the rest of the class. The class as a whole will then discuss: “What do you think are the most important influences on how school leadership affects student learning – and why?

Class members as education researchers will learn more about this important research report’s findings regarding how principals’ and teachers’ views of what instructional leadership is differ as well as the differences in instructional leadership between elementary and secondary schools.

Class members will form two groups. Group 1 will read and orally report on the key points for future principals to the class on “Principals and Teachers’ View of What Instructional Leadership Looks Like” (pages 83–87) and Group 2 will read “Differences in Instructional Leadership between Elementary and Secondary Schools” (pages 87–92).

After groups have finished their readings and identified what they believe are their section’s key points for future principals, they will present their findings to the rest of the class. The class as a whole will discuss: What key points from these research findings do you think will be the most helpful to you as a future principal – and why?

On the 50th anniversary of Douglas McGregor’s insights about the differences between Theory X and Theory Y as management (leadership) motivational models, Matthew Stewart takes another look at these assumptions about human nature.

After reading the article, the class will answer and discuss the following questions:

  1. Do you agree or disagree with the statement: “Business (or education) is all about people; that if you trust in people, they’ll trust you back”? Give the reasons that support your belief.
  2. How has “the jargon of Theory Y evolved into an Orwellian Newspeak that often serves as cover for the kind of exploitation and manipulation that would make even the most chauvinist X-ist quiver”? Give examples to support this assertion.
  3. How does Stewart contribute (or not contribute) to our understanding of human motivation and human interaction (including conflict and trust) in an organization?
  • Bass, B.M. (1990, Winter) From transactional to transformational leadership: Learning to share the vision. Organizational Dynamics, 18 (3), 19–31. Retrieved from http://www.ucdenver.edu/...

In this classic article, Bernard Bass, a leadership scholar, explains the differences between transactional and transformational leadership – and describes how potential leaders can learn how to become more transformational.

Class members will form groups of four. All class members will read the article and then discuss the following questions in their small groups:

  1. Describe the differences in leadership attitudes and behaviors between transactional and transformational leadership in how leaders define for employees the “scope of work” and the types of rewards for performing well.
  2. How do the characteristics of transactional and transformational leaders compare and contrast? (See Exhibit 1, p. 22.)
  3. Why are transformational leaders more effective to their organizations than are transactional leaders?
  4. What can graduate programs in educational leadership and local school districts (and experienced principals) do to foster transformational leadership development in their employees (and in themselves)?

After the small groups have finished discussing answers, the class as a whole will answer the questions and discuss their relevance to the principalship.

Professor Michael Zigarelli briefly highlights – in words and graphics – the strengths and weaknesses of ten leadership theories, including The Great Man Theory; The Trait Theory of Leadership; The Skills Theory of Leadership; The Style Theory of Leadership; The Situational Leadership Theory; The Contingency Theory of Leadership; Transactional Leadership Theory; Transformational Leadership Theory; Leader-Member Exchange Theory; Servant Leadership Theory. Each carries an important truth.

After the class has viewed and listened to the video, the class as a wholewill discuss:

  1. How would you describe the evolution of leadership theory over time as depicted in these ten approaches?
  2. Why do you think our understanding of leadership has evolved over time?
  3. What happens to the concept of leadership as being a collection of personal traits with which one is born (or not) during the evolution of thought about leadership theory?
  4. What are the three main ideas that you can derive from an accurate understanding of leadership from these theories?
  • YouTube. Rachel, C. (2011, June 22). Expanded Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, Human Needs, Self-Actualization, Humanistic Psychology. PsycheTruth. (Time: 21 minutes, 48 seconds). Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yM8SwZkvCIY

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is a motivational theory, what influences people to behave as they do. This video presents an expanded view of Maslow’s hierarchy. Originally designed with five levels, the extended version has eight different levels of needs. The first four levels are basic, deficiency, or coping needs and physiological needs, safety needs, love and belonging needs, esteem needs. The higher-order or growth needs relate to self-actualization including knowledge and understanding needs, aesthetic needs, self-actualization needs (including morality, fulfilling one’s potential), and transcendence needs (helping other people). Happiness, long-lasting satisfaction results from achieving higher-order needs.

After viewing the video, consider answers to the following questions:

  1. Identify all the basic and growth needs typically provided by employment as educators in schools.
  2. How can principals use understanding of Maslow’s basic needs to help keep the school physically and emotionally safe for teachers, staff, and students?
  3. How can principals use understanding of Maslow’s higher-order needs hierarchy to motivate retention and continued professional growth and productivity?
  4. Which of Maslow’s needs will you be meeting by becoming a principal?

Ben Brocker discusses commonalities among leadership theory: relationships based on influence, leaders and followers, intended real change, leaders and follower developing mutual purpose. He looks at three important leadership models – Situational Leadership Theory, Participative Leadership Theory, and Transformational Leadership Theory.

After viewing and listening to the video, the class will discuss answers to the following questions:

  1. What are technical skills, interpersonal skills, and conceptual skills and why are they essential to effective leadership in any organization?
  2. What are the strengths and weaknesses of Situational Leadership Theory?
  3. What are the strengths and weaknesses of Participative Leadership?
  4. What are the strengths and weaknesses of Transformational Leadership?
  5. Under which leadership theory would you prefer to be an employee – and why?
  6. Under which leadership theory would you prefer to be a leader – and why?

Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard developed the Situational Leadership Model based on the belief that situations differ, people differ, and therefore, different leadership styles are necessary to generate optimal performance. The leader should tailor the leadership style to the developmental level of the follower. This video explains how leaders use either high or low directive or supportive behavior with followers to generate optimum performance.

The class will view and listen to the video and consider the following questions:

  1. How do the variables of the employees’ competence and commitment relate to their developmental stage and the desirable leadership behaviors? Give examples.
  2. How does understanding this model give more clarity to expectations?
  3. How useful do you think the Situational Leadership Model will be in your school leadership roles – and why? Give examples.

Markow clearly describes the differences between transformational, transactional, and laissez faire leadership. Transformational leadership is the most current and well-researched leadership style. In contrast to transactional leadership that focuses on the exchange between leaders and followers (“You give me this, and I’ll give you that”), laissez faire leadership is “hands off” (absence of) leadership; and transformational leadership is the process of engaging with others to create a connection that increases motivation and morality between the leader and others. Leaders and followers influence each other, reciprocally. Transformational leaders are about empowering others.

After viewing and listening to the video, the class will discuss the following questions:

  1. What do transformational leaders do to motivate their followers beyond the expected and move them to transcend self-interest to meet higher-level and organizational needs? How might a principal do this in a school?
  2. Give examples of when and in what situations you have experienced any of the four Is of transformational leadership – idealized influence (strong role model, high standards of moral and ethical conduct;); inspirational motivation (communicating high expectations; inspire others to commitment and engagement); intellectual stimulation (stimulating followers to be innovative and creative, try new solutions; challenging organizational beliefs); individualized consideration (listening carefully to followers’ needs; acting as a coach; treating people like human beings). Have you ever experienced any of these in a school setting? What effect did it have on you as an employee?
  3. Give examples of when and in what situations you have experienced transactional leadership: contingent reward (“You do this, I’ll give you that”); management by exception (leader does nothing until something is broken; criticism and negative reinforcement is main communication purpose); passive management by exception (“Leave alone; Zap!”). How did that affect you as an employee?
  4. Give examples of when and in what situation you experienced laissez faire leadership? How did this affect you as an employee?
  5. Why do you think transformational leadership is so rare in organizational leadership?

Instructional leadership is shown to have a strong influence over educational policy in the U.S. and internationally. Osborn discusses instructional leadership’s history, theory, progression, and policy implications.

Review the video and consider the following questions as a class:

  1. What were the Coleman Report in 1966 and the 1970s–1980s Effective Schools Movement and how did they influence the development of instructional leadership?
  2. Identify and describe the instructional leadership qualities imbued in the school’s instructional leader.
  3. Discuss reasons why the theory of instructional leadership conflicts with the reality of trying to make a one-size-fits-all model for school leadership.
  4. Explain how Instructional Leadership 2.0 became more democratized into a more successful leadership model.

Expectancy theory is a commonly used management theory that explains why people select certain behaviors when they have other options available to them. In a workplace setting, one can predict an employee’s behavior if certain other factors are present: motivational force (extent to which a person is likely to engage in a certain course of action; expectancy (the belief than an increase in effort will result in an increase in performance); instrumentality (the belief that increased performance will lead to certain outcomes); valence (the extent to which that outcome is desirable). Motivational force = expectancy × instrumentality × valence. Organizations need to tailor their rewards to their employees’ desires.

View the video and consider the following questions:

  1. How can expectancy theory be of use to principals? Give an example of motivational force, expectancy, instrumentality, and valence in a school setting.
  2. How can principals determine the desirable outcomes or “rewards” that would motivate teachers and staff to put forth the effort to improve their work performance?
  3. What are the “rewards” that are realistically available to principals that they can use as valences to incentivize teachers and staff to work towards improved performance?

Chapter 3: Developing a Philosophy of Education

This ebook reproduction of John Dewey’s Democracy and Education focuses on how Dewey conceives of education as a means to reinforce democratic values in each generation.

Read Section 2, The Democratic Ideal (summarized below), and consider the following questions:

Summary: Democracy is devoted to education. Democracy relies on more numerous and varied points of shared common interest, greater reliance on recognizing mutual interests as a factor in social control, freer interactions among social groups, and continual readjustments to new situations. Education for a democracy recognizes our mutual interpenetrating interests where diverse people must live and work together to advance their own and their society’s interests. Areas of personal concern widen.

Democracy is a mode of associated living, not simply a form of government. Accordingly, education for such a society must be deliberate and systematic. Not only must citizens be educated in order to become informed voters. Each person has to consider his or her actions in relation to others and consider others’ actions in relation to their own. These widespread interactions to a greater diversity of stimuli lead to the breakdown of class, race, and regional barriers and liberate personal capacities. It takes deliberate effort to sustain and extend this greater individualization and broader community of interest. Providing everyone with access to intellectual opportunities on equable and easy terms prevents society from stratifying into separate classes.

“A society which is mobile, which is full of channels for the disruption of a change occurring anywhere, must so to it that its members are educated to personal initiative and adaptability. Otherwise they will be overwhelmed by the changes in which they are caught and whose significance of connections they do not perceive. The result will be a confusion in which a few will appropriate to themselves the results of the blind and externally directed activities of others.”

Question:

  1. How are Dewey’s ideas about education and democracy an argument in favor of vigorously supporting public schools?
  2. How might Dewey view the increasing privatization of education in the United States?
  3. How does this observation about democracy and education remain relevant today?

In the era of high-stakes testing, many educators, policy makers, and parents have complained that the curriculum is narrowing to the subjects tested – mainly Reading and Mathematics – and test-prep. They argue that this constricted focus is not an education that grows children’s minds. Elliott Eisner, Stanford University Professor of Education and Professor of Art, believes that a rigorous curriculum that includes the arts fully develops a child’s mind and prepares him or her to live effectively in a complex world. In this Introduction and Chapter 1 from his book, The Arts and the creation of mind, he presents his thesis.

The class will separate into six groups, each group reading a different section of the Introduction and Chapter 1, selecting Eisner’s most meaningful quotations, and reporting its most important points to the rest of the class.

Group 1: Introduction (pp. xi–xiv)
Group 2: Chapter 1, Education is the Process of Learning How to Invent Yourself (pp. 1–4)
Group 3: The Role of the Arts in Refining the Senses and Enlarging the
Imagination, pp. 4–5; and The Meaning of Representation (pp. 5–9)
Group 4: The Cognitive Functions of the Arts (pp. 9–12)
Group 5: The Arts and Personal Transformation (pp. 12–15)
Group 6: Three Modes of Treatment (pp. 15–19)
Group 7: The Arts and Transforming Consciousness (pp. 19–24)

After each group reads their section, selects its favorite quotations, and decides on the most important points to present to the rest of the class, groups will make their presentation by stating their favorite quotes from the selection and explaining what Eisner means by it. After the presentations, the class as a whole will discuss the following questions:

  1. Describe how the arts are intellectually rigorous, complex, and subtle ways of thinking, and they increase individuals’ consciousness and ability to reason and express themselves in an ambiguous, uncertain world.
  2. What does Eisner mean when he observes, “Our sensory system becomes a means through which we pursue our own development. But the sensory system does not work alone; it requires for its development the tools of culture: language, the arts, science, values, and the like. With the aid of culture we learn how to create ourselves.”
  3.  What does Eisner mean by the following paragraph – and do you agree or disagree?

