Session Information
26 SES 06 A, Successful Leadership Research: New Directions for the International Successful School Principalship Project
Symposium
Contribution
In this paper, we recap the history and evolution of ISSPP research in the USA with research teams that grew from one location (Buffalo, NY) in 2002 to seven teams at present. Drawing on a meta-analysis of leadership studies in the United States and other Western countries, including effective schools research on high-needs U.S. schools, Leithwood and Riehl (2005) identified four core practices necessary but not sufficient for success in any context: 1. Setting directions 2. Developing people 3. Redesigning the organization 4. Managing the instructional program These four core practices were used as a common analytical framework for analyzing interview data within and across the U.S.A. cases. All of the cases were selected with a common sampling strategy whereby we purposely selected schools with improved student outcomes and nominations by school district leaders and organizations. Some research teams focus on public schools while others include religious schools; some schools are situated in districts that have tighter coupling with support within accountability mandates and district systems while others have more loose coupling whereby schools seek out programs and innovations on their own initiative. Data sources include semi-structured qualitative interviews with the district leaders, principal, teachers, parents, and students in order to provide a more elaborated understanding of the phenomena i.e., school success and the principal’s leadership contribution to that success. Successful principals in New York, Massachusetts, Texas, South Carolina, Arizona and Indiana set directions and developed people around a school direction and redesigned the school organizations around collaboration. Like the Buffalo cases, these school leaders provided sustained professional development aimed at improved instructional practices and used data as a source of reflection and planning. At the same time, the additional U.S. cases conducted over the past fifteen years reflect increased leadership attention on the needs of increasingly diverse students from internal demographic shifts as well as global population migrations. While some of the principals grew up in the neighborhood areas or communities in which their schools were situated, that was not the case for all of the principals. The principals were conscious of their own histories and were committed to learning about the history of the school and surrounding community. These cases of successful principals in high-needs Northeast, Southeast, Southwest and Midwest U.S. schools provide qualitative, contextualized understandings of school success and principal contributions to that success at particular points in time over the past 20 years.
References
Byrne, D., & Callaghan, G. (2013). Complexity theory and the social sciences: The state of the art. Routledge. Leithwood, K., Day, C., Sammons, P., Harris, A., & Hopkins, D. (2006). Successful school leadership: What it is and how it influences pupil learning. Leithwood, K., & Riehl, C. (2005). What do we already know about educational leadership. A new agenda for research in educational leadership, 12.
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