Resources

• Thomas, M.D. and Bainbridge, W.L. (2001, May). ‘All children can learn.’ Facts and fallacies. Phi Delta Kappan, 82(9), 660 – 662. http://schoolmatch.com/
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The Effective Schools movement advanced the belief that school practices and policies can make a positive difference, even for children from low-income homes. In this article, Thomas and Bainbridge write that the popular mantra, “All Children Can Learn” has been interpreted simplistically in ways that undermine struggling schools’ attempts to adopt more effective practices. They name four fallacies and three unintended consequences of this misunderstanding.

The four fallacies of the simplistic interpretation:

• The fallacy that all children can learn at the same level and in the same amount of time.
• The fallacy of the principal as the sole instructional leader.
• The fallacy of setting standards based on exceptions; and
• The fallacy of uniform standards for all children.

The three unintended consequences of the simplistic interpretation:

• Establishing accountability based on state-developed tests.
• Downplaying the need for early intervention for children who live in poverty.
• Using punishment as a motivator to improve schools.

After each student reads the article independently, the class will form seven work groups, one for each fallacy and unintended consequences. The group will re-read the article sections that relate to their topic, discuss their topic to determine its meaning, and decide whether they agree or disagree with the authors.

Each group will then prepare a 2-minute presentation about how their fallacy or unintended consequence may be used to further underserve diverse students. The group will conclude their presentation with examples from schools to illustrate what might be happening in schools if their topic were understood accurately and acted on correctly and suggest relevant educational and social policy recommendations.

After the seven presentations, the class will discuss how they as teachers and future principals can accurately explain to other educators what “All children can learn” should mean and how their understanding and instructional practices can support every child’s academic learning to higher levels.

• Spiegel, A. (2013, September 17). Teachers’ expectations can influence how students perform. National Public Radio. [Comes with “Listen to the Story”, 8 minutes, 31 seconds]. http://www.npr.org/
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Teachers interact differently with students whom they expect to succeed – as compared with those whom they do not expect to succeed. Teachers’ expectations can affect the performance of the children they teach.

Read the article and answer the following questions:

• 1. Describe Rosenthal’s experiment and his findings about how teachers’ expectations about students “on the verge of an intense intellectual bloom” influenced both the teachers’ behaviors and the students’ academic progress and IQ.
• 2. Review Robert Pianta’s “7 Way Teachers Can Change Their Expectations” and rate yourself from 1 (lowest) to 5 (highest) on each of these behaviors. Identity the three in which you believe you are currently the most competent and the three behaviors that you believe you need to work on.
• 3. Discuss your self-assessment with a partner. Describe an incident about your best or worst teacher, bosses, or supervisors from the “Reflect” activity. Tell about a time your use of one of these behaviors led to one (or more) students’ increased learning and achievement.
• 4. As a class, discuss the article and how the self-assessment is going to influence your teaching practice. When and how can you begin strengthening those teaching behaviors in which you need the most growth?

• Murphy, J.F., Weil, M., Hallinger, P. and Mitman, A. (1982). Academic press: Translating high expectations into school policies and classroom practice. Educational Leadership, 40 (3), 22 – 26. http://www.ascd.org/
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This classic and still relevant article explains that school wide policies are the foundation for practices that promote student behaviors that lead to achievement and positive self-concept. The authors write that teachers’ and administrators’ beliefs about students’ performance are more likely to become part of the school’s policies and classroom practices when they are expressed through a school norm of staff responsibility for student learning. Schools express these norms in school policy (regarding school function and structure and policies on student progress) and classroom practices (establishing an academically demanding climate; conducting an orderly well-managed classroom; ensuring student academic success; implementing instructional practices that promote student achievement; and providing opportunities for student responsibility and leadership).

• 1. After reading the article individually, students will form four groups to further consider school policies and practices that convey academic press (Figure 2, p. 24): (1) policies on school function and structure; (2) policies on student progress; (3) classroom practices on establishing an academically demanding climate and conducting an orderly well-managed classroom; and (4) ensuring student academic success, implementing instructional practices that promote student achievement, and providing opportunities for student responsibility and leadership (p. 23). Each group will re-read the sections describing their topic areas and prepare a 2-minute presentation defining their topic and giving examples of what their area looks like and sounds like in schools.
• 2. After the presentations, the class will discuss the academic press policies and practices that they routinely see – or do NOT see – in their current work sites – and what principals might do to create more academic press – and student success – in their schools.

• Gallagher, E. (2013). The effects of teacher-student relationships: Social and academic outcomes and low-income middle and high school students. NYU Steinhardt. Department of Applied Psychology. https://wp.nyu.edu/
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Positive teacher-student relationships can support student’s academic and social development at all levels of schooling. This is especially true for low-income students.

• 1. After reading the article individually, the class will form two groups. One group will re-read the section on “Academic Outcomes” and the other group will re-read the section on “Social Outcomes”. Each group will develop a 10-bullet list of the positive outcomes for students in their area that result from strong, positive teacher-student relationships – with special note of how they help low-income students. Each group will present their list to the class, describing each point orally.
• 2. After the presentations, the class as a whole will discuss the school policies and practices that help foster positive teacher-student relations – and the policies and practices that discourage them.

• The Wallace Foundation. (2013, January). The school principal as leader: Guiding schools to better teaching and learning. Perspectives. Expanded edition. Author. http://www.wallacefoundation.org/knowledge-center/school-leadership/effective-principal-leadership/Documents/The-School-Principal-as-Leader-Guiding-Schools-to-Better-Teaching-and-Learning-2nd-Ed.pdf
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Principal leadership can have a measurable and positive effect on teacher effectiveness and students’ academic success. Without effective school leaders, most educational goals would be very difficult to achieve.

• Table of Contents:
• The Principal as Leader: An Overview, p. 4
• Introduction. The School Principal as Leader, Five Key Practices, pp. 5 – 11
• A Profile in Leadership: How One Principal Transformed a School, pp. 12 – 17
• A Scholar’s View of the Principal-Teacher Connection, pp. 18 – 20
• Reflections on Leadership From a Teacher. pp. 21 - 22

• The class will separate into four groups. All groups will read the Overview (p. 4) and Introduction, The School Principal as Leader, and Five Key Practices (pp. 5 – 12). Groups 1 and 2 will also read A Profile in Leadership (pp. 12-17) and Groups 3 and 4 will also read Scholar’s View (pp. 18-20) and Reflections from a Teacher (pp. 21-22).
• Groups 1 and 2’s purpose in reading is to be able answer and discuss the following questions:
  • What is the role of principal leadership in a school’s success?
  • What are the five key practices that effective principals use to positively impact school climate, teacher effectiveness, and students’ academic achievement – and what do they “look like and sound like” if operating well in schools?
• Groups 3 and 4’s purpose for reading is to be able to answer and discuss the following questions:
  • What behaviors or factors distinguish high-performing schools from low-performing schools?
  • What is the teachers’ role in a school’s success?
  • What does it mean when the author writes, “The real payoff comes when individual variables combine to reach critical mass. Creating the conditions under which that can occur is the job of the principal.” (p. 4).
  • How can principals collaborate with teachers to improve schools for adults and students?
• After reading and discussing their sections, the class as a whole will discuss the reading and their responses to the questions.
  • Muniz, J. (2019). Culturally responsive teaching. A 50-state survey of teaching standards. New America Organization. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED594599.pdf
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Culturally responsive teaching is an approach that challenges educators to recognize that, rather than deficits, students bring strengths into the classroom that should be leveraged to make learning experiences more relevant to and effective for them. Principals will want to ensure that they hire and provide professional learning opportunities for their teachers who use relevant teaching practices if they are to revere underachievement and unlocking the potential of students of color and other groups of underserved learners. Research from The New Americas Foundation identifies eight competencies that clarify what teachers should know and be able to do to become culturally competent in their classrooms.

• 1. The entire class will read “Understanding Culturally Responsive Teaching” (pp. 9 – 11).
• 2. Then the class will separate into eight groups, each group focusing on one of the eight competencies for culturally responsive teaching (pp. 12 – 15), ensuring that every competency has a group looking at it.
• 3. Each group will read the description of its chosen (or assigned) competency and describe what that means to them personally and professionally.
• 4. Identify which competencies does each group member feel most comfortable with right now and which do they believe will take more practice.
• 5. After each group has completed its work (about 10 – 15 minutes), the class will consider:

• 1. Describe cultural competency and explain why it is important to develop these attitudes and skills.
• 2. Identify incidents of culturally competent behaviors in schools – and describe how it influences those observing or receiving it.
• 3. Identify incidents of culturally incompetent behaviors in schools – and describe how it impacts those observing or receiving it.
• 4. Discuss how each of the cultural competencies can help principals increase their leadership effectiveness and the situations in which they may be most valuable.

• Dewey, J. (1916; 2008, 2013). Chapter Seven: The Democratic Conception in Education. The Project Gutenberg EBook of Democracy and Education. Available at : https://teachingamericanhistory.org/
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This ebook reproduction of John Dewey’s Democracy and Education focuses on how Dewey conceives of education as a means to reinforce democratic values in each generation.