    “Education … is the process of learning to create ourselves, and it is what the arts, both as a process and as the fruits of that process, promote. Work in the arts is not only a way of creating performances and products; it is a way of creating our lives by expanding our consciousness, shaping our dispositions, satisfying our quest for meaning, establishing contact with others, and sharing a culture.”

  4. What does Eisner means when he writes, “A culture populated by a people whose imagination is impoverished has a static future. In such a culture there will be little change because there will be little sense of possibility.”
  5. The ways in which schools define “literacy” designates the forms of representation (the subject matter) they use and the types of mental skills and modes of thinking that students develop. Eisner thinks the school’s curriculum can be considered as a “mind altering device.” What are the implications of this idea for a school curriculum focused overwhelmingly on Reading, Math, and Science on how our students learn to think?
  6. Discuss the value of learning how “to tolerate ambiguity, explore what is uncertain, to exercise judgment free from prescriptive rules and procedures,” to see what before was unnoticed, and to use an internal locus of evaluation for adults living in a complex world of continuously arising problems. Give examples.
  • Giroux, H.A. (2010, November 23). Lessons to be learned from Paulo Freire as education is being taken over by the mega rich. Op. ed. Truthout.org. Retrieved from http://truth-out.org/archive/...

Henry Giroux, is a former public school teacher and now a critical pedagogy scholar and professor at McMaster University. Critical pedagogy is “the educational movement guided by both passion and principle to help students develop a consciousness of freedom, recognize authoritarian tendencies, empower the imagination, connect knowledge and truth to power and learn to read both the word and the world as part of a broader struggle for agency, justice and democracy.” Giroux reflects on Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, considers Freire’s legacy, and writes about what we can learn from reading it.

After reading the essay, consider the following questions as a class:

  1. Why does Giroux believe that critical pedagogy offers “the very best and perhaps only chance for young people to develop and assert a sense of their rights and responsibilities to participate in governing and not simply being governed by the prevailing ideological and material forces”?
  2. What are Giroux’s concerns about higher education and public education that he believes critical pedagogy can remedy?
  3. What did Freire mean when he called education “a political and moral practice that provides the knowledge, skills and social relations that enable students to explore for themselves the possibilities of what it means to be engaged citizens, while expanding and deepening their participation in the promise of a substantive democracy”? And how did he recommend that schools practice this type of education?
  4. What did literacy and critical thinking mean in Freire’s view of education? What do they NOT mean?
  5. Give examples of school lessons at elementary, middle, and high school levels that reflect Freire’s views about pedagogy.
  6. How did Freire’s person and philosophy affect Giroux as a person and as an educator?
  7. After reading this essay, describe Paulo Freire as a person, a political thinker, an intellectual, and as an educator (of course, through Giroux’s eyes).

James A. Banks, a professor and multicultural education scholar, writes about the United States’ increasing diversity and the quest by different groups for cultural recognition and rights, challenging traditional ideas about assimilation.

Read his essay and consider the following questions:

  1. How has the assimilationist conception of citizenship evolved from 1900 to the present? What factors prompted the changes, and how have schools been agents of American citizenship?
  2. Banks believes that a delicate balance of diversity and unity should be an essential goal of democratic nation-states and of teaching and learning in democratic societies. What does this mean – and do you agree or disagree – and why?
  3. Why does Banks believe that literacy should include citizenship participation in national and global contexts?
  4. What are Banks’ notions of multicultural literacy and citizenship education and how would they affect curricula, teaching, and learning?
  5. Why does Banks view children’s cultural identity development as positive for themselves and their nation; and how does he view teachers’ role in helping children in cultural identity development?
  6. How do you respond to Banks’ views – and why?
  • Apple, M.W. (2014). Official knowledge. Democratic education in a conservative age. 3rd ed. Preface to the Third Edition (pp. xiii – xxii). New York, NY: Routledge. Retrieved from http://books.google.com/...

Michael W. Apple is an American critical theory scholar and writes about education policy and how to make schools more responsive to their communities.

Read the Preface to the Third Edition and consider the following questions:

  1. How do Apple’s experiences giving lectures in Australia illustrate controversies surrounding “the politics of knowledge” – even for teachers and administrators?
  2. How does the story about the second grader and the Pledge of Allegiance stand as an example of the “knowledge, values, and perspectives that can be imposed on children in schools”?
  3. What does Apple mean when he writes, “[S]chools and the overt and hidden curricula within them are sites of intense conflict … They are constitutive to the very act of choosing the knowledge and values that we consider official and that we choose to pass on to students … Not only must we ask what and whose knowledge is to be selected as legitimate or official knowledge, but we also need to take a stand on who should be deeply involved in the entire process of such selection and organization of knowledge”? Do you agree or disagree with this view – and why?
  4. How does Apple believe that the current economic crisis and the neoconservative and neoliberal ideologies that governments are using to recover from it have negatively impacted education policies and practices?
  5. Do you agree with the view that “What has been list is a powerful, shared normative vision of what education can and should be” and over what counts as “good” knowledge, curricula, teaching, and learning?
  6. What does Apple want from teachers and administrators when he writes that one of the book’s primary positions involves a call for critically democratic educators to engage with and act in a society that seems to have lost its ethical way”?
  • Apple, M.W. (2014). Official knowledge. Democratic education in a conservative age. 3rd ed. Preface to the Second Edition (pp. xxviii–xxx). New York, NY: Routledge. Retrieved from http://books.google.com...

Michael W. Apple is an American critical theory scholar and writes about education policy rand how to make schools more responsive to their communities.

Read the Preface to the Second Edition and consider the following questions:

  1. Explain Apple’s view that “… long-lasting transformations in education are often shaped both by the work of educators and researchers, but by social movements that push our major political, economic, and cultural institutions in specific directions” and that “educational policy and practice are not simply technical issues, but are inherently political and valuable. They involve competing definitions of ethics and social justice. And they require our very best thought.”
  2. What does Apple think the changing ideas of freedom and equality and what they represent and how they are represented – making American citizens’ more important to the country as consumers rather than as citizens (moving from “we” to “I”) – have meant for education?

Professor Stephen Hicks begins an introductory philosophy of education class by asking, “What is education?”, “What is philosophy” and “What does philosophy have to do with education?” He asks viewers to brainstorm words that they think of as related to “education.”

Watch the video and answer the following questions:

  1. Hicks defines “Education” as “the process of learning and teaching the young the knowledge and skills necessary for adult life.” With which aspects of this definition can one argue deserve further clarification, correction, or elaboration?
  2. How do educational factors such as length of time, systematic processes, and family/community wealth vary depending on the cultural era and particular contexts?
  3.  Why do questions of philosophy begin to enter the conversation when one starts to think strategically of the “big picture: of education”?

Dr. Stephen Hicks continues to introduce the educational philosophy course. The output of education is to “produce adult human beings capable of function in the real world.” What is it to be a human being? This is a philosophical question. What makes “human beings” distinct, important, and essential? Our ability to reason – to think abstractly, think about the past and future, to enjoy art – is such a quality. We can also distinguish ourselves as human beings by the range and depth of our emotional capacities. What is the relationship between human’s rationality and emotions? And what are the educational implications?

Watch the video and consider the following questions:

  1. How is answering the question, “Why is developing students’ rational capacities a primary purpose of education?” a controversial (or philosophical) question?
  2. How is answering the question, “What should be education’s role in developing students’ emotional capacities – to experience the full range of emotions and to have emotional resilience?” also a controversial (and philosophical) question?
  3. How should education address the relationship between our capacity to reason and our capacity to have emotions – are they integrated or do they work separately, does one influence the other, and should one have priority over the other – or should education even address this issue? By what criteria do we decide – and who decides?
  4. What role does our philosophy of education play in influencing the type of education we provide to others and the type of education we seek?

(Note: Professor Hicks continues his introduction to the course, Philosophy of Education, for eight clips, with each video automatically segueing into the next. They are all worth viewing if students want to take the time to review them, summarize each clip, and identify ways the information in each might influence his or her choices or attitudes as an educator/principal.)

  • YouTube. (2012, April 30). Paulo Freire Documentary. Seeing Through Paulo’s Glasses: Political Clarity, Courage, and Humility. Freire Project. (Time: 16 minutes, 22 seconds). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4jPZe-cZgc

This brief documentary introduces us to Paulo Freire, his person and his ideas, in his own voice and through his supporters including Ana Cruz, Tom Wilson, and Henry Giroux, among others. Many believe that Paulo lives out his great capacity for love in order to take on the arduous and difficult task of challenging the power structure and advancing his unyielding commitment to social justice, to make the world more just, less dehumanizing, and more humane.

View the video and respond to the following:

  1. Describe how the speakers in the video describe Paulo Freire as a person and as a teacher/mentor.
  2. How does Freire’s view of educators – as learned scholars, community researchers, moral agents, philosophers, cultural workers, political insurgents, highly respected individuals whose responsibility to notice the “day-to-day” events of daily life and interactions with the world and then to reflect, act, and change what is not working – especially for those people who are not in power – compare with the view of educators in today’s United States?
  3. Explain how Freire sees education as an element of social change and teaching as a political act.
  4. In what ways is pedagogy central to politics, not just to teaching – as Henry Giroux believes?
  5. Describe can teachers use “critical consciousness” to help students become more aware of themselves and of their world.

James A. Banks, a University of Washington professor, author, and founder of multicultural education, has been a researcher and leader in efforts to increase educational equality for students for more than 30 years. He asks who constructs the knowledge used as the building blocks for written history and how researchers’ own experiences influences their values and views. His research findings have major implications for today’s and tomorrow’s educators.

View the video and respond to the following:

  1. Explain the factors that have caused the increased racial and ethnic diversity of the U.S. population in the 20th and 21st centuries.
  2. Identify the challenges to educators that ethnic minority students are already the majority of students in many U.S. cities and states – and about 20 percent of U.S. public school students speak a language other than English at home – and most teachers are white.
  3. Discuss the implications of multicultural education for the United States as a democratic society – civically, socially, and economically.
  4. Identify the five main conclusions found by research on multicultural education – and explain how will these influence the way you will lead.
  5. Give examples of “culturally responsive teaching” and explain how this affects minority students’ learning and achievement.
  6. Describe Banks’ belief that a multicultural curriculum can advance social justice.

This brief animation describes John Rawls’ rules to create a fair society. First, everyone is entitled to basic freedoms (speech, pursuit of happiness, the fair value of political liberties regardless of social class). Second, the difference principle is meant to show that society may have inequalities as long as it makes the worst person better off. Financial inequalities are meant to help society as a whole. In a thought experiment – the original position – to support his principles, if representatives from society who were behind “the veil of ignorance,” did not know where they would end up in society, people would then choose the principles fairest to all.

View the video and consider:

  1. How would Rawls’ ideas create a society that is just and fair?
  2. Identify the ways you agree – or disagree – with Rawls’ approach to create a just and fair society.

Here is another way of thinking about “social justice.” “Social Justice” is a term you hear almost every day. But did you ever hear anybody define what it actually means? Jonah Goldberg of the American Enterprise Institute presents a conservative perspective on social justice. Is social justice noble or political opportunism? What do you think?

View this video and consider the following:

  1. In Goldberg’s view, how has the term “social justice” come to mean anything their champions want it to mean (as intellectual laziness and political opportunism)?
  2. Why is Goldberg’s assertion that “Social Justice equals ‘good things’ no one needs to ARGUE for and No one DARE be against!” such excellent rhetoric?
  3. Goldberg would deny that issues such as equal access to education, universal health care, child welfare, right to housing, income inequality, gay rights, women’s rights, and racial inequality legitimately come under the umbrella of social justice? Rather he sees it as intellectual laziness by constantly redefining what “social justice” means. Do you agree or disagree – and why?
  4. In your view, which is “social justice” – “state-sponsored compassion for the needy through economic redistribution and, therefore, a danger to a free society” or as “the state doing good things to create a more fair society” – or something else or in between?

Chapter 4: School Culture

Kent Peterson and Terrence Deal are two educational leadership professors who have researched and written extensively about reshaping school culture and affirm that “culture influences everything that goes on in schools” – from faculty wardrobe to instructional practices. In this classic article, they describe school culture and discuss how principals and other school leaders can shape it to better support teaching and learning.

