I wonder if we could support Principals more effectively…..

April 12, 2021

I wonder if….. we could support Principals differently?

Much has been written about the impact of effective Principal leadership on teacher performance and on student achievement.

At the top of John Hattie’s list of factors related to student achievement is Collective Teacher Efficacy. Listen to Dr. Hattie’s one minute definition of Collective Teacher Efficacy.

Collective Teacher Efficacy developed and sustained through Principal Leadership.

From the Wallace Foundation Blog Why should school districts invest in Principals is an article with the Principal Leadership Behaviors attributes presented in a graphic in Figure 7:2 -

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In Six ways of understanding leadership development: An exploration of increasing complexity the authors conclude:

“When people talk about leadership development, they cannot take for granted that everyone understands it in the same way. We found six qualitatively different ways of understanding leadership development. The core in leadership development is that a person becomes better as a leader, but its meaning ranges from an initial focus on a specific person’s development to an expanded way of connecting individual development to organizational targets and visions and to leadership development as a group accomplishment. The outcome that there is an increasing complexity in the understanding of the leadership development has the potential to make leadership development fundamentally developmental. It can be used to improve the design of leadership development activities as well as to inform the practice of tailoring leadership development activities to better match individuals and organizational needs and contexts. This would mean meeting people where they are, but also creating designs that sequence the belief and expectations of leadership development. Furthermore, the results may assist researchers and professionals in making their own and others’ assumptions on leadership development explicit. The results can be used as a framework for rethinking leadership development with a genuine contribution by making leadership development developmental and exploring the implicit assumptions of leadership development.”

Supporting Principals for the complex leadership task before them might need to be designed differently, more deliberately, and more developmentally.