Read Section 2, The Democratic Ideal (summarized below), and consider the following questions:

Summary: Democracy is devoted to education. Democracy relies of more numerous and varied points of shared common interest, greater reliance on recognizing mutual interests as a factor in social control, freer interactions among social groups, and continual readjustments to new situations. Education for a democracy recognizes our mutual interpenetrating interests where diverse people must live and work together to advance their own and their society’s interests. Areas of personal concern widen.

Democracy is a mode of associated living, not simply a form of government. Accordingly, education for such a society must be deliberate and systematic. Not only must citizens be educated in order to become informed voters. Each person has to consider his actions in relation to others and consider others’ actions in relation to his own. These widespread interactions to a greater diversity of stimuli lead to the breakdown of class, race, and regional barriers and liberate personal capacities. It takes deliberate effort to sustain and extend this greater individualization and broader community of interest. Providing everyone with access to intellectual opportunities on equable and easy terms prevents society from stratifying into separate classes.

“A society which is mobile, which is full of channels for the disruption of a change occurring anywhere, must so to it that it members are educated to personal initiative and adaptability. Otherwise they will be overwhelmed by the changes in which they are caught and whose significance of connections they do not perceive. The result will be a confusion in which a few will appropriate to themselves the results of the blind and externally directed activities of others.”

As a class, discuss the following questions:

• 1. How are Dewey’s ideas about education and democracy an argument in favor of vigorously supporting public schools?
• 2. How might Dewey view the increasing privatization of education in the United States?
• 3. How does this observation about democracy and education remain relevant today?

• Eisner, E.W. (2002). The Arts and the Creation of Mind. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Available at: https://acurriculumjourney.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/eisner-2003-the-arts-and-the-creation-of-mind.pdf
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In the era of high-stakes testing, many educators, policy makers, and parents have complained that the curriculum is narrowing to the subjects tested – mainly reading and mathematics – and test-prep. They argue that this constricted focus is not an education that grows children’s minds. Elliott Eisner, Stanford University Professor of Education and Professor of Art, believes that a rigorous curriculum that includes the arts fully develops a child’s mind and prepares him or her to live effectively in a complex world. In this Introduction and Chapter 1 from his book, The Arts and the Creation of Mind, he presents his thesis.

The class will separate into six groups, each group reading a different section of the Introduction and Chapter 1, selecting Eisner’s most meaningful quotations, and reporting its most important points to the rest of the class.

• Group 1: Introduction, pages xi – xiv
• Group 2: Chapter 1, Education is the Process of Learning How to Invent Yourself, pp. 1 – 4
• Group 3: The Role of the Arts in Refining the Senses and Enlarging the Imagination, pp. 4 – 5; and The Meaning of Representation, pp. 5 – 9.
• Group 4: The Cognitive Functions of the Arts, pp. 9 – 12.
• Group 5: The Arts and Personal Transformation, pp. 12 – 15.
• Group 6: Three Modes of Treatment, pp. 15 – 19.
• Group 7: The Arts and Transforming Consciousness, pp. 19 -24.

After each group reads their section, selects its favorite quotations, and decides on the most important points to present to the rest of the class, groups will make their presentation by stating their favorite quotes from the selection and explaining what Eisner means by it. After the presentations, the class as a whole will discuss the following questions:

• 1. Describe how the arts are intellectually rigorous, complex, and subtle ways of thinking, and they increase individuals’ consciousness and ability to reason and express themselves in an ambiguous, uncertain world.
• 2. What does Eisner mean when he observes, “Our sensory system becomes a means through which we pursue our own development. But the sensory system does not work alone; it requires for its development the tools of culture: language, the arts, science, values, and the like. With the aid of culture we learn how to create ourselves.”
• 3. What does Eisner mean by the following paragraph – and do you agree or disagree?
  “Education…is the process of learning to create ourselves, and it is what the arts, both as a process and as the fruits of that process, promote. Work in the arts is not only a way of creating performances and products; it is a way of creating our lives by expanding our consciousness, shaping our dispositions, satisfying our quest for meaning, establishing contact with others, and sharing a culture.”
• 4. What does Eisner means when he writes, “A culture populated by a people whose imagination is impoverished has a static future. In such a culture there will be little change because there will be little sense of possibility.”
• 5. The ways in which schools define “literacy” designates the forms of representation (the subject matter) they use and the types of mental skills and modes of thinking that students develop. Eisner thinks the school’s curriculum can be considered as a “mind altering device.” What are the implications of this idea for a school curriculum focused overwhelmingly on reading, math, and science on how our students learn to think?
• 6. Discuss the value of learning how “to tolerate ambiguity, explore what is uncertain, to exercise judgment free from prescriptive rules and procedures,” to see what before was unnoticed, and to use an internal locus of evaluation for adults living in a complex world of continuously arising problems. Give examples.

• Giroux, H.A. (2010, November 23). Lessons to be learned from Paulo Freire as education is being taken over by the mega rich. Op. ed. Truthout.org. http://truth-out.org/
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Henry Giroux is a former public school teacher and now a critical pedagogy scholar and professor at McMaster University. Critical pedagogy is “the educational movement guided by both passion and principle to help students develop a consciousness of freedom, recognize authoritarian tendencies, empower the imagination, connect knowledge and truth to power and learn to read both the word and the world as part of a broader struggle for agency, justice and democracy.” Giroux reflects on Paulo Freire’s “Pedagogy of the Oppressed,” considers Freire’s legacy, and writes about what we can learn from reading it. After reading the essay, consider the following questions as a class:

• 1. Why does Giroux believe that critical pedagogy offers “the very best and perhaps only chance for young people to develop and assert a sense of their rights and responsibilities to participate in governing and not simply being governed by the prevailing ideological and material forces”?
• 2. What are Giroux’s concerns about higher education and public education that he believes critical pedagogy can remedy?
• 3. What did Freire mean when he called education “a political and moral practice that provides the knowledge, skills and social relations that enable students to explore for themselves the possibilities of what it means to be engaged citizens, while expanding and deepening their participation in the promise of a substantive democracy”? And how did he recommend that schools practice this type of education?
• 4. What did literacy and critical thinking mean in Freire’s view of education? What do they NOT mean?
• 5. Give examples of school lessons at elementary, middle, and high school levels that reflect Freire’s views about pedagogy.
• 6. How did Freire’s person and philosophy affect Giroux as a person and as an educator?
• 7. After reading this essay, describe Paulo Freire as a person, a political thinker, an intellectual, and as an educator (of course, through Giroux’s eyes).

• Banks, J.A. (2004, Summer). Teaching for social justice, diversity, and citizenship in a global world. The Educational Forum, 68, 289- 298. Available at: https://static1.squarespace.com/
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James A. Banks, a professor and multicultural education scholar, writes about the United States’ increasing diversity and the quest by different groups for cultural recognition and rights, challenging traditional ideas about assimilation.

Read his essay and consider the following:

• 1. How has the assimilationist conception of citizenship evolved from 1900 to the present, what factors prompted the changes, and how have schools been agents of American citizenship?
• 2. Banks believes that a delicate balance of diversity and unity should be an essential goal of democratic nation-sates and of teaching and learning in democratic societies. What does this mean – and do you agree or disagree – and why?
• 3. Why does Banks believe that literacy should include citizenship participation in national and global contexts?
• 4. What are Banks’ notions of multicultural literacy and citizenship education and how would they affect curricula, teaching, and learning?
• 5. Why does Banks view children’s cultural identity development as positive for themselves and their nation; and how does he view teachers’ role in helping children in cultural identity development?
• 6. How do you respond to Banks’ views – and why?

• Apple, M.W. (2014). Official knowledge. Democratic education in a conservative age. 3rd ed. Preface to the Third Edition (pp. xiii – xxii). Routledge. http://books.google.com/books
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Michael W. Apple is an American critical theory scholar and writes about education policy rand how to make schools more responsive to their communities.

Read the Preface to the Third Edition and consider the following questions:

• 1. How do Apple’s experiences giving lectures in Australia illustrate controversies surrounding “the politics of knowledge” – even for teachers and administrators?
• 2. How does the story about the second grader and the Pledge of Allegiance stand as an example the “knowledge, values, and perspectives that can be imposed on children in schools”?
• 3. What does Apple mean when he writes, “[S]chools and the overt and hidden curricula within them are sites of intense conflict.… They are constitutive to the very act of choosing the knowledge and values that we consider official and that we choose to pass on to students…. Not only must we ask what and whose knowledge is to be selected as legitimate or official knowledge, but we also need to take a stand on who should be deeply involved in the entire process of such selection and organization of knowledge”? Do you agree or disagree with this view – and why?
• 4. How does Apple believe that the current economic crisis and the neoconservative and neoliberal ideologies that governments are using to recover from it have negatively impacted education policies and practices?
• 5. Do you agree with the view that “What has been list is a powerful, shared normative vision of what education can and should be” and over what counts as “good” knowledge, curricula, teaching, and learning?
• 6. What does Apple want from teachers and administrators when he writes that one of the book’s primary positions involves a call for critically democratic educators to engage with and act in a society that seems to have lost its ethical way”?