Read the article and respond to the following questions:

  1. If schools with strong, positive cultures are those (1) where staff have a shared sense of purpose and are passionately committed to teaching well; (2) where collegiality, improvement, and hard work are underlying norms; (3) where student rituals and traditions celebrate student accomplishment, teacher innovation, and parent commitment; (4) where the informal networks of storytellers, heroes, and heroines provide social web of information, support, and history; and (5) where success, joy, and humor are plentiful, on a scale of 1–5 (5 highest) for each numbered element above, how would you assess the school in which you presently work?
  2. Do you think the same elements of strong, positive cultures for K-12 schools are relevant to college and universities? Explain your reasoning.
  3. If school leaders are the key to shaping school culture and they do this by (1) communicating the core values in what they say and do; (2) honoring those who have worked to serve the students and the school’s purposes; (3) observing rituals and traditions to support the school’s “heart and soul”; (4) recognizing heroes and heroines and the work these role models accomplish; (5) speaking eloquently of the school’s deeper mission; (6) celebrating staff, student, and community accomplishments; and (7) keeping the focus on students by retelling success stories, how many of these seven elements have you observed during your years working in education? Which school leaders do you recall to be the best – and the worst – at advancing these positive school culture elements?

Kent Peterson, a renowned authority on school culture building, developed this monograph to describe the components of collaborative school cultures and to illustrate how schools develop them.

The class will separate into six groups. Each group will read this monograph looking to answer one of the following questions and prepare a three-minute talk with a graphic to explain their findings to the rest of the class. The answers can be found anywhere in the monograph. The group questions are:

Group 1: Define “collaborative school cultures” and identify the teaching and learning benefits that result from them when they are working well in schools.
Group 2: Identify the school factors that support collaborative school cultures.
Group 3: Identify the types of school cultures that exit and describe their characteristics.
Group 4: Explain how schools can best foster collegial relationships.
Group 5: Identify and describe the structures, networks, and activities that support collaboration in schools.
Group 6: Identify and describe ways to shape and nurture collaborative school leadership.

After each group has completed its assignment, the class as a whole will discuss Peterson’s key ideas about how collaborative cultures can help improve teacher and student productivity and the challenges in developing a collaborative culture in an urban school (which traditionally has very high teacher and student turnover).

For decades, Americans have been talking about reforming education, but little headway is evident because educational innovations are piecemeal, seldom considering the wider context of factors that influence school functioning. Frank Betts argues that to be effective, educational change must be systemic. He explains why approaches that do not account for the wider environments will not succeed. This 1992 article continued to be relevant almost 30 years later.

Read the article and respond to the following questions:

  1. How has “paradigm paralysis” – using old models that are no longer useful (such as the industrial society model for organizing schools) – help explain American education’s lack of success in improving public education as compared with other nations?
  2.  Considering Banathy’s (1991, p, 80) seven descriptions of how an educational system can optimize the relationships with its environment, which descriptors do you think are more possible for schools to enact – and which do you think would be more difficult for schools to enact – and why?

TNTP is a national non-profit organization whose highly selective Teaching Fellows programs prepare college graduates to be effective teachers for low-income and minority students. TNTP also advances policies and practices that ensure effective teaching in every classroom. This report highlights survey results from over 4,800 teachers in almost 250 schools in six cities to address the questions: (1) What kind of school culture is most likely to increase retention of the best teachers and improve student learning? and (2) What concrete steps can principals take to create that culture in their own schools? TNTP calls schools with carefully fostered instructional cultures that help teachers and students achieve to high levels.

The class will separate into three groups. Each group will read an assigned section of this report and then prepare and deliver a two-minute talk to the rest of the class discussing the key points in their readings. Everyone will read “Here’s     What We Found” (page before page 1).

Group 1: “Here’s What We Found” and “Why Do Effective Teachers Leave?”(p. 02)
Group 2: “Here’s What We Found” and “The Benefits of a Strong Instructional Culture” (p. 3)
Group 3: “Here’s What We Found” and “Creating a Greenhouse School” (pp. 4–7)

After the presentations, the class as a whole will discuss the following questions:

  1. What is the principal’s role – and what does the principal have to do – to create an instructional culture in the school that retains and develops effective teachers?
  2. What would a rigorous teacher hiring process (as an aspect of a strong instructional culture) include?
  3. What do teachers and principals do to keep a focus on student learning?
  4. Who are a school’s instructional leaders and what do they do to improve teaching and learning?
  5. What characteristics does a “well planned and well facilitated” professional development have?
  6. Why does removing consistently struggling or ineffective teachers a morale rather than discourage them?
  7. How can you as prospective principals prepare yourselves to create a strong instructional culture in your own schools – starting tomorrow?

Edgar H. Schein’s pioneering work on organizational culture added much to our understanding of this essential dynamic in school effectiveness. In this seminal article, Schein defines organizational culture, suggests digging below the organization’s surface to uncover the basic underlying assumptions that make up the organization’s culture.

Read the article and consider the following questions as a class:

  1. Why is an organization’s culture so essential to its functioning?
  2. Schein speaks about “cultural paradigms” – sets of interrelated assumptions that form a coherent pattern that can provide cognitive order and consistency but which may be either mutually compatible or inconsistent. Looking at Table 1, read each of the five basic underlying assumptions around which cultural paradigms form and determine how each assumption would appear in your current work site.
  3. Schein writes that school cultural elements are learned solutions to problems, and learning situations can either be positive problem solving situations in which the attempted solution works or doesn’t – or anxiety reduction situations in which the solution may or may not reduce anxiety. If this is true, why would new principals need to get to know his or her new school fairly well before implementing a new school improvement initiative?
  4. Why is leadership so important at times when the faculty’s habitual ways of doing things no longer work or when a dramatic change in the internal or external environment requires a new response? What would the leader do to facilitate a successful change? What are some examples of these two types of events – former approaches no longer working well or a change in the external or internal environment that threatens the group’s survival – in contemporary schools?
  5. Looking at Table 3, what types of school issues do you think may be associated with each of the internal integration problems noted (i.e., language, boundaries, power and status, intimacy, rewards and punishment, ideology)?
  6. How could principals and school leaders use Schein’s four approaches to reveal a school’s culture?

During the summer, 2012, 30 high school students, from all over Chicago, came together to learn how they could influence school culture – not waiting on school administrators or staff. They developed an educational curriculum that teachers can implement in class, and video testimonials to enhance lessons. This documentary is a reflection of that process – one that principals can adapt to reshape their own school culture.

Watch the video and consider the following:

  1. Why do people on the “inside” have an advantage in culture building as opposed to “outsiders”?
  2. Identify several activities that the students and the facilitators conducted around defining values that principals could adapt to use with teachers.
  3. The Vice Principal asserts that a school can have a great curriculum, really smart teachers, smart classrooms, but without a school culture, you can’t have success. Do you agree or disagree – and why?
  4. What items in and around the schools prominently reflected their school culture’s values – and what were the values illustrated?
  5. Why is it important that students, themselves, have the opportunities to define what “success” looks like to them?
  6. What purpose do the “testimonials” serve for students and teachers?
  7. What purpose did the students serve by presenting their positive school culture curriculum and their testimonies to 18 of their teachers and receiving feedback?

YES Prep North Central Public School takes its school culture seriously. Students and teachers like each other, making security cameras and guards unnecessary. A clear and strictly enforced disciplinary code, respect for others, listening to others and supporting them, and positive messaging are large parts of the school environment.

Watch the video and consider the following:

  1. What are the RISE (Restoring, Individual, Student, Excellence) disciplinary program practices that reinforce children’s appropriate and positive school behaviors? What is the discipline program’s core message to students?
  2. How does the student advisory program reinforce the positive school culture?
  3. How is the slogan, “We have your back and we are listening” appropriate to both students and teachers?
  4. How does the school use a daily and ongoing positive messaging campaign to reinforce its cultural values and behaviors?
  5. Which of these cultural practices are now parts of your own school and which do you think it would be helpful to initiate?

Academics are important in any school, but many school leaders say that school culture is the environment that allows effective teaching and learning to occur. A culture of high expectations exists for teachers and children, both. This brief video looks at successful schools that have been developed from failing schools in Detroit and New Orleans.

After viewing the video, consider the following questions:

  1. In this once failing school, how do the principal and the teachers “reset” the school culture?
  2. What student behaviors do you see that are evidence that they have been taught and are following the school’s core values: hard work, excellence, respect, discipline determination, and leadership?
  3. What is the teacher’s view of how Mays Prep created culture among teachers so teachers could create a positive school culture in their classrooms and throughout the school?
  4. How do KIPP teachers “infuse” their children with the school culture and “the right mind set” to do their best work as students?

In this interview, Edgar Schein, a foremost thought leader in the field of organizational culture, tells how he became interested in organizational culture and expresses his ideas about organizational culture. He shares insights about what culture really is and how leaders should focus on resolving related problems.

View the video and consider the following:

  1. How did Schein come to recognize and create the concept of organizational culture?
  2. How is culture like an organization’s “personality” or character – and how does its adaptiveness to internal or external realities influence its ongoing effectiveness?
  3. Why does culture only matter when there is a “business” (or organizational or educational) problem (or something not working well)?
  4. Why is “How we do things around here” a beginning – but not sufficient – step in leading and managing change?
  5. Why would principals who want to learn more about their school’s culture benefit from asking questions (and listening to answers) of a focus group rather than use an individual survey of all teachers?
  6. In Schein’s view, why are taking “best practices” and applying them in your school – or bringing in outside consultants to make recommendations for improvement – ineffective strategies to make positive change?
  7. How can subcultures within an organization – such as school – work at cross-purposes to stymie improvement?

Edgar H. Schein, MIT professor emeritus and one of the originators of the concept of organizational culture, discusses his most recent views on the application of organizational culture. He sees the organizational culture misunderstood and misapplied.

Watch the video and respond to the following questions:

  1. In Schein’s view, why is ignoring national differences, industry differences, employee task differences, and company age differences “the biggest pathology” in understanding organizational culture.
  2. In Schein’s view, how is the concept of “culture” being misunderstood and misused in today’s organizations?
  3. How is the concept of “professional cultures” of those in a particular career particularly essential to defining culture in today’s world?
  4. How is Schein’s view relevant to principals and schools?

Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline. The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, speaks to a group of business executives about shared leadership. Collective leadership is a difficult subject because it gets to the heart of our industrial age institutions: the nature of control (and the perils and anxiety of decentralizing it). Yet decentralizing leadership – and sharing it – is essential for our business and world survival.

Review the video and consider the following:

  1. How does Senge relate “control” in a business or organization to “control” in a living organism’s increased specialization?
  2. According to Senge, what is “the single most important leadership issue of our time”? (How is hierarchical leadership – and “the great man” model of leadership –insufficient to successfully meet today’s fundamental challenges?)
  3. Do you agree or disagree with Senge’s belief that today’s profound leadership challenges are systemic in nature – no simple cause – and will require organizations to work together, learning with and from each other, about how we sustain deep and systemic change in our institutions? How does this perspective apply to education and schools?

Chapter 5: Leading Change

Kurt Lewin’s theory of change has dominated both theory and practice for over 50 years, although his 3-stage model has attracted criticism. Mainly, the objections to his work include: assumptions that organizations operate in a stable state; was only applicable for small-scale change; ignored organizational power and politics; and was top-down and management-driven. This article seeks to re-appraise Lewin’s work and challenge the validity of these views. It begins with Lewin’s biographical profile and the influences that helped shape his commitment to resolving social conflict. Burnes’ conclusion: Lewin’s ideas are still relevant.

The class will separate into three groups. Each group will read an assigned segment of this article and prepare a 3–5 minute presentation highlighting its key points to the rest of the class. Every group will also read the Introduction and Conclusion but not include that information in their presentation.

Group 1: Introduction (pp. 977–978); Lewin’s Background (pp. 978–980); Conclusion (pp. 995–998)
Group 2: Introduction (pp. 977–978); Lewin’s Work (Field Theory, 981–982; Organizational Dynamics, 982–983; Action Research, 983–984; 3-Step Model); Conclusion (pp. 995–998)
Group 3: Introduction (pp. 977–978); Lewin’s Work: Criticisms and Response (pp. 992–995)

After the presentations, the class as a whole will consider the following:

  1. How did Lewin’s personal biography influence his desire to study individual and group behavior?
  2. Lewin believed, as a humanitarian, that only by learning how to resolve social conflict – whether religions, racial, marital, or industrial –humans could understand and restructure their perceptions of their world and improve the human condition. In what ways do you agree – or disagree – with Lewin’s ideas? If you agree, where and how should people be taught or learn these insights and practices?
  3. Give examples of how Field Theory, Group Dynamics, Action Research, and the 3-Step Change Model might each operate in the real world.
  4. According to Burnes, why is Lewin’s work still relevant for contemporary social and organizational change? Do you agree or disagree – and why?

The landscape of adult learning has changed markedly over the past century: from speculating on whether adults could learn to various theories that offer explanations for how it does. Now, we know that adult learning is not merely cognitive; it is also emotional and spiritual. Likewise, cultural, social, economic, and political influences work together to shape the learning environment. These many approaches to adult learning show it as a highly complex phenomenon and our understanding of adult learning will inform principals’ abilities to lead change.

