Leading Schools Successfully: Stories from the field considers international research focussing on leadership in schools. Based on the ISSPP (International Successful School Principalship Project) which has conducted over one hundred multiple perspective case studies of successful school principals from more than a dozen countries, the book captures the exhilaration of being a principal who grows and sustains success from those practitioners who are acknowledged as exhibiting outstanding leadership. Whilst much is known about successful school leaders, the book reinforces the argument that it is neither possible, nor appropriate, to generalise specific strategies that should be adopted to ensure success for all schools at all times in all settings. Instead, success calls for a high level of judgement, wisdom, artistry and sheer hard work on the part of principals, adapting for their particular context the knowledge about leading schools successfully. Reflection sections in each chapter ask the reader to consider further issues which each chapter raises. Topics considered include: - the importance of school principals to school success - turning around under-performing schools - values-led leadership -sustaining successful leadership - leading in multi-cultural settings - issues and implications for the future. With international contributions from experts in the field, the book offers a new perspective on leadership in schools and will be of interest to school principals and researchers.
What’s missing in education reform in the United States? The answer is leadership; specifically, the ability of school and district leaders to construct and continually nurture a culture of sustained high performance. A true leader needs to have not only a vision of the desired culture, but the skills and information necessary to make that vision a reality. Providing a combined 70 years of classroom and administrative experience, renowned authors James Guthrie and Patrick Schuermann offer a practice-based approach, grounded in research and theory, to achieving and maintaining an atmosphere of success in schools through effective leadership.
LEADING SCHOOL TURNAROUND Leading School Turnaround offers new perspectives and concrete, evidence-based guidelines for the educational leaders and administrators faced with the challenge of turning our low-performing schools around. Using the tools outlined in this groundbreaking book, school leaders can guide their schools to higher levels of achievement and sustained academic success. Based on research conducted in the United States, Canada, and England, Leading School Turnaround addresses in three parts the dynamic context of the turnaround environment, what turnaround leaders do, and the incredible challenges of moving from turnaround to "stay around." Filled with illustrative examples, the book outlines the best practices and behaviors successful turnaround leaders exercise. The authors include detailed information for applying the four main categories of turnaround leadership: direction setting, developing people, redesigning the school, and managing the instructional program. This important resource can help any school leader get their school back on the track to academic success.
The leadership of schools can make a significant difference to enhancing the life chances of students in schools and enabling them to succeed. This book examines leadership within schools, focusing on securing success within a challenging social and political environment. It explores the approaches to leadership adopted by four successful secondary school headteachers in a local authority situated in an area of high social deprivation and identifies the impact the headteachers of these schools have on staff, students and community. It analyses the key leadership strategies of these successful school leaders, strategies that can be deployed in all schools, and explores the links between leadership theories and leadership actions. The book goes on to examine how these strategies were actually implemented in a failing school in challenging circumstances and shows how other schools might benefit from such strategies and the insights on which they are based.