• National Policy Board for Educational Administration (NPBEA). (2018, August). National Educational Leadership Preparation (NELP) Program Recognition Standards. Building level, https://www.npbea.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/NELP-Building-Standards.pdf
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Anchored in a well-established research-based body of knowledge, the NELP Standards can help principals define their core beliefs, articulate a vision, and identify leadership practices needed to improve every student’s learning and wellbeing. Within NELP standards, the words and phrases – collaboration, equity, diversity, data use, technology, inclusive school culture, equitable access to educational resources, cultural responsiveness, relationships, reflection, academic and non-academic programs, and develop, implement, evaluate, communicate, – appear frequently.

• 1. After locating the pages describing the first seven Standards (pp. 11 – 29), separate the class into seven groups.
• 2. Each group will read their Standard’s definition, the components, the research support, and the acceptable candidate performances, looking to identify the key philosophical beliefs that standard conveys and the behaviors that exhibit that standard in practice.
• 3. After reading, group members will identify and discuss the philosophical leadership beliefs they found. Each member will also identify which philosophical beliefs they currently hold and which they will need to develop further.
• 4. When all the groups have finished their readings and discussion, each group will report their findings to the class.
• 5. The class will discuss the 10 key leadership philosophy tenets they find in the NELP Standards and the behaviors that exhibit these in the school setting.

• Ohlson, M., Swanson, A., Adams-Manning, A, & Byrd, A. (2016). A culture of success. Examining school culture and student outcomes via a performance framework. Journal of Education and Learning, 5(1), 114 – 127. https://files.eric.ed.gov/
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This study is a report of the relationship between a collaborative school culture, teacher quality and the influence these variables have upon student attendance and suspensions. The study looked at two distinct variables found to influence student achievement, student efficacy, and graduation rates: student attendance and out-of-school suspensions. The study’s purpose was to determine if teacher quality characteristic and school culture components are related to student attendance and suspension rates. Short answer: they do.

After reading the article, consider the following:

• 1. Using the Educational Performance Framework (Figure 1, p. 117), identify and discuss the teacher quality characteristics, school leadership and collaborative culture characteristics, and the role of student absences and participation in their academic success
• 2. Apply the Discussion’s (pp. 119 – 121) key findings.to your accurate understanding of the Educational Performance Framework’s contents.
• 3. Discuss your conclusions about the power of specific aspects of school culture on students’ academic success from this study.

• Peterson, K.D. and Deal, T.E. (1998, September). How leaders influence the culture of schools. Educational Leadership, 56 (1), 28-30. http://larrycuban.files.wordpress.com/
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Kent Peterson and Terrence Deal are two educational leadership
professors who have researched and written extensively about reshaping school culture and affirm that “culture influences everything that goes on in schools” – from faculty wardrobe to instructional practices. In this classic article, they describe school culture and discuss how principals and other school leaders can shape it to better support teaching and learning.

Read the article and respond to the following questions:

• If schools with strong, positive cultures are those (1) where staff have a shared sense of purpose and are passionately committed to teaching well; (2) where collegiality, improvement, and hard work are underlying norms; (3) where student rituals and traditions celebrate student accomplishment, teacher innovation, and parent commitment; (4) where the informal networks of storytellers, heroes, and heroines provide social web of information, support, and history; and (5) where success, joy, and humor are plentiful, on a scale of 1 – 5 (5 highest) for each numbered element above, how would you assess the school in which you presently work?
• Do you think the same elements of strong, positive cultures for K-12 schools are relevant to college and universities? Explain your reasoning.
• If school leaders are the key to shaping school culture and they do this by (1) communicating the core values in what they say and do; (2) honoring those who have worked to serve the students and the school’s purposes; (3) observing rituals and traditions to support the school’s “heart and soul;” (4) recognizing heroes and heroines and the work these role models accomplish; (5) speaking eloquently of the school’s deeper mission; (6) celebrating staff, student, and community accomplishments; and (7) keeping the focus on students by retelling success stories, how many of these seven elements have you observed during your years working in education? Which school leaders do you recall to be the best – and the worst – at advancing these positive school culture elements?

• Peterson, K. (1994). Building collaborative cultures: Seeking ways to reshape urban schools. NCREL Monograph. https://files.eric.ed.gov/
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Kent Peterson, a renowned authority on school culture building, developed this monograph to describe the components of collaborative school cultures and to illustrate how schools develop them.

The class will separate into six groups. Each group will read this monograph looking to answer one of the following questions and prepare a 3 minutes talk with a graphic to explain their findings to the rest of the class. The answers can be found anywhere in the monograph. The group questions are:

• Group 1: Define “collaborative school cultures” and identify the teaching and learning benefits that result from them when they are working well in schools.
• Group 2: Identify the school factors that support collaborative school cultures.
• Group 3: Identify the types of school cultures that exit and describe their characteristics.
• Group 4: Explain how schools can best foster collegial relationships.
• Group 5: Identify and describe the structures, networks, and activities that support collaboration in schools.
• Group 6: Identify and describe ways to shape and nurture collaborative school leadership.

After each group has completed its assignment, the class as a whole will discuss Peterson’s key ideas about how collaborative cultures can help improve teacher and student productivity and the challenges in developing a collaborative culture in an urban school (which traditionally has very high teacher and student turnover).

• Betts, F. (1992, November). How systems thinking applies to education. Educational Leadership, 50 (3), 38-41. http://www.ascd.org/publications/
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For decades, Americans have been talking about reforming education, but little headway is evident because educational innovations are piecemeal, seldom considering the wider context of factors that influence school functioning. Frank Betts argues that to be effective, educational change must be systemic. He explains why approaches that do not account for the wider environments will not succeed. This 1992 article continued to be relevant almost 30 years later.

Read the article and respond to the following questions:

• 1. How has “paradigm paralysis” – using old models that are no longer useful (such as the industrial society model for organizing schools) – help explain American education’s lack of success in improving public education as compared with other nations?
• 2. Considering Banathy’s (1991. p, 80) seven descriptions of how an educational system can optimize the relationships with its environment, which descriptors do you think are more possible for schools to enact – and which do you think would be more difficult for schools to enact – and why?.

• (2012). Greenhouse schools. How schools can build cultures where teachers and students thrive. TNTP. Reimagine teaching. http://tntp.org/
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TNTP is a national non –profit organization whose highly selective Teaching Fellows programs prepare college graduates to be effective teachers for low-income and minority students. TNTP also advances policies and practices that ensure effective teaching in every classroom. This report highlights survey results from over 4,800 teachers in almost 250 schools in six cities to address the questions: (1) what kind of school culture is most likely to increase retention of the best teachers and improve student learning? and (2) What concrete steps can principals take to create that culture in their own schools? TNTP calls schools with carefully fostered instructional cultures that help teachers and students achieve to high levels.

The class will separate into three groups. Each group will read an assigned section of this report and then prepare and deliver a 2 minute talk to the rest of the class discussing the key points in their readings. Everyone will read, “Here’s What We Found” (page before page 1)

• Group 1: “Here’s What We Found” and “Why Do Effective Teachers Leave?” (p. 02)
• Group 2: “Here’s What We Found” and “The Benefits of a Strong Instructional Culture” (p. 3)
• Group 3: “Here’s What We Found” and “Creating a Greenhouse School” (pp. 4-7)

After the presentations, the class as a whole will discuss the following questions:

• 1. What is the principal’s role – and what does the principal have to do – to create an instructional culture in the school that retains and develops effective teachers?
• 2. What would a rigorous teacher hiring process (as an aspect of a strong instructional culture) include?
• 3. What do teachers and principals do to keep a focus on student learning?
• 4. Who are a school’s instructional leaders and what do they do to improve teaching and learning?
• 5. What characteristics does a “well planned and well facilitated” professional development have?
• 6. Why does removing consistently struggling or ineffective teachers a morale rather than discourage them?
• 7. How can you as prospective principals prepare yourselves to create a strong instructional culture in your own schools – starting tomorrow?

• Schein, E.H. (1984, Winter). Coming to a new awareness of organizational culture. Sloan Management Review, 25 (2), p. 3-16. https://sloanreview.mit.edu/
• Click to view external links.

Edgar H. Schein’s pioneering work on organizational culture added much to our understanding of this essential dynamic in school effectiveness. In this seminal article, Schein defines organizational culture, suggests digging below the organization’s surface to uncover the basic underlying assumptions that make up the organization’s culture.