To read and understand this article, the class will separate into seven groups, one for each of the following selections. After the readings, the groups will prepare and deliver a three-minute presentation on what they agree are the most important aspects of their selection for principals who will lead change in their schools.

Group 1: Introduction and Foundations: Can adults learn? (pp. 199–202)
Group 2: The Development of Adult Learning Theory and Andragogy (pp. 202–204)
Group 3: Self-Directed Learning (pp. 204–206)
Group 4: Transformational Learning Theory (pp. 206–208)
Group 5: Recent Contributions to Adult Learning and Context-Based Learning (pp. 208–211)
Group 6: Critical Perspectives (pp. 211–213)
Group 7: The Emotions, Body, and Spirit in Learning and Adult Learning Theory Is a Work in Progress (pp. 213–216)

After the presentations, as a whole class discuss:

  1. What are the most important things that principals or staff development professionals need to know about adult learning – and do to facilitate it – when planning to lead teachers in change or encourage them to improve their professional practice?
  2. Which of the adult learning information do you find most often ignored or neglected when your own school leaders involve teachers in school improvement planning or professional development?
  3. What is the most important aspect of adult learning that you are certain to remember and use when you are leading school improvement?
  • Using Bolman and Deal’s Four Frames to solve an education problem: a case study.

The case study below illustrates an educational situation that benefits from using Bolman and Deal’s Four Frames. Separate the class into four teams, one for each frame: structural, human resource, political, and symbolic. Each group will read the case study and using their frame, identify strategies and rationale for how the new District Director might successfully address this situation. After the groups have read the case study and identified their strategies and rationale, they will present these to the entire class. After the presentations, the class as a whole will discuss the situation and suggest additional four frames’ approaches to use.
Case study
Erika Jones was the new District Director of Student Services. The school district had three middle schools that participated in a Safe Schools Grant Application, a joint school plan that included goals, objectives, action steps for each grade level, resources needed, and a budget. The Application protocol required each school to submit its own separate plan annually. Many state and federal laws had requirements that had to be met in the application document.
Erika started her position with the school district in the third week of school. After reviewing papers from her predecessor, she discovered that the Combined Application/School Plans had not yet been submitted – even though they had been due the prior June 15. After making several calls, she soon learned that teachers and administrators totally detested the complex application process and extensive document. They saw it as a complete waste of time. In the past, their school plans had been returned to them because they did not follow the rules or include all the necessary data and information. As a result, every year they had to alter the paperwork.
Central Office colleagues informed Erika that her predecessor in this position usually wrote most of the documents and gave them to the principals and teachers to sign off. In fact, many teachers never actually saw the school plan submitted for them.
This year, however, the State Department of Education had warned the schools to either submit appropriate plans or lose their plans or their grants for the year – an amount over $15,000.
Because Erika was familiar with this grant from her previous position, she knew several people at the State DOE, and was able to persuade them to extend the application deadline for another six weeks.
Erika’s main challenge was to persuade first the principals and then the teachers that this document was more than busy work. It had meaning and actually reflected what they were already doing.
She approached the principals with several “givens.” (1) She explained the financial and resource implications and what the schools would lose if they decided not to rewrite and resubmit the application. (2) She clarified the laws and regulations’ purposes and how these benefited the school. (3) Erika swore that although she would not write the plans, she would support them, help them use the right wording, that these were the teachers’ plans, and she would assist them in any way they needed her.
To follow up, Erika continued to stress the teachers’ importance to the entire endeavor and she frequently visited classrooms to see what they were doing and to praise them for their work.
Erika’s goal was to help students by helping teachers. She was familiar with why teachers found the grant application tedious and time consuming, and she was going to succeed in her first district-level administrative position. But she was not going to do so by using force or coercion.

Change theory or change knowledge can be a very powerful force in education reform, but only if those involved can connect theory to explicit action. In this paper, Fullan focuses on several incomplete change theories, considers change theories that have merit (are getting the desired results) and discusses why, explores the prospects for using change knowledge more completely in the future, and several barriers that may prevent moving to deeper change strategies.

The class will separate into six teams; three teams will take responsibility for each of the two sections (Teams 1, 2, and 3 will take Section 1, “Flawed Change Theories” and Teams 4,5, and 6 will take Section 2, “Theories of Action with Merit.” All teams will also read Section 3, “Prospects for Future Use of Change Knowledge.” Each team will read their section and identify the most important points for school leaders to understand and do. After their reading, discussion, and identification of key points for school leaders, they will share their findings with the rest of the class – with each successive group adding to the list of key ideas.

After the presentations, the class as a whole will discuss:

  1. Why is school or district culture an essential but often overlooked component of some change theories? What can knowledge and understanding of school and district culture add to understanding of how to lead change?
  2. How has the superficial understanding of professional learning communities as program innovations at individual schools often failed to achieve instructional improvement and increased student achievement because it lacked understanding of why and how to develop collaborative cultures among teachers?
  3. How does principal effectiveness also depend on the cultural conditions under which principals work rather than simply preparing outstanding individual principals?
  4. How do the Theories of Action with merit (motivation, capacity building with a focus on results, learning in context, changing context, a bias for reflective action, tri-level engagement, and persistence and flexibility in staying the course) prove a useful guide to principals as change agents?

The class will read the article and consider the following questions:

  1. How did Argyris’ personal background and his knowledge of psychology, economics, and organizational behavior attract him to try and understand “the riddles of human nature” in organizations that analytic professionals preferred to avoid?
  2. Explain the importance to you as a worker in an organization that “Argyris argued that organizations depend fundamentally on people and that personal development is and can be related to work. The problem, Argyris believed, in many organizations is that the organization itself stands in the way of people fulfilling their potential. The task for the organization is to make sure that people’s motivation and potential are fulfilled and well-directed.”
  3. What did Argyris mean by saying that most people defend learning too narrowly, “as mere problem solving” and identifying and correcting errors in the external environment, but if the learning is to persist, people need to also reflect critically on their own behaviors?
  4. How does Argryis and Schön’s two basic organizational models – Model 1 and Model 2 – show leaders how not to and how to (respectively) initiate change in their organizations?
  5. In your experience, what is the truth about Argyris’ view of a universal human tendency to design one’s actions according to four basic values: to remain in unilateral control; to maximize winning and minimize losing; to suppress negative feelings; and to be as rational as possible (evaluating one’s behavior in terms of whether or not they have achieved their stated goals and objectives).

Dan Heath, a Duke University senior fellow, argues that people don’t change because they are exhausted, not lazy. He uses a “fascinating” psychology study to make his point. Chocolate chip cookies eaters or radish eaters? Which will persist in a difficult (impossible) task? What this study shows: Self-control is exhausting. How does this apply to change situations?

Watch the video and respond to the following:

  1. How is change exhausting to those people going through it?
  2. Do you agree with the study’s conclusions – why or why not?
  3. What difference does this awareness – exhaustion and not laziness – mean for school leaders trying to initiate and sustain change? How might this alter their perceptions and behaviors?

Kurt Lewin recognized that change is a process. This brief video uses this model to illustrate the change process. It gives an excellent description of the 3-step change model, examples of how it operates, and how organizational leaders can use it to facilitate change.

View the video and consider the following:

  1. In Unfreezing, what are ways for leaders to create an awareness of how the status quo or present situation is hindering the organization and how the change will benefit the employees?
  2. During Changing, why are education, communication, support and time essential to support employees? Give examples of how leaders might do this.
  3. During ReFreezing, what should leaders do to reinforce, stabilize, and solidify the change in processes, goals, structures, offerings, or people so employees will accept the change as the new norm?
  4. Give examples of how educational leaders might plan for change using Lewin’s 3-stage model.

This video introduces the Bolman and Deal’s four frames clearly and thoughtfully explained. It includes clips of Steve Jobs talks about the structural frame, Tommy Lee Jones acts in an illustration of the human resources frame, the narrator discusses the political frame, and Starbuck’s Howard Schultz discusses the symbolic frame.

View the video and consider the following:

  1. Which of the clips most accurately reflected the meaning of the frame as Bolman and Deal intended? Which were the least accurate?
  2. Answer based on your personal and professional experiences: (Structure). “What type of structure nurtures our passion and fulfills the needs of our internal and external stakeholders?”
  3. Answer based on your personal and professional experiences: (Human Resource). “How can organizations that value employee needs and well-being maintain these values through times of crisis and harmony?”
  4. Answer based on your personal and professional experiences: (Political). “What conditions must exist to strengthen the group and encourage new relationships and information sharing?”
  5. Answer based on your personal and professional experiences: (Symbolic). “How do we get the mission and vision of the posters and into souls of everyone in the organization?”
  6. Which of the “What I Learned From” has the most personal meaning for you as a future school leader?
  • YouTube. Heath, D. (2010, September 16). Dan Heath: “Want Your Organization to Change” Put Feelings first. FastCompany. (Time: 3 minutes, 26 seconds). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhBzxy7CneM

When leaders want people to change, they often try to teach them something, but knowledge rarely leads to change. In organizational change, when we want our employees to move in a new direction, we educate them. But in fact, it may be that people see something, that makes them feel something, that gives them the fuel to change. Heath argues that to have people change, you have to put feeling first. Leaders’ jobs are not done after they have shared some knowledge.

Watch the video and consider the following:

  1. What are the differences in mental models of change between those used in U.S, and those in Italy and Canada as illustrated by their cigarette smoking campaigns?
  2. How does Heath’s argument fit with Lewin’s 3-stage model of change?
  3. Give examples of what can school leaders do to make teachers genuinely “feel” the need for change (specify the change) rather than simply give them lots of data with rational analysis.

We know that 80 percent of change programs fail? Why? It requires changing people, processes, technologies – their emotions – and still maintain productivity. Professor John P. Kotter, Harvard Business School, offers an 8-step approach to ensure that organizational change succeeds: increase urgency; build the guiding team; get the vision right; communicate for buy-in; empower action; create short-term winds; don’t let up; and make change stick. All these deal with people! How you fail is by not addressing people.

Watch the video and consider the following:

  1. What is Gibson’s argument – and do you agree or disagree?
  2. In your experiences as professional educators, how many of you worked with principals who put “people first” when planning and implementing school improvement? What did they do – or not do – regarding attending to faculty members’ emotional buy-in?
  3. Where in any of the change models discussed in this chapter can leaders pay attention to employees’ needs (beyond providing detailed analysis and data) to help them understand, accept, and commit themselves to working the change?

Chapter 6: Ethical Behaviors and Trust

The National Association of Secondary School Principals and the Council of Chief School Officers believe that education leaders should promote the success of every student by acting with integrity, fairness, and in an ethical manner. But understanding the ethical standards and translating them into real-world practice is not always clear or easy.

The class will separate into three groups – an elementary, a middle level, and a high school group (depending on the expected principalship level). Each group will consider the ethical statements in the reading and generate at least two situations illustrating what this might look like if a principal enacted it in their grade level setting. After the group work, groups will report their findings to the rest of the class. And the class will also discuss the following:

  1. What similarities do you hear in the situations suggested by the groups?
  2. What differences in ethical behaviors do you hear among the different grade level schools?
  3. Give examples of situations in which principals trying to enact an ethical standard might confront an ethical dilemma.

Principals make hundreds of decisions every day. Being aware of the need for ongoing ethical discussions with teachers and staff about ethical behaviors in school and in the community can help guide their decision making processes.

The class will read the article and respond to the following:

  1. Although written for an elementary school audience, how well do these ethical recommendations fit for middle or high school principals?
  2. How is a principal to know when he or she is making a decision that is “fair” to faculty, staff, and students? How is a principal to know when he or she is making a decision that is “unfair”?
  3. What difficulties does a principal face in trying to decide “consistently”? Given an example of a principal’s decision that teachers or students might not view as acting “consistently.”
  4. Identify some of the ethical decisions that teachers have to make and what criteria they can use to decide “fairly” and “consistently.”
  5. How is a principal to learn community mores about what is or is not acceptable for school situations or educators’ community behaviors?
  6. Identify the types of issues about which community norms may vary from the principals’. In cases of differences between principal and community mores, which ones should the principal follow?
  7. Which of these suggestions do you think might be most difficult for you to implement in your school when you become principal – and why?

If principals are their organizations’ “stewards” – responsible for building organizations where people can continually expand their capacities to understand complexity, clarify vision, and improve their shared mental models that are responsible for learning; and creating an ethical and moral educational setting – how are they to enact this role? How can principals become “moral role models”?