Our fourth book in the International Research on School Leadership series focuses on school leadership in an era of high stakes accountability. Fueled by sweeping federal education accountability reforms, such as the United States’ No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and Race to the Top (R2T) and Australia’s Performance Measurement and Reporting Taskforce, school systems around the world are being forced to increase academic standards, participate in high-stakes testing, and raise evaluation standards for teachers and principals. These results-driven reforms are intended to hold educators “accountable for student learning and accountable to the public” (Anderson, 2005, p. 2, emphasis in original). While policymakers and the public debate the merits of student achievement accountability measures, P-12 educational leaders do not have the luxury to wait for clear guidance and resources to improve their schools and operating systems. Instead, successful leaders must balance the need to create learning communities, manage the organizational climate, and encourage community involvement with the consequences testing has on teacher morale and public scrutiny. The chapters in this volume clearly indicate that as school leaders attend to these potentially competing forces, this affects their problem-solving strategies, ability to facilitate change, and encourage community involvement. We were delighted with the responses from colleagues around the world who were eager to share their research dealing with how leaders are functioning effectively within a high-accountability environment. The nine chapters in this volume provide empirical evidence of the strategies school leaders use to cope with problems and negotiate external demands while improving student performance. In particular, the voices and actions of principals, superintendents, and school board members are captured in a blend of quantitative and qualitative studies. The breadth of studies is impressive, ranging from case studies of individual principals to cross-district comparisons to national data from the National Center for Education Statistics. To highlight important findings, we have organized the book into five sections. The first section (Chapters 2, 3, and 4) highlights the problem-solving strategies used by principals and superintendents when pressured to turn around low-performing schools. In the second section (Chapters 5 and 6), attention is devoted to ways in which school leaders act as “buffers” by reducing the impact of external demands within their local school contexts. Next, Chapters 7 and 8 explore creative ways in which financial analyses can be used to assess the cost effectiveness of programs and services. Chapters 9 and 10 examine how principals enact their instructional leadership roles in managing curriculum reforms and evaluating teachers. Finally, in the last section (Chapter 11), Kenneth Leithwood synthesizes the major themes and ideas emerging across these chapters, paying particular attention to practical issues influencing school leaders in this era of school reform and accountability as well as promising areas for future research.
A school leadership model for surviving hyper-change From social media to evolving safety issues to constant school reform, today’s school leaders face unprecedented disruption. How can educators prepare students for a globalized world when many institutions are not ready for the constantly changing 21st century? With an eye on the past and a vision for the future, Carter and White draw the blueprint for adapting schools to ever-changing times. • A comprehensive history of disruption in American schools as a lens for understanding accelerated change • Practical exercises and real-life examples for reshaping education in the 21st century • A grounded examination of radical disruptions schools will face in the years to come
This timely book shows how award-winning secondary schools and districts are successfully using technology and making systemic changes to increase student engagement, improve achievement, and re-invigorate the teaching and learning process. Through in-depth case studies, we see how experienced school and district leaders use technology in curricular, administrative, and analytical ways to meet the needs of 21st-century learners, educators, and communities. These cases reveal important details addressed by the leadership of these schools and districts that go beyond what they did with technology to include changes in school culture, curriculum and teaching, uses of assessment data, financial considerations, infrastructure, and involvement with the community.
This book is based on the largest and most extensive empirical study of contemporary leadership in primary and secondary schools in England. The results demonstrate that heads of successful schools improve the quality of student learning and achievement through who they are – their values, virtues, dispositions and competencies – as well as their timely use of change and improvement strategies. Successful School Leadership provides a comprehensive analysis of the values and qualities of head teachers. It assesses the strategies they use and how they adapt these to their particular school context in order to ensure positive increases in the learning, well being and achievement of their students. The authors: Identify a basic set of leadership practices resulting from their findings Analyse and describe the leadership values, qualities and behaviours related to different phases in schools’ improvement journeys Provide illustrative case studies of primary and secondary schools that highlight context sensitive strategies Provide a contemporary overview of international research and thinking about successful school leadership Recognize similar and distinguishing features between schools in different socio-economic groups This book is valuable reading for…school leaders and senior teachers, educational policy makers and advisors, as well as anyone involved or interested in education and its leadership.
The leadership of schools can make a significant difference to enhancing the life chances of students in schools and enabling them to succeed. This book examines leadership within schools, focusing on securing success within a challenging social and political environment. It explores the approaches to leadership adopted by four successful secondary school headteachers in a local authority situated in an area of high social deprivation and identifies the impact the headteachers of these schools have on staff, students and community. It analyses the key leadership strategies of these successful school leaders, strategies that can be deployed in all schools, and explores the links between leadership theories and leadership actions. The book goes on to examine how these strategies were actually implemented in a failing school in challenging circumstances and shows how other schools might benefit from such strategies and the insights on which they are based.
This book contributes significantly to our understanding of successful school leaders by describing similarities and differences in the work of such leaders in countries ranging from England to Australia, the United States to Norway, and Sweden to Hong Kong. Bringing together case study research, the book helps explain what all successful principals do and the ways in which context shapes some of their work.