Read the article and consider the following questions as a class:

• 1. Why is an organization’s culture so essential to its functioning?
• 2. Schein speaks about “cultural paradigms” – sets of interrelated assumptions that form a coherent pattern that can provide cognitive order and consistency but which may be either mutually compatible or inconsistent. Looking at Table 1, read each of the five basic underling assumptions around which cultural paradigms form and determine how each assumption would appear in your current work site.
• 3. Schein writes that school cultural elements are learned solutions to problems, and learning situations can either be positive problem solving situations in which the attempted solution works or doesn’t – or anxiety reduction situations in which the solution may or may not reduce anxiety. If this is true, why would new principals need to get to know his or her new school fairly well before implementing a new school improvement initiative?
• 4. Why is leadership so important at times when the faculty’s habitual ways of doing things no longer work or when a dramatic change in the internal or external environment requires a new response? What would the leader do to facilitate a successful change? What are some examples of these two types of events – former approaches no longer working well or a change in the external or internal environment that threatens the group’s survival – in contemporary schools?
• 5. Looking at Table 3, what types of school issues do you think may be associated with each of the internal integration problems noted (i.e., language, boundaries, power and status, intimacy, rewards and punishment, ideology)?
• 6. How could principals and school leaders use Schein’s four approaches to reveal a school’s culture?

• Burnes, B. (2004, September). Kurt Lewin and the planned approach to change: A re-appraisal. Journal of Management Studies, 41 (6), 977 – 998. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/
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Kurt Lewin’s theory of change has dominated both theory and practice for over 50 years, although his 3-stage model has attracted criticism. Mainly, the objections to his work include: assumed that organizations operate in a stable state; was only applicable for small-scale change; ignored organizational power and politics; and was top-down and management-driven. This article seeks to re-appraise Lewin’s work and challenge the validity of these views. It begins with Lewin’s biographical profile and the influences that helped shape his commitment to resolving social conflict. Burnes’ conclusion: Lewin’s ideas are still relevant.

The class will separate into three groups. Each group will read an assigned segment of this article and prepare a 3 – 5 minute presentation highlighting its key points to the rest of the class. Every group will also read the Introduction and Conclusion but not include that information in their presentation.

• Group 1: Introduction (pp. 977-978); Lewin’s Background (pp. 978-980); Conclusion (pp. 995-998).
• Group 2: Introduction (pp. 977-978); Lewin’s Work (Field Theory, 981-982; Organizational Dynamics, 982-983; Action Research, 983-984; 3-Step Model); Conclusion (pp. 995-998).
• Group 3: Introduction (pp. 977-978); Lewin’s Work: Criticisms and Response (pp. 992-995).

After the presentations, the class as a whole will consider the following:

• 1. How did Lewin’s personal biography influence his desire to study individual and group behavior?
• 2. Lewin believed, as a humanitarian, that only by learning how to resolve social conflict – whether religions, racial, marital, or industrial – so human could understand and restructure their perceptions of their world and improve the human condition. In what ways do you agree – or disagree – with Lewin’s ideas? If you agree, where and how should people be taught or learn these insights and practices?
• 3. Give examples of how Field Theory, Group Dynamics, Action Research, and the 3-Step Change Model might each operate in the real world.
• 4. According to Burnes, why is Lewin’s work still relevant for contemporary social and organizational change? Do you agree or disagree – and why?

• Merriam, S. (2004). The changing landscape of adult learning theory. In J. Comings, B. Garner, & C. Smithy (Eds.), Review of adult learning and literacy: Connecting research, policy, and practice (pp. 199-220). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. https://studylib.net/
• Click to view external links.

The landscape of adult learning has changed markedly over the past century: from speculating on whether adults could learn to various theories that offer explanations for how it does. Now, we know that adult learning is not merely cognitive; it is also emotional and spiritual. Likewise, cultural, social, economic, and political influences work together to shape the learning environment. These many approaches to adult learning show it as a highly complex phenomenon and our understanding of adult learning will inform principals’ abilities to lead change.

To read and understand this article, the class will separate into seven groups, one for each of the following selections. After the readings, the groups will prepare and deliver a 3 minute presentation on what they agree are the most important aspects of their selection for principals who will lead change in their schools.

• Group 1: Introduction and Foundations: Can adults learn? (pp. 199-202)
• Group 2:The Development of Adult Learning Theory and Andragogy (pp. 202-204)
• Group 3: Self-Directed Learning (pp. 204-206)
• Group 4: Transformational Learning Theory (pp. 206-208)
• Group 5: Recent Contributions to Adult Learning and Context-Based Learning (pp. 208-211)
• Group 6: Critical Perspectives (pp. 211-213)
• Group 7: The Emotions, Body, and Spirit in Learning and Adult Learning Theory Is a Work in Progress (pp. 213-216)

After the presentations, as whole class discuss:

• 1. What are the most important things for principals or staff development professionals need to know about adult learning – and DO to facilitate it – when planning to lead teachers in change or encourage them to improve their professional practice?
• 2. Which of the adult learning information do you find most often ignored or neglected when your own school leaders involve teachers in school improvement planning or professional development?
• 3. What is the most important aspect of adult learning that you are certain to remember and use when you are leading school improvement?

• Editor’s note (2007), In Kotter, J.P. (1996). Leading change. Why transformation efforts fail. Best of HBR. Harvard Business Review p. 2. https://irp-cdn.multiscreensite.com/
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“Most major change initiatives—whether in- tended to boost quality, improve culture, or reverse a corporate death spiral—generate only lukewarm results. Many fail miserably. Why? Kotter maintains that too many managers don’t realize transformation is a process, not an event. It advances through stages that build on each other. And it takes years.” “By understanding the stages of change— and the pitfalls unique to each stage—you boost your chances of a successful transformation.”

After everyone reads this article, separate the class into small groups of three or four.

• 1. Each group will use the table (page 1), “The Idea in Practice,” to create two scenarios for a specific school change initiative that the group identifies.
• 2. The first scenario will use each Stage, enacting the “Actions Needed” to come to a successful conclusion.
• 3. The second scenario will enact the “pitfalls” for each Stage to illustrate how NOT to lead change.
• 4. Groups will present their completed scenarios to the rest of the class.
• 5. The class will discuss the benefits of using Kotter’s model for school improvement.

• Using Bolman and Deal’s Four Frames to Solve an Education Problem: A Case Study.

The case study below illustrates an educational situation that benefits from using Bolman and Deal’s Four Frames. Separate the class into four teams, one for each frame: structural, human resource, political, and symbolic. Each group will read the case study and using their frame, identify strategies and rationale for how the new District Director might successfully address this situation. After the groups have read the case study and identified their strategies and rationale, they will present these to the entire class. After the presentations, the class as a whole will discuss the situation and suggest additional four frames’ approaches to use.

Case Study

Erika Jones was the new District Director of Student Services. The school district had three middle schools that participated in a Safe Schools Grant Application, a joint school plan that included goals, objectives, action steps for each grade level, resources needed, and a budget. The Application protocol required each school to submit its own separate plan annually. Many state and federal laws had requirements that had to be met in the application document.

Erika started her position with the school district in the 3rd week of school. After reviewing papers from her predecessor, she discovered that the Combined Application/School Plans had not yet been submitted – even though they had been due the prior June 15. After making several calls, she soon learned that teachers and administrators totally detested the complex application process and extensive document. They saw it as a complete waste of time. In the past, their school plans had been returned to them because they did not follow the rules or include all the necessary data and information. As a result, every year they had to alter the paperwork.

Central Office colleagues informed Erika that her predecessor in this position usually wrote most of the documents and gave them to the principals and teachers to sign off. In fact, many teachers never actually saw the school plan submitted for them.

This year, however, the State Department of Education had warned the schools that they would either submit appropriate plans for lose their plans or lose their grants for the year – an amount over $15,000.

Because Erika was familiar with this grant from her previous position, she knew several people at the State DOE, and was able to persuade them to extend the application deadline for another six weeks.

Erika’s main challenge was to persuade first the principals and then the teachers that this document was more than busy work. It had meaning and actually reflected what they were already doing.

She approached the principals with several “givens.” (1) She explained the financial and resource implications and what the schools would lose if they decided not to rewrite and resubmit the application. (2) She clarified the laws and regulations’ purposes and how these benefitted the school. (3) Erika swore that although she would not write the plans, she would support them, help them use the right wording, that these were the teachers’ plans, and she would assist them in any way they needed her.

To follow up, Erika continued to stress the teachers’ importance to the entire endeavor and she frequently visited classrooms to see what they were doing and to praise them for their work.

Erika’s goal was to help students by helping teachers. She was familiar with why teachers found the grant application tedious and time consuming, and she was going to succeed in her first district-level administrative position. But she was not going to do so by using force or coercion.

• Fullan, M. (2006, November). Change Theory. A Force for School Improvement. Seminar Series Paper No. 157. Centre for Strategic Education. http://www.michaelfullan.ca/
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Change theory or change knowledge can be a very powerful force in education reform, but only if those involved can connect theory to explicit action. In this paper, Fullan focuses on several incomplete change theories, considers change theories that have merit (are getting the desired results) and discusses why, explores the prospects for using change knowledge more completely in the future, and several barriers that may prevent moving to deeper change strategies.