Read the article and respond to the following:

  1. Do you agree that adults – especially principals working with young people in schools – need to demonstrate to them that it is possible to live one’s values and advocate for a more just and responsible society? Explain.
  2. Describe what integrity, authenticity, balance between justice and care, and systems thinking are and look like in practice; and explain why they are essential qualities for principals to enact in schools.
  3. Why is it good advice to principals to “value the primacy of relationships” and how does one show this in daily behaviors?
  4. How can principals use the ethics of justice and care with a systems perspective? Give examples.
  5. Respond to the following statement: “Frequently, educational leaders focus on curriculum, policy-making and other bureaucratic functions to the exclusion of the truly vital function of education, assisting students in becoming the very best people that they can be. This must be understood in a holistic context.”

A growing body of case studies and empirical research finds that social trust among teachers, parents, and school leaders improves much of the routine work of schools and is a key resource for reform for meaningful school improvement. This article helps define social trust, identifies factors that help shape it, and name the benefits it produces.

Read the article and respond to the following:

  1. Give examples from your experiences of how is school an interrelated set of mutual dependencies and mutual vulnerabilities – and how deliberately taking actions to reduce this sense of others’ vulnerability builds trust across the community.
  2. Describe and give examples from your experiences of how individuals’ discernments about interpersonal respect, personal regard, competence in core role responsibilities, and personal integrity contribute to social trust in schools.
  3. Discuss the relationship between strong relational trust, school improvement, and measurable improvements in student learning over time.
  4. Describe the school conditions that foster relational trust.
  5. Describe the principal’s role in building relational trust.
  • (2012, January). Ethical and professional dilemmas for educators. Facilitator’s guide. Understanding the code of professional responsibility for educators. Module 5 – Phase I Pilot. Hartford, CT: Connecticut’s Teacher Education and Mentoring Program. Retrieved from http://www.ctteam.org/df/resources/Module5_Manual.pdf

Because educators are entrusted with the community’s children’s wellbeing, principals and teachers are held to high standards of ethical behavior and moral integrity. As role models, educators’ conduct on and off the job affects their professional image and personal reputations. Lapses in judgment can adversely affect their students, damage professional credibility, and erode public trust in schools and in the education profession. Accordingly, educators need to develop a thoughtful awareness of the varied ethical dilemmas and situations they may face in daily interactions with students, parents, and the community. These brief scenarios involving students, professional ethics, community and family, and bullying give educators an opportunity to carefully examine, openly discuss, recognize, and analyze situations that require ethical and professional judgments.

The class will form 12 groups. Each group will take responsibility for exploring one of the 12 scenarios and four Discussion Questions in each scenario (in a small class, assign groups as the students and professors agree works for them). These scenarios are based on reality and the incident or its discussion may make some group members uncomfortable – and that is OK. Ethical situations are often anxiety producing. All groups will read and discuss the Introduction, page 3.

Each group will have a facilitator to help lead the group through the Discussion Questions, reading aloud the printed sections of the Code of Professional Responsibility for Educators. [This activity uses the Connecticut Code, but most states use similar expectations.] The group members will read the brief scenario. Then group members will take turns paraphrasing in their own words the bulleted issues/concerns through the four Discussion Questions: (1) What possible issues/concerns might this scenario raise? (2) How could this situation become a violation of the law, the “Coder” or other school/district policies? (3) In this situation, what are some potential negative consequences for the teacher, for the students and the school community? (4) What responsibilities/actions will result in a more positive outcome and/or what proactive measures might be considered?

If the paraphrase does not adequately express the concern or issue, someone else in the group can help clarify and extend the paraphrase to ensure a complete understanding of each bulleted statement. Each discussion scenario may take 0 to 30 minutes.

I. Situations Involving Students:
Scenario 1: Electronic Communications with Students, pp. 7–9.
Scenario 2: Transporting Students, pp. 11–13.
Scenario 3: Contact with Students, pp. 14–16.

II. Situations Involving Professional Ethics:
Scenario 1: Use of Social Networks, pp. 17–19.
Scenario 2: DUI Convictions, pp. 20–22.
Scenario 3: Teacher Documentation, pp. 23–25.

III. Situations Involving Community and Family:
Scenario 1: Teacher Public Behavior, pp. 26–28.
Scenario 2: Student Confidentiality, pp. 29–31.
Scenario 3: Teacher Using Position for Personal Gain, pp. 32–34.

IV. Introduction to Situations Involving Bullying:
Scenario 1: Emotional Bullying, pp. 36–38.
Scenario 2: Cyberbullying, pp. 39–41.
Scenario 3: Physical Bullying, pp. 42–44.

After the groups have finished, the whole class will discuss the following:

  1. What did you learn about identifying and resolving ethical dilemmas in school from reading and discussing these scenarios?
  2. What are the three most important things to remember regarding ethical dilemmas when working as an educator?
  3. What are the three most important things to do regarding ethical dilemmas when working as an educator?

Diverse high school students, teachers, administrators, and teachers discuss the meaning of ethics and ethical dilemma.

View the video and consider the following:

  1. Identify the types of ethical dilemmas raised by students and school personnel in the video.
  2. Each class member will define ethics and ethical dilemma for him or herself – in writing and then aloud to the rest of the class.
  3. The class will create a consensus definition of ethics.
  4. The class will identify the types of ethical dilemmas they have witnessed or experienced in their school settings – and how the main actors resolved them.
  5. Why are self-examination and reflection an important dimension of a successfully addressing and resolving ethical dilemmas?
  6. How can clear school policies and procedures sometimes help educators effectively resolve ethical dilemmas?
  • YouTube. (2009, July 22). Ethics Workshop Part I – Overview of Moral Reasoning and Ethical Theory. Case Western Reserve University. (Time: 59 minutes and 23 seconds). Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwKryWlGCT0

Shannon E. French, Ph.D., Inamori International Center for Ethics and Excellence, speaks with a group of college undergraduate researchers about ethics and ethical behavior. Many people have a “moral intuition” or “gut feeling” about what is “right” or “wrong.” Her presentation includes a discussion of moral reasoning (knowing “right” from “wrong”), moral theory, and moral principles. [In Ethics Workshop Part 2, “Understanding Character and Moral Decisions,” Dr. French discusses ethics and individual character (the influences and pressures that lead people to do what they know is wrong) and recognizing others who may influence you to act in “wrong” ways.] This is a chance to think about ethics as a concept and in practice.

Review the video and consider the following:

  1. In your view, how does one find the best balance between one’s own ethical behavior between ethical reasoning (rely on given principles and rules) and concern with behavioral consequences (consider the context and outcomes)?
  2. Why is it difficult (and possibly dangerous) to base moral reasoning and decisions on “the greatest good for the greatest number”?
  3. Why is it difficult to base moral reasoning and decision on following certain principles and rules (regardless of the consequences)?
  4. Give examples of how lack of “situational awareness” makes it difficult to make good ethical decisions. As an educational leader, how can you increase your “situational awareness” so as to improve your ethical decision making?
  5. How does the view that “I, as a principal, am acting in the ‘best interests of students’” generate ethical concerns? How would a principal go about securing “informed consent” from those who would be affected by the decisions (give examples)?
  6. Respond to this statement: “Always treat the humanity in yourself and others ‘never merely as a means, but always at the same time as an end.” – Immanuel Kant.

Everyone needs a strong ethical base. Opportunities for making ethical decisions are frequent, but telling right from wrong is not always easy. Four questions that you ask yourself can help you make the best choice.

    1. What are your options? Be clear about how this option helps you and all other relevant stakeholders based on how well they solve your problem.
    2. For each option, Will your decisions compromise your values? For this, you need to know your four or five top values. Write them down so you know them clearly.
    3. What am I advised to do? Seek advice to help from a more experienced mentor to help you more fully consider your options and their implications and put things in perspective.
    4. Will I be embarrassed to share my decision? Select the option that best passes the “sunshine test.”

Watch the video and consider the following:

  1. Identify your five most important values that you tend to use in making ethical decisions – and share them with a partner.
  2. How useful to you is this ethical decision-making paradigm? Is it simple enough to make sense and be practical or is it too simplistic? Explain with examples.
  3. Why can it be that the most difficult choices often help us become better decision makers?

High school students and a school administrator in Phoenix, AZ, talk about cyberbullying – what it is, when people stop having the right to say what they want, how cyberbullying can harm students and the learning environment, and how students and schools can constructively handle it.

View the video and consider the following:

  1. How is cyberbullying a factor in your own school?
  2. What can teachers do to help end cyberbullying?
  3. What can administrators do to help end cyberbullying?
  • YouTube. (2010, December 4). Stephen M.R. Covey on Relationship Trust and 13 Behaviors of High Trust People. Franklincovey Speedoftrust. (Time: 3 minutes, 54 seconds). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CciecbzzH-g

The level of trust in a relationship is like a bank account: by behaving in ways that build trust, you deposit money into the trust account. By behaving in ways that diminish trust, you make withdrawals. The balance in the account is the amount of trust in the relationship at any given time. Covey discusses his own experience as a leadership consultant learning about the need to build trusting relationships the hard way – and how people can build it.

Review the video and consider the following:

  1. In the video, what behaviors did Covey use to build trust?
  2. How does “building trust with the one, build trust with the many”? What does this mean for building trust in schools? Is the reverse also true? Give an example.
  3. Using each of Covey’s 13 behaviors common to all trusted people – talk straight, demonstrate respect, create transparency, right wrongs, show loyalty, deliver results, get better, confront reality, clarify expectations, practice accountability, listen first, keep commitments, extend trust – define the term and identify a school-based example of how to build trust and an example of how to destroy it.
  4. Can you think of a high trust behavior that Covey did not mention – and how would it look in practice?
  5. Do you agree that these 13 behaviors of high trust people come from who you are, not what you pretend to be – and why?

Chapter 7: Communication

“Communication is fundamental to building relationships and therefore the ability to lead.” Clear, two-way communication is essential to any leader’s and organization’s success. Superintendents and principals have lost their jobs over poor communications skills. School leaders have been slower than their industry colleagues in looking at communication as an essential leadership skill. Cyndi Lee, a school public relations consultant, writes about the urgent need for educators to improve their communication skills with their varied publics.

Read the article and respond to the following questions:

  1. In what ways have school public relations – their communication with their community – been used as a buffer between leaders and stakeholders to keep people out rather than as a bridge to build links between leaders and stakeholders?
  2. How does this public relations specialist suggest that schools go about using communications to build bridges rather than moats?
  3. Describe the ways in which good communication can be a key to community support and funding?
  4. Why is good communication essential for a principal’s or superintendent’s job security?
  5. Do you agree or disagree with the statement – The key to motivating cooperation from others is high quality communication in everyday interactions and small steps – and why?

Institutions such as schools succeed or fail by public opinion. One school district has developed a top 10 list for principals to use in communicating with their schools’ varied constituents, and the National School Public Relations Association presents it as a model. Let’s see how well your current principal is meeting all these expectations – and how ready you will be in your own principalship.

The class will separate into 12 small groups. Each group will take responsibility for reading one of the ten communications suggestions, explaining it to the rest of the class along with examples of what it might look and sound like if practiced effectively in a school – and what it might look and sound like if not practiced effectively in a school.

After the presentations, the whole class will consider:

  1. Why are having effective communication skills essential for a leader’s skill set?
  2. Who are the opinion leaders in your school community? How do you find out who they are – and what might you do with that information?
  3. Which places in your school and what personnel are the most important school ambassadors – and why? How can principals help prepare these individuals to be highly effective communicators?
  4. What types of communication between schools and parents are most effective and have the most positive impact on student learning and achievement?
  5. Why is it best to say “I don’t know and I’ll get back to you with the answer” rather than to speculate on an answer?
  • Ramsey, R.D. (2009) The twenty biggest communication mistakes school leaders make and how to avoid them. Chapter 1. How to say the right thing every time. Communicating well with students, staff, parents, and the public. 2nd Edition. (pp. 1 – 19). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin. Retrieved from http://www.sagepub.com/upm-data/25868_081218_Ramsey_ch1.pdf

Principals communicate with a variety of audiences for a living. When principals use words effectively, they can inspire, inform, instruct, and advance teaching and learning. But when principals and other school leaders do not express themselves well, misinformation, misinterpretations, misunderstandings, and mixed messages can cause confusion and, occasionally, great harm.

This article identifies the top 20 reasons educators fail to communicate, how using professional jargon can stymie communication with parents and community, how euphemisms and political correctness might feel good but doesn’t send clear messages, and how straight talk can help school leaders be better leaders.

The class will separate into groups of four. Everyone will read the article and conduct certain activities around specific sections:

“The Top Twenty Reasons Educators Fail to Communicate,” pp. 2–7, group will assign each member four of the communication errors to read. Each member will then summarize the error aloud to the group and give examples of what this error might look and sound like in schools.

