The Case for Expanding Standards for Teacher Evaluation to Include an Instructional Supervision Perspective

Despite the concerns of scholars in the field of instructional supervision, teacher evaluations continue to emphasize bureaucratic accountability and standardization. This article presents an argument for extending the Joint Committee on Standards' Personnel Evaluation Standards to include standards related to the practice of supervision. The proposed standards call for differentiated procedures, collaborative identification of teachers' professional development goals, multiple sources of data, emphasis on formative evaluation processes, consideration of both teachers' personal development goals and school/program improvement goals, and the formalization of formative evaluation processes to achieve clear and shared understanding of their purpose and goals. These standards would align teacher evaluation with aspects of instructional supervision namely,clarification and shared understanding of the process and purpose of evaluations, interpretation of teaching performance in the context of teachers' classrooms and professional values, and deliberation with teachers about how evaluation evidence depicts and informs their work.Patricia Holland is Associate Professor in Educational Leadership and Cultural Studies at the University of Houston. Her research in the areas of instuctional supervision and teachers’ professional development emphasizes the interpretive nature of practice in these areas.     

Disentangling school leadership and its ties to instructional practices – an empirical comparison of various leadership styles

This paper investigates the direct and indirect ties between various leadership styles, namely, instructional, transformational, transactional, and laissez-faire leadership, and the instructional practices of teachers by applying a structural equation model. For this purpose, we analyzed survey data of n = 3,746 teachers from 126 schools collected by the Hamburg school inspection in Germany between 2012 and 2015. The underlying model is based on Leithwood’s framework for guiding research on leader effects on learning and instruction. First, the results show that a bi-factor model seems to be the best measurement model. Next, it is shown that mediating variables are influenced by a leadership core as well as by different leadership facets. Third, we found that for influencing complex instructional practices like cognitive activation with challenging content, a combination of leadership styles is most promising, while for classroom management instructional leadership is the only and, thus, the primary determinant.     

Beyond the power of one: redesigning the work of school principals

There is mounting international research evidence that the work of school principals is increasingly difficult, time consuming and more unattractive to prospective applicants. We suggest that the solution to this situation lies in redesigning the work that principals do. Using the New London Group’s (1996) definition of design as both process and product and as a hybrid of existing resources, we offer five cases of redesign: distributed pedagogical leadership, co-principalship, shared principalship, multi-campus principalship, and community-based principalship. We argue that these examples show that redesigns that focus on the school, rather than on the work of the principal, have more far-reaching effects, but are also much more vulnerable to context. We propose three emerging principles for redesign viz. developing a strong warrant for redesign, attending to infrastructure and building organic relations between school and community.     

Bottling fog? The quest for instructional management

Elsewhere, the authors have unpacked instructional leadership and have documented that such leadership is associated with more effective schools. Indeed, there has been for a considerable time nearly universal acceptance that learning-centered leadership should provide the central platform on which leadership is enacted. In this paper, a less sanguine narrative is provided on instructional management. Specifically, it documents that for all the evidence and recognition of importance, learning-focused leadership remains a small domain of action for leaders at the school and district levels. It then focuses on both the culture of the profession of school administration and the nature of schooling to explain why in the face of considerable energy and effort only marginal improvements have been realized in deepening instructional leadership. It closes with an analysis of possible paths going forward.     

学校领导的新进展：从教学领导到转型领导

学校领导的研究已有100余年的历史,20世纪80年代后出现了两种占主导地位的领导范式:教学领导和转型领导。前者强调自上而下的控制;后者强调自下至上的参与式改革,是一种分享式的领导范式。教学领导凭借管理与控制组织成员导向既定的目标;转型领导则通过提升组织成员的期望值来憧憬、创造未来。鉴于两者的优点与不足,未来的领导范式将是两者的有机整合。     

教学领导的概念创生与理论演进——基于菲利普·海林杰教授访谈的叙事与思考

教学领导是教育领导领域十分重要且经典的理论模型,自上世纪80年代被提出以后,至今仍对理论和实践具有重要的影响力。本世纪以来,伴随"为学习的领导"研究热潮的兴起,教学领导理论再次得到关注。基于对教学领导理论和工具的主要创立者—菲利普·海林杰(Philip Hallinger)教授的专题访问,文章从亲历者和见证人的视角还原了这个标志性教育领导理论创生的历史过程,呈现了其在竞争性领导理论、多元文化情境以及不断升级的教育改革实践所编织的复杂背景中起落沉浮、渐进演化的脉络图景。文章最后着眼于教育领导研究日趋多元的发展格局,对本领域研究从哪里来、到哪里去的根本性议题进行了反思与展望。     