The class will separate into six teams; three teams will take responsibility for each of the two sections (Teams 1, 2 and 3 will take Section 1, “Flawed Change Theories” and Teams 4,5, and 6 will take Section 2, “Theories of Action with Merit.” All teams will also read Section 3, “Prospects for Future Use of Change Knowledge.” Each team will read their section and identify the most important points for school leaders to understand and do. After their reading, discussion, and identification of key points for school leaders, they will share their findings with the rest of the class – with each successive group adding to the list of key ideas.

After the presentations, the class as a whole will discuss:

• 1. Why is school or district culture an essential but often overlooked component of some change theories? What can knowledge and understanding of school and district culture add to understanding of how to lead change?
• 2. How has the superficial understanding of professional learning communities as program innovations at individual schools often failed to achieve instructional improvement and increased student achievement because it lacked understanding of why and how to develop collaborative cultures among teachers?
• 3. How does principal effectiveness also depend on the cultural conditions under which principals work rather than simply preparing outstanding individual principals?
• 4. How do the Theories of Action with merit (motivation, capacity building with a focus on results, learning in context, changing context, a bias for reflective action, tri-level engagement, and persistence and flexibility in staying the course) prove a useful guide to principals as change agents?

• (2013, November 19). Chris Argyris (1923-2013): An Appreciation. Thinkers50.com. https://thinkers50.com/
• Click to view external links.

The class will read the article and consider the following questions:

• 1. How did Argyris’ personal background and his knowledge of psychology, economics, and organizational behavior attracted him to try and understand “the riddles of human nature” in organizations that analytic professionals preferred to avoid?
• 2. Explain the importance to you as a worker in an organization that “Argyris argued that organizations depend fundamentally on people and that personal development is and can be related to work. The problem, Argyris believed, in many organizations is that the organization itself stands in the way of people fulfilling their potential. The task for the organization is to make sure that people’s motivation and potential are fulfilled and well-directed.”
• 3. What did Argyris mean by saying that most people defend learning too narrowly, “as mere problem solving” and identifying and correcting errors in the external environment, but if the learning is to persist, people need to also reflect critically on their own behaviors?
• 4. How does Argryis and Schön’s two basic organizational models – Model 1 and Model 2 – show leaders how NOT TO and HOW TO (respectively) initiate change in their organizations?
• 5. In your experience, what is the truth about Argyris’ view of a universal human tendency to design one’s actions according to four basic values: to remain in unilateral control; to maximize winning and minimize losing; to suppress negative feelings; and to be as rational as possible (evaluating one’s behavior in terms of whether or not they have achieved their stated goals and objectives).

• National Association of Secondary School Principals. (2013). Ethics for School Leaders. https://www.nassp.org/
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The National Association of Secondary School Principals and the Council of Chief School Officers believe that education leaders should promote the success of every student by acting with integrity, fairness and in an ethical manner. But understanding the ethical standards and translating them into real-world practice is not always clear or easy.

The class will separate into three groups – and elementary, a middle level, and a high school group (depending on the expected principalship level). Each group will consider the ethical statements in the reading and generate at least two situations illustrating what this might look like if a principal enacted it in their grade level setting. After the group work, groups will report their findings to the rest of the class. And the class will also discuss the following:

• 1. What similarities do you hear in the situations suggested by the groups?
• 2. What differences in ethical behaviors do you hear among the different grade level schools?
• 3. Give examples of situations in which principals trying to enact an ethical standard might confront an ethical dilemma.

• Weaver, R.L. (2007, May/June). What Principals Need to Know About Ethics. Practitioner’s Corner. National Association of Elementary School Principals. http://www.naesp.org/
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Principals make hundreds of decisions every day. Being aware of the need for ongoing ethical discussions with teachers and staff about ethical behaviors in school and in the community can help guide their decision making processes.

The class will read the article and respond to the following:

• 1. Although written for an elementary school audience, how well do these ethical recommendations fit for middle or high school principals?
• 2. How is a principal to know when he or she is making a decision that is “fair” to faculty, staff, and students? How is a principal to know when he or she is making a decision that is “unfair”?
• 3. What difficulties do a principal face in trying to decide “consistently”? Given an example of a principal’s decision that teachers or students might not view as acting “consistently.”
• 4. Identify some of the ethical decisions that teachers have to make and what criteria they can use to decide “fairly” and “consistently.”
• 5. How is a principal to learn community mores about what is or is not acceptable for school situations or educators’ community behaviors?
• 6. Identify the types of issues about which community norms may vary from the principals. In cases of differences between principal and community mores, which ones should the principal follow?
• 7. Which of these suggestions do you think might be most difficult for you to implement in your school when you become principal – and why?

• Quick, P.M. (2013). Moral Leadership: A Model for Educational Leaders in the 21st Century. Florida International University. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/
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If principals are their organizations’ “stewards” – responsible for building organizations where people can continually expand their capacities to understand complexity, clarify vision and improve their shared mental models that are responsible for learning; and creating an ethical and moral educational setting – how are they to enact this role? How can principals become “moral role models”?

Read the article and respond to the following:

• 1. Do you agree that adults – especially principals working with young people in schools – need to demonstrate to them that it is possible to live one’s values and advocate for a more just and responsible society? Explain.
• Describe what integrity, authenticity, balance between justice and care, and systems thinking are and look like in practice; and explain why they are essential qualities for principals to enact in schools.
• 2. Why is it good advice to principals to “value the primacy of relationships” and how does one show this in daily behaviors?
• 3. How can principals use the ethics of justice and care with a systems perspective? Give examples.
• 4. Respond to the following statement: “Frequently, educational leaders focus on curriculum, policy-making and other bureaucratic functions to the exclusion of the truly vital function of education, assisting students in becoming the very best people that they can be. This must be understood in a holistic context.”

• Mayer, J.D., Salovey, P., & Caruso, D.R. (2008, September). Emotional intelligence. New ability or eclectic traits? American Psychologist, 63(6), 503 – 517. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/0003-066X.63.6.503 Available at: https://scholars.unh.edu/
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Some individuals have a greater capacity than others to carry out sophisticated information processing about emotions and emotion-relevant stimuli and to use this information as a guide to thinking and behavior. The authors have termed this set of interrelated abilities emotional intelligence (EI). This scholarly paper looks at the relevant academic research on EI from its 1990 inception until 2008 to define what EI is and is not.
After reading the paper, consider the following:

• 1. Explain how Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence (1995) and its extensive coverage in the popular press complicated the popular understanding.
• 2. Describe the difference in audience and ethics between journalists and scientists in the writing for publication.
• 3. Using Figure 1, p. 507, discuss how the Four-Branch Model of EI provide a conceptually coherent approach to understanding this dynamic.
• 4. Explain the significance of EI to understanding one’s feelings, social relationships, and work relationships,
• 5. Respond to the following statement: “A truly healthy individual has neither thought alone, nor emotion alone, but a functional integration among his or her major psychological processes.” (p. 513).

• Endsley, M.R. (2000). Introduction. Theoretical underpinnings of situational awareness: A critical review. In M.R. Endsley & D.J. Garland (Eds.). Situational awareness analysis and measurements (pp. 1 – 24). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. https://maritimesafetyinnovationlab.org/
• Click to view external links.

This excellent article clearly explains (in dense text with very useful illustrations) the situational awareness (SI) construct and why it is a critical skill in many career domains. Written for aircraft piloting, its ideas are relevant to educators. After reading pages 1 – 18 of this article, consider the following:

• 1. Using Figure 2, page 3, explain how principals use SI to make decisions and perform, actions.
• 2. Identify and describe the cognitive processes involved with SI (pp. 7 – 16).

• Bryk, A.S. & Schneider, B. (2003, March). Trust in Schools: A Core Resource for school Reform. Educational Leadership, 60 (6), 40-45. https://www.ascd.org/
• Click to view external links.

A growing body of case studies and empirical research finds that social trust among teachers, parents, and school leaders improves much of the routine work of schools and is a key resource for reform for meaningful school improvement. This article helps define social trust, identifies factors that help shape it, and name the benefits it produces.

Read the article and respond to the following:

• 1. Give examples from your experiences of how is school an interrelated set of mutual dependencies and mutual vulnerabilities – and how deliberately taking actions to reduce this sense of others’ vulnerability builds trust across the community.
• 2. Describe and give examples from your experiences of how individuals’ discernments about interpersonal respect, personal regard, competence in core role responsibilities, and personal integrity contribute to social trust in schools.
• 3. Discuss the relationship between strong relational trust, school improvement, and measurable improvements in student learning over time.
• 4. Describe the school conditions that foster relational trust.
• 5. Describe the principal’s role in building relational trust.

