Leadership for Tomorrow
Researchers have told us many things about the skills needed by a leader of any educational institution of yesterday, however, what can we look forward to for tomorrow? Where are we as leaders heading? With the demands for accountability of schools and leaders by educational stakeholders, what do we do next in an attempt to meet these new benchmarks for success as a leader?
One of the current trends in education is school and instructional improvement; nation-wide efforts formulated an attempt to meet the needs of students. In Dr. Michael Fullan’s book, “Change Forces”, he presents a theory of action that has helped to guide many building administrators as they are surrounded by the stress and tensions between the school system’s expectations and the school’s variability. In other word, how do principals handle this new level tension based upon being held accountable for student success and achievement along with their efforts to improve student instruction. Fullan presents the following five basic principles of school improvement;
- Principals are the key actors in instructional improvement.
- Each school setting presents a unique set of attributes to another unique series of school improvement issues.
- Sustained school improvement is a bi-lateral effort between teachers and principals.
- Common work amongst teachers and principals is a great source of power for school-wide improvement.
- Instructional improvement is primarily about student achievement.
The principals of tomorrow are going to be required to possess the skills necessary to align student success with necessary school improvement efforts. School improvement is only one of many issues that make the job of a school principal extremely complex and at times extremely difficult.
There a number of barriers to school leadership. We too often hear from principals that time is one of their greatest concerns and needs. This barrier can be linked to two other barriers of over responsibility and under responsibility of building principals. The overresponsible principal is about the principal who takes all of the responsibility for all things while the under responsibility described the principal that assumes minimal responsibility for anything. However, neither of these responsibilities has proven successful for principals, rather a great majority of these two types of principals have seen failure in their leadership.
Principals of tomorrow will need to have a moral purpose. Moral purpose is principals defining a system where all students can learn and the gap between high and low performing students is greatly reduced. It becomes the responsibility of the school principal to be all things to the school, teachers, parents, and students. Principals must be an instructional leader to ensure the alignment of curriculum and instruction to meet the needs of their students; principals must be a manager of resources to provide guidance wise utilization and conservation of resources; counselor to meet the needs of staff, students, and parents when the need arises; liaison and/or arbitrator between feuding entities; principals need to be educational researchers constantly searching for the most recent theories of learning and instructional that will help the school staff meet the educational needs of the students; and an educational resource of knowledge and information to be able to provide requested information to their staffs. What will emerge as the moral purpose of the leader from the total responsibility package of a building principal?
The principals of the future will need to have political savvy to able to communicate their staffs’ and students’ needs to the local school districts, regional board, state boards, and parents in a politically correct manner attempting not to offend any of the interested stakeholders. Schools are becoming more and more politically driven in attempt to gather support from various types of stakeholders to help promote the needs of students in meeting No Child Left Behind standards.
Check out the following websites to find out more information about what it will take to be an educational leader for tomorrow.
Websites for further information
Developing Successful Principals
http://www.ncsl.org/programs/educ/wallacereport.htm
School Leadership: A Profile
http://leo.oise.utoronto.ca/~vsvede/
School Leadership and Student Motivation
http://www.ericdigests.org/1992-3/school.htm
ISLLC Standards
http://www.ccsso.org/projects/Interstate_Consortium_on_School_Leadership/ISLLC_Standards/
References
Fullan, Michael (2003). The Moral Imperative of School Leadership. Corwin Press. Thousand Oaks, CA.
Fullan, Michael (1999). Change Forces; The Sequel. Flamer Press. Philadephia, PA.
Kuhns, Gregory M.(2005). The Connection Between Leadership and Pedagogy. West Virginia University Dissertations.
Kouzes, J. M. & Posner, B. Z. (2003). Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
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Posted on December 14, 2007 by gkuhns | Filed Under Leadership
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