美国现行教学督导系统及其特征

教学督导是美国教育督导的特色部分.教学督导为教师提供服务,通过向教师提供改进教学的专门帮助,来改进学生的学业成绩.强调服务和帮助,是美国教学督导的一大特色.本文在描述美国教学督导现状的基础上探讨了美国教学督导的特征.     

走课——美国中小学校长教学领导的新举措

发挥教学领导的作用,是中小学校长的一项重要职责。如何有效地履行教学领导的职责,是许多中小学校长所关心的。在这方面,美国中小学校长在其教学领导中采用的“走课”,为我们提供了有益的借鉴与启示。本文主要介绍了“走课”的缘起与内涵、程序与方法,以及它的优点与局限。     

试论幼儿园园长教学领导

教学领导是一种新的教学管理理念。借鉴现代领导理念及校长教学领导的已有研究,对园长教学领导的内涵、角色进行了界定,并从理念、实战两个层面对有效实拖园长教学领导提出了建议,以期为提高幼儿园教学管理水平提供一定参考。     

School principals’ evaluations of their instructional leadership behaviours: realities vs. ideals

The purpose of the current study was to examine primary and middle school principals’ evaluations of their own instructional leadership behaviours, and thereby pay closer attention to the ideal instructional leadership behaviours suggested in the related literature and the realities of principals’ instructional leadership behaviours. Although studies in the instructional leadership literature have vastly examined instructional leadership and its relationship with various variables, few studies have focused on school principals’ evaluations of their instructional leadership behaviours using a qualitative approach. This study was framed to contribute to gain an insight into the essential characteristics of instructional leadership in Turkey and to suggest some educational implications for school leadership in a Turkish context. The researchers conducted a qualitative case study in a large city in South-eastern Turkey in the academic year of 2012–2013. The study group consisted of 11 primary and middle school principals chosen via a maximum variation sampling technique. It was found that some of the school principals painstakingly tried to improve school-related factors which may potentially increase positive student outcomes. However, they were not able to display some instructional leadership behaviours such as change management, promoting teachers’ professional growth, collaborating with teachers and forming a positive learning environment due to multifarious reasons. The study concludes by presenting implications for the development of school principals as instructional leaders in Turkey.     

Agency and Structure: Principals’ Ability to Bring about Sustainable Improvement in Underperforming Schools in South Africa

This article reports on a study of which the purpose was to understand the role of principals in changing underperforming schools towards sustainable improvement in one circuit area of North-West, South Africa. School principals play a crucial role in guiding schools towards sustainable improvement by shaping a vision of academic success for all learners. Managing teaching is one of the core modules in South Africa’s new national qualification for school principals, and that being the case, principals should play a central role in effecting the educational transformation of all learners. The quality of principals’ leadership is the key factor driving the transformational turnaround and improvement required in schools. They perform a highly complex and dynamic role in enhancing and sustaining school improvement. It was the goal of this qualitative study to explore cultural, structural, and agential challenges faced by principals in their effort to provide for change and improvement in their schools. Six schools were purposefully selected to participate in the study and semi-structured interviews were used to gather data from the principals. The study established that paying attention to cultural, structural and agential factors in schools increases their ability to sustain learner improvement.     

Perceptions of elementary teachers on the instructional leadership role of school principals

In this research, elementary school principals＇ instructional leadership behavior was evaluated based on the perceptions of elementary school teachers. The research is believed to contribute to the development of instructional leadership behavior of elementary school principals for the development of school organization. A ＂semi-structured interview technique＂, one of the qualitative research methods in the literature was used in the research. The study group was made up of elementary school teachers working in Nigde, Turkey, during the 2008-2009 academic year. For the study sample, one teacher from each school was selected at random, resulting in group of twenty elementary school teachers. Based on the content analysis, five themes of instructional leadership behavior were found. These themes are： （1） determination of the school＇s purpose; （2） management of instruction; （3） evaluation of students; （4） support to teachers; and （5） creation of a regular learning-teaching environment.