• (2012, January). Ethical and Professional Dilemmas for Educators. Facilitator’s Guide. Understanding the Code of Professional Responsibility for Educators. Module 5 – Phase I Pilot. Hartford, CT: Connecticut’s Teacher Education and Mentoring Program. Available at: https://portal.ct.gov/
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Because educators are entrusted with the community’s children’s well being, principals and teachers are held to high standards of ethical behavior and moral integrity. As role models, educators’ conduct on and off the job affects their professional image and personal reputations. Lapses in judgment can adversely affect their students, damage professional credibility, and erode public trust in schools and in the education profession. Accordingly, educators need to develop a thoughtful awareness of the varied ethical dilemmas and situations they may face in daily interactions with students, parents, and the community. These brief scenarios involving students, professional ethics, community and family, and bullying give educators an opportunity to carefully examine, openly discuss, recognize, and analyze situations that require ethical and professional judgments.

The class will form 12 groups. Each group will take responsibility for exploring one of the 12 scenarios and 4 Discussion Questions in each scenario (in a small class, assign groups as the students and professors agree works for them). These scenarios are based in reality and the incident or its discussion may make some group members uncomfortable – and that is OK. Ethical situations are often anxiety producing. All groups will read and discuss the Introduction, page 3.

Each group will have a facilitator to help lead the group through the Discussion Questions, reading aloud the printed sections of the Code of Professional Responsibility for Educators. [This activity uses the Connecticut Code, but most states uses similar expectations] The group members will read the brief scenario. Then group members will take turns paraphrasing in their own words the bulleted issues/concerns through the four Discussion Questions: (1) What possible issues/concerns might this scenario raise? (2) How could this situation become a violation of the law, the “Coder” or other school/district policies? (3) In this situation, what are some potential negative consequences for the teacher, for the students and the school community? (4) What responsibilities/actions will result in amore positive outcome and/or what proactive measures might be considered?

If the paraphrase does not adequately express the concern or issue, someone else in the group can help clarify and extend the paraphrase to ensure a complete understanding of each bulleted statement. Each discussion scenario may take 0 to 30 minutes.

I. Situations Involving Students:

• Scenario 1: Electronic Communications with Students, pp. 7 – 9.
• Scenario 2: Transporting Students, pp. 11-13.
• Scenario 3: Contact with Students, pp. 14 – 16.

II. Situations Involving Professional Ethics:

• Scenario 1: Use of Social Networks, pp. 17 -19.
• Scenario 2: DUI Convictions, pp. 20-22.
• Scenario 3: Teacher Documentation, pp. 23 -25.

III. Situations Involving Community and Family:

• Scenario 1: Teacher Public Behavior, pp. 26 – 28.
• Scenario 2: Student Confidentiality, pp. 29 -31.
• Scenario 3: Teacher Using Position for Personal Gain, pp. 32-34.

IV. Introduction to Situations Involving Bullying:

• Scenario 1: Emotional Bullying, pp. 36-38.
• Scenario 2: Cyberbullying33, pp. 39-41.
• Scenario 3: Physical Bullying, pp. 42-44.

After the groups have finished, the whole class will discuss the following:

• 1. What did you learn about identifying and resolving ethical dilemmas in school from reading and discussing these scenarios?
• 2. What are the three most important things to REMEMBER regarding ethical dilemmas when working as an educator?
• 3. What are the three most important things to DO regarding ethical dilemmas when working as an educator?

• Ramsey, R.D. (2009) The Twenty Biggest Communication Mistakes School Leaders Make and How to Avoid Them. Chapter 1. How to Say the Right Thing Every Time. Communicating Well With Students, Staff, Parents, and the Public. 2nd Edition. (pp. 1 – 19). http://www.sagepub.com/
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Principals communicate with a variety of audiences for a living. When principals use words effectively, they can inspire, inform, instruct, and advance teaching and learning. But when principals and other school leaders do not express themselves well, misinformation, misinterpretations, misunderstandings, and mixed messages can cause confusion and, occasionally, great harm.

This article identifies the top 20 reasons educators fail to communicate, how using professional jargon can stymie communication with parents and community, how euphemisms and political correctness might feel good but don’t send clear messages, and how straight talk can help school leaders be better leaders.

The class will separate into groups of four. Everyone will read the article and conduct certain activities around specific sections:

“The Top Twenty Reasons Educators Fail to Communicate,” pp. 2 – 7, group will assign each member four of the communication errors to read. Each member will then summarize the error aloud to the group and give examples of what this error might look and sound like in schools.

“The Jargon Trap”, pp. 8 – 10, group members will review the list and poll members for which of these jargon words they have used in groups with parents or other non-educators – without a “plain talk” translation.

For “Euphemisms Feel Good But Don’t Send a Clear Message” (pp. 10-12), the group members will discuss the euphemism they occasionally use and the situations in which they use them – and the discomfort they experience trying to be more direct and accurate.

Also:

• 1. Respond to the examples of common situations when one should listen first and accept that nothing may be the best way to communicate (p. 17). Can you think of other times when it may be more important to listen first and say nothing initially (if at all)?
• 2. Discuss the challenge of “calling things as they are” in a work situation as balanced against the need to “please one’s superiors, colleagues, and stakeholders.”
• 3. What is the most important idea and action that each member will remember from this reading?

• Hatch, T. (2009, October). The Outside-Inside Connection. Educational Leadership, 67 (2), 16-21. https://www.ascd.org/
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Challenges that principals face inside school are often connected to – and complicated by – events occurring off campus. Principals benefit from the connections, expertise, and support that come from interacting with many people and organizations in the community. Just as principals are their schools’ champions, negotiators, and spokespersons, successful school improvement often depends on the relationships and opportunities that educators develop outside the school. But it takes shared leadership to make a wide array of community contacts work effectively.

The class will read this article and consider the following:

• 1. Explain why it is essential that school leaders and school members need to clearly understand and be able to express the school’s goals, philosophy, and mission, be on the lookout for qualified staff, and act in ways to advance the school’s interests.
• 2. Discuss the ways in which schools benefit when its leaders and members can “scan” and “seed” the outside environment and how schools might go about doing this.
• 3. Identify and discuss the downsides for principals of cultivating external relationships and ways in which principals might best handle these potential conflicts.
• 4. What are the implications of the saying, “It takes capacity to build capacity”?

• Pescatore, G. (2014, August 27). Parent Communication Toolbox. Home-to-School Connections. Edutopia. http://www.edutopia.org/
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Communicating effectively with parents requires developing a knowledge and facility with a range of communication tools. Although face-to-face is best, principals can supplement this with smartphones, tablets, and inexpensive laptops that do not require large family incomes. This brief article gives school leaders suggestions about ways to reach their families, the purposes of such one-way and two-way communication tools, and ideas about getting them used.

Read the article and respond to the following:

• 1. Which of the one-way and two-way communicating tools mentioned in the article are presently in use by your school presently? And how often?
• 2. Which communication tools are widely available among your children’s families – and how do you know?
• 3. In which of these one- and two-way communication tools do you have facility? Which do you use at least once a month? If you do not have facility with at least one or two of these tools, how will you gain it?
• 4. Would your school benefit from professional development on using any of these tools to improve communications with families – and who would be available to provide it?

• Ikemoto, G, Taliaferro, L., & Adams, E. (2012, November). Playmakers: How Great Principals Build and Lead Great Teams of Teachers. New Leaders. https://files.eric.ed.gov/
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A decade of research supports principals’ critical but indirect role in shaping the quality of teaching and learning at the school level – but principals’ biggest impact is on improving teachers’ effectiveness. This 2012 report describes a study that asks, “What specific actions do principals of high-performing schools take to improve teacher effectiveness?” and “What distinguishes principals of high-performing schools from other principals?”

The class, as a team of educational leadership consultants, has been hired by a school district to provide their K-12 principals and assistant principals with the knowledge to become more effective instructional leaders. The consultants will form four teams, each team responsible for presenting (orally and with at least one graphic) a 5-minute presentation to the principals about what they can do to be more effective in generating teacher capacity and student achievement. All teams are to read “Leadership on the Field: The Difference a Principal Can Make” (pp. 4-7) and “The Playbook: Three Types of Plays that Principals Made to Amplify Great Teaching” (pp. 8 – 10).

Specific group assignments are as follows:

• Team 1: Develop Teachers, pp. 11 -17.
• Team 2: Managing Talent, pp. 18-25.
• Team 3: Creating Great Places to Work, pp. 26-30.
• Team 4: Championship Coaches: What Principals of the Most Successful Schools Do Differently, pp. 32-36.

After all teams have completed their presentations, the class as a whole will consider:

• 1. What are the most important insights to remember from this report when becoming a principal?
• 2. Which of these behaviors can you begin developing further now in your present role?
• 3. Which of these behaviors are presently and fully effective in your current school? What have you learned from this report that might help your principal and/or teachers make them more effective?

