Mini Case: Out of the Box Leadership
Your superintendent knows that you are in a doctoral program and that you are undoubtedly learning new and out-of-the-box ways to create schools that meet the needs of all children. She presents you with an incredible opportunity to design and lead a school restructuring with a brand-new model of schooling for children ages 5–12. The first task she would like you to address are the leadership styles you will use in the development, implementation, and monitoring of the restructuring of this school.
Write a 250- to 300-word response to the following:
- Using the discussion of leadership styles in Ch. 9 of
Organizational Behavior in Education, describe how you will lead at each of the 3 stages of restructuring: development, implementation, and monitoring. Include a research-based rationale for each stage.
- Include your own experience, as well as 2 citations that align with or contradict your comments as sourced from peer-reviewed academic journals, industry publications, books, and/or other sources. Cite your sources using APA formatting. If you found contradicting information to what your experience tells you, explain why you agree or disagree with the research.
1131486 - Pearson Education Limited © nd district capacity. Principle 6: Resourcefulness. Restraint and Renewal. We need to use our resources wisely to ensure that we do not exploit or deplete them, and we must renew those resources to sustain high levels of commitment to the mission and vision. Hargreaves and Fink identify three sources of renewal: 1. Trust. A climate of trust enhances the commitment of members to organizational goals. When there is a lack of trust, the organization cannot move forward and PLCs are impossible to form. 2. Confidence. The organization must have expectations of success. Members must be confident they can achieve their goals. 3. Emotion. Positive emotions are necessary to keep the organization moving toward its mission and vision. Fullan calls this principle “cyclical energizing.” Fullan would agree with Kurt Lewin’s concept of the three-step change process as described in Chapter 8 : unfreeze, moving, refreeze. People need productive downtime that reenergizes them for continual improvement. Principle 7: Conservation: History and Legacy. We need to learn from our past successes and failures. We should not forget the past by simply building something new; we should use organizational memory to build on positive cultural norms. However, we should be purposeful about what past practices we want to abandon and what past practices we want to continue or adapt. At the same time, we should not file://view/books/9780133588859/epub/OPS/xhtml/fileP7000491558000000000000000000FD2.html#P7000491558000000000000000000FD2 1131486 - Pearson Education Limited © romanticize the past, which can interfere with our judgment of what was good. Distributed leadership and sustainable leadership concepts are not without their critics. Henry Levin (2006), professor of economics and education at Teachers College of Columbia University, has been critical of the research base for each and doesn’t believe the researchers provide sufficient guidance for practice. But even Levin admits that the work of Spillane on distributed leadership and that of Hargreaves and Fink on sustainable leadership are “useful to generating discussions and further study for students, researchers, and practitioners” (Levin, p. 43). We believe that distributed leadership and sustainable leadership are the right concepts for today’s transformational leaders to implement in schools, and for today’s researchers in school leadership to study. In the final section of this chapter, we present the work of Marzano, Waters, and McNulty (2005) which lends research evidence to these concepts. 1131486 - Pearson Education Limited © Research on Sustainable Leader Behavior We focus on one major research study by Marzano, Waters, and McNulty (2005) for two reasons: (a) it is a meta-analysis that analyzes 69 studies of leadership behaviors correlated to student achievement, and (b) this research has had wide impact on school districts around the United States since it was published. The studies in the meta-analysis include a total of 2,802 schools, representing all school levels, with approximately 1,400,000 students and 14,000 teachers. For each study, “a correlation between general leadership and student achievement was either computed or extracted directly from the study” (p. 30). The typical study used in this meta-analysis had questionnaires asking teachers their perceptions of principal behaviors, rather than asking the principals themselves. The average effect size, which they call a correlation, between leadership and achievement for all studies combined was .25. By school type, the correlations were as follows: .29 for elementary schools, .24 for middle or junior high schools, and .26 for high schools. In a hypothetical example, the authors interpret this result to mean that principals in the top half of a normal distribution when compared to principals in the bottom half would have 25% higher pass rates. This improvement is significant. So what do principals who are top performers do that improves student achievement? Marzano, Waters, and McNulty identified 21 specific behaviors which we list here in Table 9.1 in order of highest to lowest correlation to student achievement. To help our readers interpret these findings, we took liberties with the Marzano, Waters, and McNulty data and categorized the specific behaviors listed in Table 9.1 into general areas of focus in Table 9.2 . Listed next to each area of focus are the item numbers from Table 9.1 . There is 1131486 - Pearson Education Limited © some overlap as some specific behaviors appear in multiple areas of focus, such as item 14, which focuses on communications, school culture, and change leadership. From our analysis of the specific behaviors, there are five associated with instructional leadership. This result is not surprising, considering much of the literature on school leadership in the last 20 years has focused on the importance of instructional leadership in helping teachers and parents improve student learning. Marzano, Waters, and McNulty (2005) also performed a factor analysis that resulted in the 21 behaviors being categorized into two lists of behaviors most associated with two types of change strategies. They found that all 21 behaviors were associated with first-order