“The Jargon Trap”, pp. 8–10, group members will review the list and poll members for which of these jargon words they have used in groups with parents or other non-educators – without a “plain talk” translation.

For “Euphemisms Feel Good But Don’t Send a Clear Message” (pp. 10–12), the group members will discuss the euphemism they occasionally use and the situations in which they use them – and the discomfort they experience trying to be more direct and accurate.

Also:

  1. Respond to the examples of common situations when one should listen first and accept that nothing may be the best way to communicate (p. 17). Can you think of other times when it may be more important to listen first and say nothing initially (if at all)?
  2. Discuss the challenge of “calling things as they are” in a work situation as balanced against the need to “please one’s superiors, colleagues, and stakeholders.”
  3. What is the most important idea and action that each member will remember from this reading?
  4. Hatch, T. (2009, October). The outside-inside connection. Educational Leadership, 67 (2), 16–21. Retrieved from http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational_leadership/oct09/vol67/num02/The_Outside-Inside_Connection.aspx

Challenges that principals face inside school are often connected to – and complicated by – events occurring off campus. Principals benefit from the connections, expertise, and support that come from interacting with many people and organizations in the community. Just as principals are their schools’ champions, negotiators, and spokespersons, successful school improvement often depends on the relationships and opportunities that educators develop outside the school. But it takes shared leadership to make a wide array of community contacts work effectively.

The class will read this article and consider the following:

  1. Explain why it is essential that school leaders and school members need to clearly understand and be able to express the school’s goals, philosophy, and mission, be on the lookout for qualified staff, and act in ways to advance the school’s interests.
  2.  Discuss the ways in which schools benefit when its leaders and members can “scan” and “seed” the outside environment and how schools might go about doing this.
  3. Identify and discuss the downsides for principals of cultivating external relationships and ways in which principals might best handle these potential conflicts.
  4. What are the implications of the saying, “It takes capacity to build capacity”?

Communicating effectively with parents requires developing a knowledge and facility with a range of communication tools. Although face-to-face is best, principals can supplement this with smartphones, tablets, and inexpensive laptops that do not require large family incomes. This brief article gives school leaders suggestions about ways to reach their families, the purposes of such one-way and two-way communication tools, and ideas about getting them used.

Read the article and respond to the following:

  1. Which of the one-way and two-way communicating tools mentioned in the article are presently in use by your school presently? And how often?
  2. Which communication tools are widely available among your children’s families – and how do you know?
  3. In which of these one- and two-way communication tools do you have facility? Which do you use at least once a month? If you do not have facility with at least one or two of these tools, how will you gain it?
  4. Would your school benefit from professional development on using any of these tools to improve communications with families – and who would be available to provide it?

This video introduces the basic communications process in a professional environment: sender, channel, receiver, noise (environmental and psychological), feedback (verbal, non-verbal, and written), listening, and the key factors in giving information that others that will help them understand, remember the message, and feel satisfied.

View the video and respond to the following.

  1. Why is it important for leaders to be aware of their non-verbal communication as well as their verbal communication?
  2. Why is it important to “intend to listen” to what is being or not being said rather than simply hear what another is saying?
  3. If observing key points in presenting information effectively by keeping the message as simple as possible, stressing the important information during the talk and repeating it at the end, give the audience opportunities to ask questions about anything they don’t understand. How many of these factors are you currently using regularly in your own presentations and which might you want to include more often?
  • YouTube. (2012, October 11). Shelly Arneson on How School Leaders Can Better Communicate with their Teachers. Eye on Education Radio. (Time: 9 minutes, 38 seconds). Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4ZCfE7pnIw

Shelly Arneson, a national expert on how school leaders can build trust through effective communication and author of “Communicate and Motivate: The School Leader’s Guide to Effective Communication” discusses her research findings. Specifically, Arneson speaks on how principals can build trust with teachers during teacher evaluations.

Watch the video and respond to the following:

  1. Discuss the trust issue between teachers and principals when it comes to teacher evaluation.
  2. What suggestions does Arneson give that shows how might principals do build trust with teachers?
  3. Why are “having an open door policy,” willingness to listen and give good feedback, communicate with everybody, being visible in the school, and stating “what went right before saying what went wrong” ways that teachers develop trust in their principals?
  4. What does the following mean in terms of effective communication between principals and teachers: “Do you want to be right or do you want to be heard (or make it right)?”
  5. Why is it important for principals to point to specific teacher behaviors rather than get personal in giving teachers feedback?

This brief video gives ten principles to become a more effective and respectful communicator. Watch the video, explain what it means, and generate a positive and negative example of each of the ten principles as they might appear in a school setting. When finished, share your answers with a partner.

The principles are:

  1. Seize leadership. Lead and guide the communication at all times.
  2. Envision your goal. Ensure that the content and tone of your communication serves your goal.
  3. Consider your audience. Know your audience and tailor the communication to serve them.
  4. Be respectful. Communicate professionally and considerately at all times.
  5. Be clear and accurate. Doing so creates credibility.
  6. Be direct and forthcoming. Doing so inspires confidence.
  7. Be genuine. Doing so creates connections.
  8. Be transparent. Doing so engenders trust.
  9. Be consistent. Doing so reflects integrity.
  10. Reflect on whether your communication served your goal. If so, you were effective.

We need effective communication skills to be successful in our personal and work relationships and in having smooth everyday interactions. A good communicator has six essential skills: assertiveness, authenticity, open mindedness, openness, clarity, and listening. These are all essential leadership skills.

Watch the video, listen to the explanations of each, and identify the communication skills in which you are currently proficient and which will need more attention and work. How will you work on improving your weaker skills? Complete the following table with your responses, and then discuss your findings and conclusions with a partner. Get your partner’s feedback on the accuracy of your self-review based on what he or she has witnessed in your demeanor in this class.

Currently proficient

Needs growth

How to improve

  1. Assertiveness
  1. Authenticity
  1. Open mindedness
  1. Empathy
  1. Clarity
  1. Listening

As a class, consider the following:

  1. Did you find any differences in perceptions of communication skills between your self-assessment and your partner’s observations of you? If so, what are they? What do you think accounts for the differing views?
  2. From your experiences, in which of these communication areas do principals tend to have the strongest – and the weakest – skills and what was the impact on their teachers, students, or parents?
  3. Which are the one or two communication areas where you think you need to make the most improvement? How will you do this?

Ever experienced “Death by PowerPoint”? Do you want to avoid being the author of that dreaded, bullet-drenched PowerPoint that everybody hates? As leaders, principals often make presentations to teachers, parents, professional, and community groups. This video offers three tips about how to do it so your audience understands your message without being abused.

Watch the video and respond to the following:

  1. Explain the trial lawyer’s statement, “If you say 10 things, you say nothing!” as it relates to giving educational presentations to your colleagues (your jury).
  2. Give examples of situations when principals can “show something” (apart from clip art) as part of a powerful presentation.
  3. How can principals “Tease before you tell” – that is, build the audience’s curiosity before formally beginning the presentation?

Chapter 8: Building Teacher Capacity

Psychological contract can be used as a powerful vehicle to drive behavior and improve organizational performance. Michael Wellin, a management consultant and author, looks at the developments in psychological contract theory and recent changes in the psychological contract between individuals and organizations. Understanding this dynamic can help principals better understand how to motivate teachers and staff.

The class will separate into four groups. Each group will read one of the following sections and report back to the class “the top three insights” from their section that they believe will be most useful to principals as school leaders and how these insights can be used in schools.

Group 1: Background to the Psychological Contract (pp. 17–19)
Group 2: Redefined View of the Psychological Contract (pp. 27–28)
Group 3: Change and the Psychological Contract (pp. 28–30)
Group 4: Shifts in the Prevailing Psychological Contract Over Time (pp. 30–33)

After the group reports, the class will discuss:

  1. How have social and technological changes upended – and changed – parts of psychological contract theory? How has this “new adhocracy” affected your own psychological contract and your relationship with your employer?
  2. What mutual expectations are in your own psychological contract for your present role?
  3. What mutual expectations will be in your psychological contract for your role as principal? What if any changes do you expect – and why?
  4. What aspect of psychological contract theory do you believe will be most useful to you as principals – and why?

A decade of research supports principals’ critical but indirect role in shaping the quality of teaching and learning at the school level – but principals’ biggest impact is on improving teachers’ effectiveness. This 2012 report describes a study that asks, “What specific actions do principals of high-performing schools take to improve teacher effectiveness?” and “What distinguishes principals of high-performing schools from other principals?”

The class, as a team of educational leadership consultants, has been hired by a school district to provide their K-12 principals and assistant principals with the knowledge to become more effective instructional leaders. The consultants will form four teams, each team responsible for presenting (orally and with at least one graphic) a five-minute presentation to the principals about what they can do to be more effective in generating teacher capacity and student achievement. All teams are to read “Leadership on the Field: The Difference a Principal Can Make” (pp. 4–7) and “The Playbook: Three Types of Plays that Principals Made to Amplify Great Teaching” (pp. 8 – 10).

Specific group assignments are as follows:

Team 1: Develop Teachers, pp. 11–17.
Team 2: Managing Talent, pp. 18–25.
Team 3: Creating Great Places to Work, pp. 26–30.
Team 4: Championship Coaches: What Principals of the Most SuccessfulSchools Do Differently, pp. 32–36.

After all teams have completed their presentations, the class as a whole will consider:

  1. What are the most important insights to remember from this report when becoming a principal?
  2. Which of these behaviors can you begin developing further now in your present role?
  3. Which of these behaviors are presently and fully effective in your current school? What have you learned from this report that might help your principal and/or teachers make them more effective?
  • The Wallace Foundation. (2010). Connecting leadership to learning. Knowledge in brief. Findings you can use from New Wallace Research. New York, NY: Author. Retrieved from http://www.wallacefoundation.org/....

What does effective school leadership look like? In the largest in-depth study of educational leadership in the United States at the time that included 180 schools, 43 school districts, in nine states, researchers surveyed about 8,400 teachers and 470 school administrators; interviewed over 500 of them, observed 310 classrooms, and gathered and analyzed student achievement on language and Math standardized tests. Findings confirmed that leadership is the second most important school-related influence on student achievement, after classroom instruction. The report stresses that although principals are the school’s central leaders in schools, they are not the only leaders. Here is the Executive Summary. [If interested, the full report is available from http://www.wallacefoundation.org/...]

Read the research brief and respond to the following:

  1. Explain how the combined influence of teachers, administrators, parents, and others on school decisions can have a greater impact on student learning than the influence of any one leader? What does this suggest as benefits of including teachers and parents in problem solving and decision making?
  2. Describe several reasons for the principal’s effect on teachers’ effectiveness.
  3. Discuss several obstacles to better school leadership.
  4. Identify things the school district can do to support principals in building teacher and principal capacity.

  • DuFour, R. (2007, September).Professional learning communities: A bandwagon, an idea worth considering, or our best hope for high levels of learning? Middle School Journal, 39 (1), 4 -8. Retrieved from:
    http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ775771.pdf

Richard DuFour, a former high school principal and district superintendent, has popularized the Professional Learning Community (PLC) concept and practice. In this seminal article, he identifies and explains the three “Big Ideas” about PLCs: ensuring that students learn; creating a culture of collaboration; and focusing on results. Written in 2004, it remains timely.

Read the article and consider the following:

  1. Explain DuFour’s concern that the initial excitement over PLCs would follow the traditional school reform path to confusion, implementation problems, and ultimate failure to improve schools.
  2. Describe several ways in which the shift “from a focus on teaching to a focus on learning” has profound implications for schools.
  3. To what extent is help for struggling students in your present school systematic, timely, based on intervention rather than remediation, and directive?
  4.  To what extent do teachers in your current school work collaboratively to analyze and improve their classroom practice that prompt deep team learning and higher student achievement?
  5. Identify the things that principals must do to make PLCs effective in their schools.
  6. Describe the activities in your current school in which teachers turn data into useful and relevant information to improve teaching practice and student achievement.
  7. Explain how effective PLCs change the nature of school accountability.

Two teacher leaders give their “grounds-eye view” of the obstacles to teacher leadership in schools, how teacher leadership can enhance the teaching profession, and implications for administrators.

The class will separate into four groups, each group assigned to a different section of the article. Groups will read their selections, identify the most important points for future principals, create a graphic to illustrate their points, and give a three-minute presentation on their selection to the rest of the class. Everyone will read the brief introduction on page 1 and Next Steps, pp 10–11.