• Louis, K.S., Leithwood, K., Wahlstrom, K.L., & Anderson, S.E. (2010). Investigating the links to improved student learning. Final report of research findings The Wallace Foundation. [Read pages 16 – 53]. https://www.wallacefoundation.org/
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What does effective school leadership look like? In the largest in-depth study of educational leadership in the United States at the time that included 180 schools, 43 school districts, in nine states, researchers surveyed about 8,400 teachers and 470 school administrators; interviewed over 500 of them, observed 310 classrooms, and gathered and analyzed student achievement on language and math standardized tests. Findings confirmed that leadership is second most important school-related influence on student achievement, after classroom instruction. The report stresses that although principals are the school’s central leaders in schools, they are not the only leaders.

Read the research brief and respond to the following:

• 1. Explain how the combined influence of teachers, administrators, parents, and others on school decisions can have a greater impact on student learning than the influence of any one leader? What does this suggest as benefits of including teachers and parents in problem solving and decision making?
• 2. Describe several reasons for the principals’ effect on teachers’ effectiveness.
• 3. Discuss several obstacles to better school leadership.
• 4. Identify things the school district can do to support principals in building teacher and principal capacity.

• DuFour, R. (2004, May). What is a “Professional Learning Community”? Educational Leadership, 61 (8), 6-11. https://www.ascd.org/
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Richard DuFour, a former high school principal and district superintendent, has popularized the Professional Learning Community (PLC) concept and practice. In this seminal article, he identifies and explains the three “Big Ideas” about PLCs: Ensuring that students learn; creating a culture of collaboration; and focusing on results. Written in 2004, it remains timely.

Read the article and consider the following:

• 1. Explain DuFour’s concern that the initial excitement over PLCs would follow the traditional school reform path to confusion, implementation problems, and ultimate failure to improve schools.
• 2. Describe several ways in which the shift “from a focus on teaching to a focus on learning” has profound implications for schools.
• 3. To what extent is help for struggling students in your present school systematic, timely, based on intervention rather than remediation, and directive?
• 4. To what extent do teachers in your current school work collaboratively to analyze and improve their classroom practice that prompt deep team learning and higher student achievement?
• 5. Identify the things that principals must do to make PLCs effective in their schools.
• 6. Describe the activities in your current school in which teachers turn data into useful and relevant information to improve teaching practice and student achievement.
• 7. Explain how effective PLCs change the nature of school accountability.

• Urbanski, A., & Nickolaou, M.B. (1997). Reflections on Teachers as Leaders. Educational Policy, 11(2), 243 – 254. https://doi.org/
• Click to view external links.

Two teacher leaders give their “grounds-eye view” of the obstacles to teacher leadership in schools, how teacher leadership can enhance the teaching profession, and implications for administrators.

The class will separate into four groups, each group assigned to a different section of the article. Groups will read their selections, identify the most important points for future principals, create a graphic to illustrate their points, and give a 3 minute presentation on their selection to the rest of the class. Everyone will read the brief introduction on page 1 and Next Steps, pp 10-11.

• Group 1: Obstacles to Teacher Leadership, pp. 2-3.
• Group 2: Leadership Roles for Teachers, pp. 4-5.
• Group 3: Implications for Administrators, pp. 6-8.
• Group 4: Leadership vs. Management, pp. 8-10

After the presentations, the class will consider:

• 1. In your present school, which obstacles mentioned (or others) are preventing increased capacity for teacher leadership?
• 2. What obstacles in the principal may also create obstacles to building teacher leadership capacity?
• 3. Identify the ways in which teachers in your present school are serving as teacher leaders.
• 4. Discuss the statement: “Leadership is a euphemism for administration.”
• 5. Identify the occasions when a principal serves as a “manager” and the occasions when a principal serves as “leader.”

• Kraft, M.A. & Blazar, D. (2022, Summer). Taking teacher coaching to scale. Education Next, 18(4). https://www.educationnext.org/
• Click to view external links.

Individual teachers make a tremendous impact on student learning, with wide variability in their effectiveness, both across and within schools. This presents a challenge: providing every student with access to high quality teachers. Teacher coaching may be a more effective model than traditional professional development for improving teaching effectiveness and increasing student learning. After reading this article, consider the following:

• Explain why traditional teacher PD outside the classroom has proved ineffective in boosting teachers’ instructional capacities.
• Describe the factors that make one-on-one teacher coaching a more effective intervention than traditional PD or other school-based interventions.
• Identify 2 to 5 facts from this study that impress you the most and explain why.
• Identify several discouraging findings or considerations for teacher coaching.

• Connor, C. McD. (2017). Commentary on the special issue on instructional coaching models: Common elements of effective coaching models. Theory Into Practice, 56(1), 78 - 83. https://doi.org/ Available at: https://escholarship.org/
• Click to view external links.

Although the research on different teacher coaching models find different underlying theories and aims, they share some important common assumptions and findings. After readding this article, consider the following:

• 1. Identify and discuss the four commonalities that research on teacher coaching models share.
• 2. Identify some of necessary factors that make teacher coaching work for you.

• Hain, R. (2013, July 17). Tackling the Dysfunctional Workplace. The Blog. Hufingtonpost.com. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

Businesses and other organizations (including schools) are often so focused on the “bottom line” (i.e. disaggregated student achievement test scores) that they don’t do what is necessary to keep the employees – the organization’s backbone – happy, fulfilled, and engaged. Brandon Smith, a leading expert in workplace healthy and dysfunction talks about the three causes of workplace dysfunction and ways to end it.

The class will form groups of four or five. Each group will read the article and answer the following questions:

• 1. Identify the three types of workplace dysfunction, their underlying causes, and what they might look and sound like in schools.
• 2. The role of Generation Y (those persons born during the 1980s and early 1990s, sometimes called “echo boomers” or Millennials and who tend to be very technologically sophisticated, diverse) in creating a healthy workplace environment.
• 3. YOUR OWN favorite story of workplace dysfunction in a school.

When the groups have finished working, they will discuss their findings with the rest of the class.

• Myatt, M. (2012, February 22). 5 Keys to Dealing with Workplace Conflict. Forbes. http://www.forbes.com/

Leadership and conflict go together. Mike Myatt, a leadership advisor to Fortune 500 CEOs and Boards, writes that “leadership is a full-contact sport, and if you cannot or will not address conflict in a healthy, productive fashion, you should not be in a leadership role.” Leaders can learn how to not fear – and actually welcome – conflict if they can recognize it, understand its nature, and be able to bring quick and fair resolution. To ignore conflict may bring their undoing.

Read the article and consider the following:

• 1. “Every workplace is plagued with manipulative people who use emotion to create conflict in order to cover-up for their lack of substance.” Has this been true of your workplace experience? If so, how did your leader handle it and to what effect on the other employees?
• 2. How can principals as school leaders ensure that communication or emotions don’t create unnecessary and unproductive conflict?
• 3. For you, personally, as a leader, which of Myatt’s “tips” to more effectively handle conflict in the workplace will you find the easiest – and which the most uncomfortable – for you to enact – and why?

• Liou, Y-H. (2015). School crisis management: A model of dynamic responsiveness to crisis life cycle. Educational Administration Quarterly, 51(2), 247 – 289. https://doi.org/ Available at: https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/

The present study applied a dynamic crisis life cycle model that draws on chaos and complexity theory to a crisis management case, and further imbued the dynamic model with core aspects emerging from the school’s crisis response to understand crisis management. Findings suggest that the dynamic crisis life cycle model is useful in perceiving and addressing the school crisis and its aftereffects and its flexibility and self-correcting mechanisms are important aspects of crisis response. After reading the article, consider the following:

• 1. Explain why the conventional school crisis management framework is inadequate.
• 2. Describe the major concepts of chaos theory and complexity theory.
• 3. Present the rationale for using chaos theory and complexity theory in response to school crises.
• 4. Explain the value of flexibility, collaboration, and self-correcting feedback in response to a school crisis.
• 5. Describe the role of relationships in effective responses to school crises.

• Cain, S. (2012, January 13). The rise of the new groupthink. Opinion. The New York Times Sunday Review. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/opinion/sunday/the-rise-of-the-new-groupthink.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

“Solitude is out of fashion.” Susan Cain, a writer and former corporate lawyer, observes that teamwork and collaboration are the new groupthink. But this practices does not square with the research that strongly suggest that people are more creative when they have privacy free from disruption, and that the most exceptionally creative individuals are often introverted.

Read the article and consider the following:

• 1. Describe the work situations in which you find it more productive and growth producing to work individually and in which you find it more productive and growth producing to work as part of a team.
• 2. Respond with your opinion and examples to the statement: “Culturally, we’re often so dazzled by charisma that we overlook the quiet part of the creative process.”
• 3. Explain how the story of Steve Wozniak epitomizes the tension in the individual-vs-team approach to creativity.
• 4. Summarize the research and findings on this question of whether solitude or collaboration is best for creativity and quality/quantity of outcomes.
• 5. Explain Cain’s recommendations for creativity and learning and how they affect school.

