EDU 8672
Instructional Leadership

Project Links:

1. The Instructional Leadership Statement

ENVISIONING INSTRUCTIONAL
LEADERSHIP PRACTICE

From the first day of class, students will be challenged to reflect upon their experiences of "learning to teach," their satisfaction and dissatisfaction with staff development programs, as well as their hopes and aspirations about what teaching can be and how principals and other academic administrators have hindered the professional development of teachers. Because of this experienced failure of instructional leadership, many teachers have been left feeling frustrated and isolated while many other teachers have left the profession never having achieved their hopes and aspirations for themselves and their students. What a great loss this is for American education, in general, and for students, in particular!

At the same time, however, this experienced failure of instructional leadership also seduces students to believe, for the most part falsely, that they have the sure prescription to ameliorate the symptoms of the disease. The general notion is that "If they'd only do things the way I want them done, then everything would be fine."

While this notion may make sense, its assumptions are faulty.

First, not only does this notion demonstrate a fundamental lack of understanding about what leadership really is, it also reveals a fundamental insensitivity to the cognitive complexities associated with successful leadership. Such criticism evidences a "unitary" approach to solving "problems" rather than a multi-framed (Bolman & Deal, 1997), multi-imaged (Morgan, 1997), or multi-tooled (McWhinney, Webber, Smith, & Novokowsky, 1997) pathway to resolve the issue―and the implicit values conflict―manifesting itself in these and other such problems.

Second, this notion also implies that one already knows what teacher "professionalism" involves because one has already developed the expertise―learned through experience―to capably identify what one (and others) need to learn. Once again, one's professional ideals remain just that if they are not refined and perfected through the oftentimes harsh realities of working with colleagues, young people, and parents in schools. There are many experiences that novice and accomplished teachers must learn from if they are to become expert teachers who exhibit professional wisdom in actual practice episodes (Berliner, 1986; Carter, 1990; Kagan, 1992).

The purpose for formulating what will become a provisional "Instructional Leadership Statement"―after all, one's vision of instructional leadership will change with time and experience just as one's vision of teaching has changed over the years―is to explicate and clarify one's hopes and professional experience along with what one's research suggests. This statement, then, challenges the student to envision the broad terrain of instructional leadership, to consider how one might navigate it, and to identify how instructional leadership is crucial for teacher professional development. A good statement will enable the student, one day as an instructional leader, to promote an agenda intended to decrease the feelings of frustration and isolation that many teachers experience and to increase the feelings of self-efficacy among all teachers as they achieve their professional goals for themselves and their students as a learning community. Yes, instructional leadership is central to educational reform!

Approaching the Course Project:

Beginning on the very first day of EDUC 8672, the student will begin formulating an Instructional Leadership Statement which will state concisely what the student believes instructional leadership involves and requires. This statement will concern itself with the responsibilities the student believes an experienced educator accepts to ensure that the people, the process, and the technology of schooling—teaching and learning—deliver on their promise to form capable and responsible young adult citizens who live in a culturally diverse and pluralistic democratic republic. Topics a student might include in one's Instructional Leadership Statement include, among others: developing a mission and goals and translating them into professional practice; managing the educational production function; promoting an academic learning climate; and, developing a supportive work environment (Murphy, 1990, p. 169). A student might also reflect upon one's experience in education and identify those elements of successful and failed instructional leadership one has experienced first hand and, then, incorporate all of these ruminations in one's Instructional Leadership Statement.

As the course progresses, the student will read course-related literature, study additional research as well as consider the materials presented and discussed in class. Also, the student will receive feedback concerning one's provisional work from the professor as well as one's classmates. All the while, the student should be outlining, filling in, and revising one's tentative ruminations about instructional leadership that will coalesce, at semester's end, in one's provisional yet intellectually refined "Instructional Leadership Statement" representing the student’s comprehensive and coherent vision and plan for successful instructional leadership practice. When completed, the Instructional Leadership Statement will comprise Section #1 of the Professional Development Portfolio.

One way the student might approach writing the Instructional Leadership Statement is to keep a notebook, diary, or log of one's thoughts as they emerge and recede throughout the course, organizing and synthesizing these thoughts as common strands become clearer. The purpose for continually revising one's thoughts is to ensure that one's ideas about instructional leadership, teacher learning, and professional development, in particular, are rooted in research, reflection, and learning...not simply one's prejudices learned as a consequence of the successes and failures of instructional leadership.

The final Instructional Leadership Statement should be about five pages in length and is to be placed in the first section of the student's Professional Development Portfolio. Many of the ideas and concepts that will spur a student's reflections will be stimulated by the course-related literature, online sources, and other primary and secondary source literature that the student independently studies. Any important, but ancillary information should be placed in the Appendix. The student should remember that this assignment must conform with the standards identified in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (5th ed.). Lastly, the Instructional Leadership Statement accounts for twenty percent (20%) of the student's final grade.

References

Berliner, D. C.  (1986).  In pursuit of the expert pedagogue. Educational Researcher, 15(7), 5-13.

Bolman, L., & Deal, T.  (1997).  Reframing organizations: Artistry, choice, and leadership (2^nd ed.).  San Francisco: Jossey Bass.

Carter, K.  (1990).  Teachers’ knowledge and learning to teach.  In W. R. Houston (Ed.), Handbook of research on teacher education (pp. 291-310).  New York: Macmillan.

Kagan, D. M.  (1992).  Professional growth among preservice and beginning teachers. Review of Educational Research, 62(2), 129-169.

McWhinney, W., Webber, J. B., Smith, D. M., & Novokowsky, B. J. (1997). Creating paths of change: Managing issues and resolving problems in organizations (2^nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publication, Inc.

Morgan, G.  (1997).  Images of organization (2nd ed.).  Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.