change, that is, change that is incremental and not very distruptive to school routine or culture. All 21 behaviors, they reported, are necessary for the day-to-day, regular management of the school. They found that seven of the behaviors, however, must be the focus of leaders when attempting second-order change, termed “deep change” that “alters the system in fundamental ways, offering a dramatic shift in direction and requiring new ways of thinking and acting” (p. 66). For second-order change to occur, leaders must emphasize the seven behaviors which are listed below (the item number from Table 9.1 appears in parentheses): 1. Is knowledgeable about current curriculum, instruction and assessment practices (item 6) 2. Inspires and leads new and challenging innovations (item 18) 3. Ensures everyone is aware of current theories and practices and makes discussion of these a regular aspect of the school culture (item 14) 1131486 - Pearson Education Limited © TABLE 9.1 Specific Principal Behaviors and Average Correlations Source: Adapted from Marzano, Waters, and McNulty (2005). 1131486 - Pearson Education Limited © Specific Principal Behavior Average Correlation to Student Achievement 1. Is aware of details and undercurrents in the running of the school and uses the information to address current and potential problems .33 2. Adapts leadership behavior to the needs of the situation and is comfortable with dissent .28 3. Monitors effectiveness of school practices and their impact on learning .27 4. Is an advocate for the school to all stakeholders 5. Protects teachers from issues and influences that detract from their teaching time or focus 6. Is knowledgeable about current curriculum, instruction and assessment practices .25 7. Establishes a set of standard operating procedures and routines 8. Provides teachers with materials and professional development necessary for success 9. Is willing to challenge the status quo 10. Fosters shared beliefs and a sense of 1131486 - Pearson Education Limited © community and cooperation 11. Involves teachers in the design and implementation of important decisions and policies 12. Recognizes and rewards individual accomplishments .24 13. Establishes clear goals and keeps those goals in the forefront of the school’s attention 14. Ensures everyone is aware of current theories and practices and makes discussion of these a regular aspect of the school culture 15. Establishes strong lines of communication with teachers and students .23 16. Communicates and operates from strong ideals and beliefs about schooling .22 17. Is directly involved in the design and implementation of curriculum, instruction, and assessment practices .20 18. Inspires and leads new and challenging innovations 19. Has quality contact and interactions with teachers and students 20. Recognizes and celebrates accomplishments and acknowledges failures .19 1131486 - Pearson Education Limited © 21. Demonstrates an awareness of the personal aspects of teachers and staff .18 TABLE 9.2 Areas of Focus for Specific Principal Behaviors Areas of Focus Item Numbers from Table 8.1 Instructional leadership (includes professional development) 3, 6, 8, 14, 17 Communications 4, 14, 15, 16 Change leadership 9, 13, 18 Decision making and problem solving 1, 2, 11 School culture 10, 14, 16 Relationship building 19, 21 Recognition 12, 20 Order and discipline 5, 7 4. Is willing to challenge the status quo (item 9) 5. Monitors effectiveness of school practices and their impact on learning (item 3) �. Adapts leadership behavior to the needs of the situation and is comfortable with dissent (item 2) 7. Communicates and operates from strong ideals and beliefs about schooling (item 16) 1131486 - Pearson Education Limited © They warn us, however, that four other behaviors are negatively associated with second-order change: 1. Fosters shared beliefs and a sense of community and cooperation (item 10) 2. Establishes strong lines of communication with teachers and students (item 15) 3. Establishes a set of standard operating procedures and routines (item 7) 4. Involves teachers in the design and implementation of important decisions and policies (item 11) Deep change can result in certain faculty and staff becoming alienated and principals “pay a certain price for the implementation of a second-order change innovation” (p. 74). Principals who use the 21 specific behaviors in the Marzano, Waters, and McNulty study are clearly demonstrating transformational and moral leadership. Leadership is distributed and it will sustain over time. 1131486 - Pearson Education Limited © Final Thoughts This chapter began with a discussion of the difference between leadership and command, with particular attention to the differences in the role of power in both leadership and command. Clearly, organizational leaders have a range of theories of leadership from which to choose in selecting a leadership style. For example, one may choose to use a traditional, top-down, directive approach, often thought of as bureaucratic. Such an approach assumes that the best information and the best ideas for solving problems are found in the upper echelon of the organization and should be passed down the line to be implemented by those in the lower echelons. This approach predictably creates a transactional relationship with followers in which motivation and effort are circumscribed by the expectations inherent in the agreed-upon transactional relationship. An alternative is to choose a more collaborative, or transformative, leadership style in working with others, in the belief that useful information and good ideas may well be found anywhere in the organization and should be shared in the leadership process. At its best, collaborative leadership creates a transformational relationship with followers in which they are motivated by uniting with others in a mutual commitment to share in solving problems and creating solutions, as well as by the sense of mutual effort, or team membership, involved. But the major factor in deciding which approach to use in exercising leadership lies in the belief that one approach is more effective in producing better outcomes than the other. Educational organizations today are confronted by demands for near-constant change in dealing with problems that are highly complex, often poorly understood, and ambiguous 1131486 - Pearson Education Limited © —and with outcomes that are uncertain. Organizations must be nimble, adaptable, and responsive