Group 1: Obstacles to Teacher Leadership (pp. 2–3)
Group 2: Leadership Roles for Teachers (pp. 4–5)
Group 3: Implications for Administrators, (pp. 6–8)
Group 4: Leadership vs. Management (pp. 8–10)

After the presentations, the class will consider:

  1. In your present school, which obstacles mentioned (or others) are preventing increased capacity for teacher leadership?
  2. What obstacles may the principal also create to build teacher leadership capacity?
  3. Identify the ways in which teachers in your present school are serving as teacher leaders.
  4. Discuss the statement: “Leadership is a euphemism for administration.”
  5. Identify the occasions when a principal serves as a “manager” and the occasions when a principal serves as “leader.”

An ESL teacher gives her views, in words and pictures of teacher leadership. These include: invitation, creativity, support, seeking, knowledge, and risk taking, and catalyst.

View the video and respond to the following:

  1. Describe how this teacher describes teacher leadership. In which aspects do you agree – or disagree? What aspects would you add?
  2. In what ways does teacher leadership increasingly blur the lines between teaching and learning?
  3. How does teacher leadership allow teachers to see – and understand – both the forest and the trees?
  4. How can making one’s teaching more transparent also make a teacher more vulnerable – and more confident?
  5. Use examples to describe the differences between a “career lattice” and a “career ladder.” Which approach might teachers find more motivating?
  6. How do you think teachers in this school would respond to this video?

Professor Denise Rousseau, a psychological research scholar for 30 years, explains the psychological contract during an interview in France. She discusses changes in how we understand psychological contract over this time.

View the video and respond to the following:

  1. Explain the difference in psychological contracts between the transactional, relational, and hybrid models and their effect on employers and employees.
  2. Describe the effects that uncertainty in organizations has on individuals’ psychological contracts – and how this affects employers and employees.
  3. Describe the nature of your psychological contract with your school district. How does it deal with organizational uncertainty?
  4. Discuss employees’ options for dealing with an organization’s whose incentive structure does not comfortably match their own values and priorities?

In the present high-change, high-uncertainty environment, the relationship between leaders and followers needs attention. Sebastian Salicru, an Australian business psychologist and leadership development specialist, presents an innovative view of a Leadership Psychological Contract and discusses leaders’ unwritten expectations, their effects on followers, and their organizational outcomes.

Watch the video and respond to the following:

  1. Describe the components of this Leadership Psychological Contract: the contract makers (the leadership promise or the nature of the deal that includes the leader’s values, principles, and actions); the health of the contract (the followers’ cognitive assessment of the leader’s behaviors, including fulfillment of expectations, levels of trust, and fairness that determine the leader’s credibility, character, and integrity); the consequences of the contract or leadership impact (followers’ emotional responses to the leadership including commitment, satisfaction, discretionary effort, and innovation); and results (performance outcomes).
  2. How useful is this model for helping future principals to conceive and enact their new role?
  3. Explain how understanding this Leadership Psychological Contract can be helpful to future principals.

Richard DuFour, a leading professional learning community practitioner and consultant, highlights the differences between a group and a team (using Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan as examples, respectively. He explains how collaboration – interdependence, shared goal, and mutual accountability – is essential for highly functioning teams (of athletes or teachers).

Review the video and respond to the following:

  1. Explain the three differences between a group and a team – and why American schools tend to have teacher groups rather than teams.
  2. How is collegiality different than collaboration? How is this evidenced among teachers in schools?

Richard DuFour, a PLC innovator and author, talks about the importance of professional learning communities and the biggest obstacles a school faces when transitioning to a PLC.

Watch the video and respond to the following:

  1. If research consensus agrees that the way to improve schools is to build capacity and improve the quality of instruction that students receive every single day through the collective efforts of their teachers and school leaders, what avenues are available to principals and teachers to reach this goal?
  2. Identify the long-standing traditions and “mythologies” that serve as obstacles interfering with traditional schools transitioning to professional learning communities.
  3. Explain how a district-wide PLC vision and implementations – using a “mantra” including “don’t blame the kids,” “what can we educators do to create the conditions to help our children learn at higher levels,” and specific expectations for teachers – compare with a school-wide PLC approach in effectiveness, sustainability, and positive student outcomes.

Chapter 9: Conflict Management and Decision Making

Businesses and other organizations (including schools) are often so focused on the “bottom line” (i.e. disaggregated student achievement test scores) that they don’t do what is necessary to keep the employees – the organization’s backbone – happy, fulfilled, and engaged. Brandon Smith, a leading expert in workplace health and dysfunction talks about the three causes of workplace dysfunction and ways to end it.

The class will form groups of four or five. Each group will read the article and answer the following questions:

  1. Identify the three types of workplace dysfunction, their underlying causes, and what they might look and sound like in schools.
  2. The role of Generation Y (those persons born during the 1980s and early 1990s, sometimes called “echo boomers” or Millennials and who tend to be very technologically sophisticated, diverse) in creating a healthy workplace environment.
  3. Your own favorite story of workplace dysfunction in a school.

When the groups have finished working, they will discuss their findings with the rest of the class.

Leadership and conflict go together. Mike Myatt, a leadership advisor to Fortune 500 CEOs and Boards, writes that “leadership is a full-contact sport, and if you cannot or will not address conflict in a healthy, productive fashion, you should not be in a leadership role.” Leaders can learn how to not fear – and actually welcome – conflict if they can recognize it, understand its nature, and be able to bring quick and fair resolution. To ignore conflict may bring their undoing.

Read the article and consider the following:

  1. “Every workplace is plagued with manipulative people who use emotion to create conflict in order to cover-up for their lack of substance.” Has this been true of your workplace experience? If so, how did your leader handle it and to what effect on the other employees?
  2. How can principals as school leaders ensure that communication or emotions don’t create unnecessary and unproductive conflict?
  3. For you, personally, as a leader, which of Myatt’s “tips” to more effectively handle conflict in the workplace will you find the easiest – and which the most uncomfortable – for you to enact – and why?

“Solitude is out of fashion.” Susan Cain, a writer and former corporate lawyer, observes that teamwork and collaboration are the new groupthink. But this practices does not square with the research that strongly suggests that people are more creative when they have privacy free from disruption, and that the most exceptionally creative individuals are often introverted.

Read the article and consider the following:

  1. Describe the work situations in which you find it more productive and growth producing to work individually and in which you find it more productive and growth producing to work as part of a team.
  2. Respond with your opinion and examples to the statement: “Culturally, we’re often so dazzled by charisma that we overlook the quiet part of the creative process.”
  3. Explain how the story of Steve Wozniak epitomizes the tension in the individual-vs-team approach to creativity.
  4. Summarize the research and findings on this question of whether solitude or collaboration is best for creativity and quality/quantity of outcomes.
  5. Explain Cain’s recommendations for creativity and learning and how they affect school.

David Lee, an internationally recognized authority on organizational and management practices, writes that stress at work can interfere with human intellectual, emotional and interpersonal functioning. Eventually, stress’s effect on employees’ performance can seriously undermine their – and the organization’s – effectiveness.

Read the article and consider the following:

  1. Explain how stress potential or actual threat or insecurity increases people’s endorphin production, creates a “numbing out”, and impairs all aspects of decision making, innovation, interpersonal behavior, and safety.
  2. Describe the trends and events that may be producing high levels of stress for today’s educators.
  3. Discuss the role of “perceived control” in managing stress, and identify how principals can help teachers and staff experience more perceived control in their schools.

What is the link between principal leadership and student learning? This study examines varied factors often present in principal-teacher interactions and teacher-teacher relationship to see how these may impact teachers’ classroom instructional practices. Research finds that the presence of shared leadership and professional community explain much of the strength in the factors influencing teachers’ instructional behaviors.

The class will separate into six groups. Each group will be responsible for reading a portion of the article and reporting their findings to the entire group. Each group will create a graphic with five or more key ideas and/or images to help explain their oral presentation. Everyone will read the introduction (pp. 458–460).

Group 1: Literature Review, Shared Leadership (pp. 460–462)
Group 2: Trust (pp. 462–464)
Group 3: Teachers’ Instructional Practices (pp. 464–466)
Group 4: Efficacy (pp. 466–467) and Summary of Review (pp. 467–468; and use Figure 1, p. 468 as your graphic)
Group 5: Methodology, Classroom Practices (pp. 469–470) and Principal Leadership (pp. 470)
Group 6: Summary of Findings, Leadership and Instruction (pp. 478–479); Teacher – Teacher Relationships in Instruction (pp. 480–481)

[Note: The professor can read Discussion and Conclusions (pp. 481–484) and use authors’ ideas to help reinforce any group’s report.]

After the group presentations, the class as a whole will discuss:

  1. What are the most important things that you learned from this article that will affect your practice as a teacher? As a school leader? As a principal?
  2. What can you do beginning tomorrow at your school to enact a perspective or action learned from this article?

How effective are you at solving problems? What does thinking outside of the box really mean? The way we frame problems may create limits on our ability to find solutions to these problems. This nine-dot exercise presents a metaphor for how we sometimes limit our thinking about solving problems. Reframing problems can open up our alternative options.

Watch the video and consider:

  1. Imagine a situation in which you may have had to reframe a situation in order to find the best possible solution.
  2. What might principals do to help others reframe a situation to permit discussing more constructive alternatives to solving a problem?
  • YouTube. (2013, June 19). Andrew Lo on “Bounded Rationality” – Clarendon Lectures 13 June 2013. Said Business School, University of Oxford. (Time: 55 minutes, 12 seconds). Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUrZubcSe7U

Andrew W. Lo. MIT Professor of Economics, uses research from the fields of biology and neuroscience to explore “bounded rationality,” i.e. processes and limitations of human decision making. He refers to neuro-scientific research into split-brain patients to show how different parts of the brain interact to form decision-making processes. His witty lecture supplemented with personal examples and cognitive exercises provides an interesting insight into the potential limitations of complex decision making.

Watch the video and consider the following:

  1. Herbert Simon’s concept of “satisficing” means deciding a “good enough” – rather than an optimal – solution to a problem. By what criteria (the ‘rules of thumb’, trial-and-error, and particular environment) do you know when you reach a decision point that is “good enough”?
  2. In what ways do the principals’ criteria for decision making differ from teachers’ criteria?
  3. Explain the dangers of talking on the phone while driving as it relates to bounded rationality.
  4. Describe how human brain anatomy influences our decision making.

Conflict and difficult conversations are a regular part of organizational interactions. A recent survey finds that the average employee spends 2.1 hours a week dealing with conflict, and 70 percent see managing conflict as an important leadership skill. This video defines conflict as a process, compares disagreement with conflict, develops conflict awareness, considers how conflict affects the organization and employee engagement, identifies approaches to managing conflict, and ‘Do’s’ and ‘Don’ts’ to help leaders respond to conflict.

Watch the video and respond to the following:

  1. What behaviors or feelings can you notice in yourself or others when a simple disagreement threatens to become a conflict?
  2. Of the typical causes of conflict in organizations – professional jealousy, high stress, value differences, personality conflict, role ambiguity, competition, “turf wars,” and other – which have you witnessed or experienced personally in your work setting at a school? Did you see it move through a process or a series of events? Did it move from disagreement to conflict? If no, how was it kept at the disagreement stage? If yes, how did the leader or others help manage and resolve it?
  3. How can emotional intelligence play a constructive role in identifying and managing conflict?
  4. Given the five levels of conflict – (1) discomfort, (2) episode, (3) disagreement, (4) anxiety, and (5) critical turning point (conflict escalated and individuals feel threatened) – at which level do you normally recognize that a conflict situation exists and you begin to manage it? At which level does your current principal tend to manage conflict?
  5. Of the barriers to managing conflict – (1) ignoring conflict and hoping that it will go away; (2) threats to self-esteem; (3) values, culture, generation, gender, style, etc.; (4) hidden agendas; (5) teasing putdowns, and negative judgments; (6) intimidation and inappropriate use of power, and (7) others – which ones typically affect how you as a leader deal with conflict in a work setting?
  6. Which signs of employee disengagement resulting from unmanaged conflict – absenteeism, productivity (lack of discretionary effort), customer service, (low) morale, and leader frustration – have you observed in your work setting? What was the unmanaged conflict? How large is employee disengagement in your own work setting?
  7. Take the poll for your current approach for managing conflict situations (Time: 28 minutes, 42 seconds).
  8. Which aspects of the five-step AEIOU Model – A (Acknowledge the other person’s concerns and point of view; state your intention for the conversation to make it safe to talk); E (Express your concerns while also appealing to the other’s needs and concerns); I (Identify a proposal or plan and state clearly the behavior you need to be the results of the conversation); O (Outline the outcome you anticipate or need; how will the plan meet each party’s need); U (Reach an understanding and all parties agree on the proposal and outcome) – for managing conflict do you currently use?
  9. What roles can self-awareness and having a mental model play when you are dealing with a conflict management situation?
  10. Which of the ‘Don’ts’ (focus on personal traits that can’t be changed; interrupt, attack; disregard the other’s feelings; avoid the conflict; allow emotions to take over the conversation or impose personal values or beliefs) and ‘Do’s’ (understand that conflicts are inevitable; resolve to address conflict quickly; focus on the problem; be open to solutions; acknowledge how others are feeling; and listen actively) do you typically use in managing conflict? Which behaviors do you want to learn how to do better?

One Morton Thiokol Engineer tried to convince NASA and Thiokol management that their booster rocket is flawed. The predicted temperature at launch time was too low to keep the O-rings intact. Both NASA and Thiokol ignored his warnings. Thirteen hours before launch, a tense group conference occurs at Thiokol: to launch or not launch? The next day The Space Shuttle Challenger explodes over Florida. The Rogers Commission was tasked with finding out why. View Parts 6 of 10 and see how groupthink contributed to the Challenger disaster.

Watch the video and consider the following:

  1. What pressures on Morton Thiokol managers to ignore their engineers’ data and warnings that Challenger launch should not go forward and instead, decide to recommend the launch?
  2. In what ways would the criteria for decision making be different when the VP for Engineering is wearing his “engineering hat” and when he is wearing his “management hat”?
  3. What pressures on NASA officials contributed to groupthink?
  4. What are your thoughts and feelings after viewing these two videos?

Andres Alonso, a Cuban émigré (at age 12), a Harvard lawyer turned educator, and former chief executive officer of the Baltimore City Public Schools, believes that great leadership combines confidence and humility, fortunate context (person, place, time, and luck), the ability to listen, certainty about “what’s important” yet ready to accept the possibility of change, and the ability to help others develop a shared vision. When everything else is spinning, the leader must be still; while at other times, the leader must be the storm.

Watch this video and consider the following:

  1. What does it mean to you when Alonso says, “Good leaders need to know the ‘essentials’ and also leave room for compromise”?
  2. Why would it be important for leaders to combine confidence and humility? What would this look and sound like in a school? How does this contribute to effective conflict management?
  3. Why is it important for the leader to be the most prepared person in the room? Is this true for you?
  4. Why is having good people around you the most important aspect of effective leadership? How might principals ensure that this happens when it comes to problem solving, decision, making, and crisis management?

Chapter 10: Data

Test-based accountability systems – using standardized testing to hold individuals and institutions responsible for performance and to reward achievement – have been cornerstones of U.S. education policy for decades. As a nation, we have invested substantial monies into the testing regimen: from approximately $260 million in 1997 to approximately $700 million in 2009. Research shows that high-stakes assessments can and do motivate change in instructional practice. But critics charge that these changes tend to be superficial adjustments, focused on the content covered and test preparation rather than deep improvements to instructional practice. Are they correct?

Read the article and consider the following:

  1. Describe the four major theories that underlie our reliance on high-stakes tests. In your view as an educator and as a taxpayer, which of these theories offers the most relevant and practical reason for high-stakes testing – and what reasons support your view?
  2. Identify and explain the conclusions drawn from research about whether high-stakes tests are increasing teacher motivation, aligning the educational system, providing information for decision making, and serve as an attractive political strategy.
  3. Which of the “Where Do We Go From Here?” recommendations do you think will be most helpful to principals and teachers – and why?

In this classic article on how formative assessments can improve teaching and learning, Thomas R. Guskey, Professor of Education at the University of Kentucky, sees assessments as integral parts of the instructional process. He writes that teachers who develop useful assessments, provide corrective instruction, and give students second chances to show how success can improve their instruction and help students learn.

Read the article and consider the following:

  1. Why is it important for teachers to consider assessments as an instructional tool to improve teaching and learning rather than an evaluation device?
  2. Explain the difference between “teaching to the test” and “testing what they teach.”
  3. Identify the ways in which teachers can use classroom assessments to improve teaching and learning.
  4. As a principal, what might you say to a teacher whose students performed poorly on a major assessment and, after you asked what accounted for the low class achievement, told you, “I taught them. They just didn’t learn it”?
  5. Describe the differences and similarities between high-quality corrective instruction and reteaching.
  6. Identify those of Guskey’s ideas about assessment that you think you might have the most difficulty persuading teachers to adopt – and give your reasons for your conclusion.

No Child Left Behind’s successor has yet to be written and legislated into law, but one change is certain: School success will depend on whether students’ test scores increase as opposed to simply requiring scores to be above an adequate yearly progress threshold. Growth modeling has influenced this policy shift. But growth modeling is not a panacea, and it brings both benefits and limitations (and cautions) to student achievement testing and educational accountability. Are we relying on it too much?

Read this article and consider the following:

  1. Identify the strengths and weaknesses of growth modeling for educational accountability.
  2. To what extent can growth models be used as the sole or primary basis on which to make high-stakes decisions about teachers (for determining performance pay or promotions), students (to determine passing to the next grade or graduating), or schools (for accreditation or ranking)? Why or why not?

Teacher evaluation in the U.S. needs an overhaul. National policy circles are discussing using value-added methodology as a major part of teacher evaluation – despite its inappropriateness for this purpose. For instance, New York City’s “worst teacher” was recently singled out, named, and labeled by the New York Post after the city’s education department released value-added test-score ratings to the media. In fact, the teacher named was a highly regarded teacher of English Language Learners working at an excellent elementary school. Is using value-added data the way to improve teacher evaluations?

Read the article and consider the following:

  1. Explain why using “value-added methods” for assessing teacher effectiveness for the purpose of making high-stakes decisions about individual teachers is a flawed strategy.
  2. Describe how using value-added methods to determine teacher effectiveness might actually undermine the goals of giving high-needs students the most effective teachers and encouraging teacher collaboration to improve instructional practices.
  3. Describe what Darling-Hammond recommends as practices for teacher evaluation.

Darling-Hammond, L., Beardsley, A.A., Haertel, E., & Rothstein, J. (2012, March). Evaluating teacher evaluation. Kappan,  8 – 15.
http://216.78.200.159/RandD/Phi%20Delta%20Kappan/Evaluating%20Teacher%20Evaluation%20-%20Darling-Hammond.pdf

  • Marsh, J.A., Pane, J.F., and Hamilton, L.S. (2006). Making sense of data-driven decision making in education. Evidence from recent RAND research. Occasional Paper. RAND Education. Retrieved from http://www.rand.org/content/...

“Data-driven” decision making has become an educational mantra. Principals, teachers, and central office personnel are systematically collecting and analyzing various types of data to guide an array of decisions to help improve students’ and schools’ success. Some suggest that educators are “drowning” in it. But are educators interpreting and using data in ways that actually benefit student outcomes? This RAND paper seeks to clarify the ways in which schools and districts are using multiple types of data.

The class will separate into five groups. Each group will read the assigned selection, identify the five most important ideas for future principals, and report their findings to the whole class. Everyone will read the Introduction. After the presentations, the class as a whole will discuss their findings and the implications for future principals.

Group 1: What is Data-Driven Decision Making in Education? (pp. 2–4) (For your presentation, use the graphic on page 3 and explain it to the rest of the class)
Group 2: What Types of Data Are Administrators and Teachers Using? (pp. 4–6)
Group 3: How are Administrators and Teachers Using These Data? (pp. 6–7)
Group 4: What Kinds of Support are Available to Help with Data Use? (pp. 7–8) and What Factors Influence the Use of Data in Decision Making? (pp. 8–9)
Group 5: Implications for Policy and Practice (pp. 9–11)

After all presentations, the class as a whole will discuss:

  1. How well does this report match how your present school is using data to make decisions? In your view, what steps are missing in your own school’s practice that would benefit your data-driven decision making?
  2. In what ways does your school or district provide technical assistance to help teachers and administrators learn how to make sense of the data they are sending to the school to help you make high-quality decisions (and not become confused, misinformed, or make invalid inferences)?

With schools increasingly testing (and testing) for accountability, this video takes a critical look at the testing mania. Four facts: (1) Our students are tested more than at any other time in history and more than other children around the world – and yet American students are achieving much more poorly than many students in other countries than shun standardized testing. (2) Standardized tests often measure superficial thinking. They are not a measure of knowledge or intelligence. (3) Experts condemn basing important decisions for an individual on the result of a single test. (4) Schools across the country are cutting back or eliminating courses in the arts, electives, and recess in order to focus children’s time and attention on test prep. (5) Teachers are being measured and fired on the basis of their students’ test scores.
View the video and consider the following:

  1. Discuss the relationship between a family’s socioeconomic status and their children’s standardized test scores.
  2. Discuss how the over-emphasis on testing may be stifling students’ creativity.
  3. Explain how schools might better use the time for increasing students’ learning, creativity, and other positive educational outcomes if less time were spent on preparing for and taking standardized tests.

This animated video illustrates key ideas that can help educators understand the process of making wise data-driven decisions: use data for actual purposes; seek clarity in what data you want and for what purposes; dig for root causes; only collect data if you will take action on them; leaders need to use data responsibly and habitually to be useful; tease out nuances in data; and provide targeted professional development.

View the video and consider the following:

  1. What does author mean by “authentic uses of data”?
  2. Using the two-column graphic in the video, explain the differences in data and planning between the “Old School” vs “Data Collection” models of decision making.
  3. Given the illustration in the video, will using a smart board help male students become more engaged? Why or why not? Where are the data to show that it will or won’t?

Follow a teacher and student through the school year to see how data help teachers, parents, and others make sure students are meeting education goals. Teachers have access to more quality data than ever on factors like student performance, past behavior, and attendance. When used along with pedagogy, content knowledge, professional judgment, and quality training, these data can be used responsibly to improve outcomes for children.

Watch the video and consider the following:

  1. Describe how teachers can use a variety of data to make students more successful.
  2. Describe how principals can use teachers’ data to help them grow and learn more effective instructional practices.
  3. To what extent are the various data-related practices in this video readily available in your current school? Which elements are most available and which elements are often missing? What is the overall effect on teachers and data use in your school? How can this situation be improved?

Teachers and administrators have been inundated with data from the many tests their students take and are looking for ways to use these data to make lasting improvements in teaching and learning. The problem is using the data constructively and to do so as a team. Harvard University professors and teachers from the Boston Public Schools designed an 8-step improvement process for using school data: prepare (organize for collaborative use and build assessment literacy), inquire (analyze a wide range of data sources including their own teaching, create data overview, dig into student data, and examine instruction), and act (develop and implement an action plan, plan to assess progress, and act and assess). At the end of step 8, the process begins again with a new round of inquiry.

Watch the video and consider the following:

  1. Explain how collaboration is an essential part of the data-wise improvement process.
  2. Identify the steps in the prepare-inquire-act process that are present and effective in your school and which are absent or ineffective. Describe what your school might do to improve the data preparation, inquire, and action process.

Data teams are about transforming teaching practice. Collaborative planning using data helps to drive instruction, helps teachers learn to trust each other, and learn from each other. As a result, teachers can see the direct connection between changing student performance and what they have been doing in their classrooms, identifying and using the best instructional strategies so every child can learn. This video offers teachers’ testimonials about how working

  1. Explain how teachers in data teams can develop the trust necessary to actually open their professional practice to each other and be able to give and receive constructive feedback that helps students learn.
  2. Describe the ways in which data teams increase teachers’ professionalism.
  3. Discuss how the school culture must change from its traditional norms if data teams are to become a realistic and constructive process in a school.
  • YouTube. (2013, September 24). The Use and Misuses of value-Added in Teacher Evaluations: Three Perspectives. Albert Shanker Institute (Time: 1 hour, 57 minutes, 19 seconds). [Note: Unless you a really interested in this discussion, it is OK to end viewing at 1 hour, 3 minutes]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unPH8r3qDs8

Is value-added data ready for “prime time”? Here is a high-quality, balanced, in-depth discussion of the use – and misuse – of value-added and other test-based measures for teacher evaluation. Education research superstars Linda Darling-Hammond (Stanford University Professor of Education), Douglas N. Harris (Tulane University economist), and Thomas Kane (Harvard Graduate School of Education Professor of Education and Economics) share their perspectives on this controversial issue. Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers, moderates. The question about value-added data may be how to use it – rather than whether or not to use it.

Watch the video and consider the following:

  1. Identify the value-added data issues where all three speakers agree and where they disagree.
  2. After considering the three perspectives, discuss the stakes that value-added measures should play in teacher evaluation (from low to high: no value added use in teacher evaluation; use only for identifying patterns of performance, program evaluation; use as a “significant” factor in determining teacher performance; use as one of several measures in teacher evaluation; or use as the primary measure in teacher evaluation) – and your reasons for reaching this conclusion.
  3. In your view, explain the weight you think teacher evaluation should consider student achievement?