• Wahlstrom, K.L. & Louis, K.S. (2008, October). How teachers experience principal leadership: The roles of professional community, trust, efficacy, and shared responsibility. Educational Administration Quarterly, 44 (4), 458-495. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0013161X08321502

What is the link between principal leadership and student learning? This study examines varied factors often present in principal-teacher interactions and teach-teacher relationship to see how these may impact teachers’ classroom instructional practices. Research finds that the presence of shared leadership and professional community explain much of the strength in the factors influencing teachers’ instructional behaviors.

The class will separate into six groups. Each group will be responsible for reading a portion of the article and reporting their findings to the entire group. Each group will create a graphic with 5 or more key ideas and/or images to help explain their oral presentation.

• Everyone will read the introduction (pp. 458-460).
• Group 1: Literature Review, Shared Leadership (pp. 460-462)
• Group 2: Trust (pp. 462-464)
• Group 3: Teachers’ Instructional Practices (pp. 464-466)
• Group 4: Efficacy (pp. 466-467) and Summary of Review (pp. 467-468; and use Figure 1, p. 468 as your graphic)
• Group 5: Methodology, Classroom Practices (pp. 469-470) and Principal Leadership (pp. 470)
• Group 6: Summary of Findings, Leadership and Instruction (pp. 478-479);
• Teacher – Teacher Relationships in Instruction (pp. 480-481)

[Note: The professor can read Discussion and Conclusions (pp. 481-484) and use authors’ ideas to help reinforce any group’s report]

After the group presentations, the class as a whole will discuss:

• 1. What are the most important things that you learned from this article that will affect your practice as a teacher? As a school leader? As a principal?
• 2. What can you do beginning tomorrow at your school to enact a perspective or action learned from this article?

• Supovitz, J. (2009). Is High-Stakes Testing Working? University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education. http://www.gse.upenn.edu/

Test-based accountability systems – using standardized testing to hold individuals and institutions responsible for performance and to reward achievement – have been cornerstones of U.S. education policy for decades. As a nation, we have invested substantial monies into the testing regimen: from approximately $260 million in 1997 to approximately $700 million in 2009. Research shows that high-stakes assessments can and do motivate change in instructional practice. But critics charge that these changes tend to be superficial adjustments, focused on the content covered and test preparation rather than deep improvements to instructional practice. Are they correct?

Read the article and consider the following:

• 1. Describe the four major theories that underlie our reliance on high-stakes tests. In your view as an educator and as a taxpayer, which of these theories offers the most relevant and practical reason for high-stakes testing – and what reasons support your view?
• 2. Identify and explain the conclusions drawn from research about whether high-stakes tests are increasing teacher motivation, aligning the educational system, providing information for decision making, and serves as an attractive political strategy.
• 3. Which of the “Where Do We Go From Here?” recommendations do you think will be most helpful to principals and teachers – and why?

• Guskey, T.R. (2003, February). How Classroom Assessments Improve Learning. Educational Leadership, 60 (5), 6 – 11. Available at: https://uknowledge.uky.edu/

In this classic article how formative assessments can improve teaching and learning, Thomas R. Guskey, Professor of Education at the University of Kentucky, sees assessments as integral parts of the instructional process. He writes that teachers who develop useful assessments, provide corrective instruction, and give students second changes to show success can improve their instruction and help students learn.

Read the article and consider the following:

• 1. Why is it important for teachers to consider assessments as an instructional tool to improve teaching and learning rather than an evaluation device?
• 2. Explain the difference between “teaching to the test” and “testing what they teach”.
• 3. Identify the ways in which teachers can use classroom assessments to improve teaching and learning.
• 4. As a principal, what might you say to a teacher whose students performed poorly on a major assessment and, after you asked what accounted for the low class achievement, told you, “I taught them. They just didn’t learn it”?
• 5. Describe the differences and similarities between high-quality corrective instruction and reteaching.
• 6. Identify those of Guskey’s ideas about assessment that you think you might have the most difficulty persuading teachers to adopt – and give your reasons for your conclusion.

• Darling-Hammond, L. (2012, March 5). Value-Added Evaluation Hurts Teaching. Commentary. Education Week Spotlight. http://www.edweek.org/

Teacher evaluation in the U.S. needs an overhaul. National policy circles are discussing using value-added methodology as a major part of teacher evaluation – despite its inappropriateness for this purpose. For instance, New York City’s “worst teacher” was recently singled out, named, and labeled by the New York Post after the city’s education department released value-added test-score ratings to the media. In fact, the teacher named was a highly regarded teacher of English Language Learners working at an excellent elementary school. Is using value-added data the way to improve teacher evaluations?

Read the article and consider the following:

• 1. Explain why using “value-added methods” for assessing teacher effectiveness for the purpose of making high-stakes decisions about individual teachers is a flawed strategy.
• 2. Describe how using value-added methods to determine teacher effectiveness might actually undermine the goals of giving high-needs students the most effective teachers and encouraging teacher collaboration to improve instructional practices.
• 3. Describe what Darling-Hammond recommends as practices for teacher evaluation.

• Marsh, J.A., Pane, J.F., & Hamilton, L.S. (2006). Making Sense of Data-Driven Decision Making in Education. Evidence from Recent RAND Research. Occasional Paper. RAND Education. http://www.rand.org/

“Data-driven” decision making has become an educational mantra. Principals, teachers, and central office personnel are systematically collecting and analyzing various types of data to guide an array of decisions to help improve students’ and schools’ success. Some suggest that educators are “drowning” in it. But are educators interpreting and using data in ways that actually benefit student outcomes? This RAND paper seeks to clarify the ways in which schools and districts are using multiple types of data.

The class will separate into five groups. Each group will read the assigned selection, identify the five most important ideas for future principals, and report their findings to the whole class. Everyone will read the Introduction. After the presentations, the class as a whole will discuss their findings and the implications for future principals.

• Group 1: What is Data-Driven Decision Making in Education? (pp. 2-4) (For your presentation, use the graphic on page 3 and explain it to the rest of the class)
• Group 2: What Types of Data Are Administrators and Teachers Using? (pp. 4-6)
• Group 3: How are Administrators and Teachers Using These Data? (pp. 6-7)
• Group 4: What Kinds of Support are Available to Help with Data Use (pp. 7-8) and What Factors Influence the Use of Data in Decision Making? (pp. 8-9)
• Group 5: Implications for Policy and Practice (p. 9-11).

After all presentations, the class as a whole will discuss:

• 1. How well does this report match how your present school is using data to make decisions? In your view, what steps are missing in your own school’s practice that would benefit your data-driven decision making?
• 2. In what ways does your school or district provide technical assistance to help teachers and administrators learn how to make sense of the data they are sending to the school to help you make high-quality decisions (and not become confused, misinformed, or make invalid inferences)?

• Spillane, J.P., & Lee, L.C. (2014) Novice school principals’ sense of ultimate responsibility: Problems of practice in transitioning to the principal’s office. Educational Administration Quarterly 50(3), 431–465. https://doi.org/10.1177/0013161X13505290 Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/

Transitioning into the principalship is a “reality shock.” This study focuses on the problems of practice that novice school principals experience as they transition into their new occupation, focusing on the first 3 months. Their sense of ultimate responsibility contributed to three core problems of practice—task volume, diversity, and unpredictability. While almost all novices experienced the responsibility shock as well as one or more of the practice problems, the conditions of novices’ transitions to the principalship either eased or exacerbated the level of practice problems they encountered. After reading this article, consider the following:

• 1. Describe the variety of responsibilities and stressors that principals face on the job that contribute to their high levels of stress.
• 2. Explain at least five “challenges” that contribute to new principals’ experience of professional isolation and loneliness.
• 3. After reading the participants’ comments describing their experiences, which challenge do you think will be the easiest for you to meet as a novice pricnpa: task volume, diversity, or unpredictability? Which do you think will be the most difficult for you?

• Super, D.E. (1980). A life-span, life-space approach to career development. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 16(3), 282 – 298. https://doi.org/

In this groundbreaking article from 1980, Donald E. Super, often considered the father of vocational guidance, defined a career as the combination and sequence of roles played by a person during a lifetime. Super originated a Life- Career Rainbow as a means of helping conceptualize multidimensional careers, the time frames involved, and the emotional commitment to, each role. Self- actualization in various roles, role conflicts, and the determinants of role selection and of role performance are discussed. After reading the article, consider the following:

• 1. Explain what Super means when he writes “The constellation of interacting, varying, roles constitutes the career.” (p. 284)
• 2. Describe the ways in which a career is different than an occupation.
• 3. Looking at Figure 1, p. 289, describe how the temporal importance of - and emotional involvement in – a person’s roles change over time. Explain with examples how this is true for you.
• 4. Explain what Super means when he writes, “It is the number and types of roles, and the stability of the width and depth of these roles, that constitute and portray a lifestyle.” (p. 290).
• 5. Use Figure 3, p. 294, to explain decision points within a career and lifestyle. Describe how this model fits – or doesn’t fit – your own career decision process.
• 6. Using Figure 4, p. 295, identify the major personal and situational determinants that affect your preferences, choices, and entry in career decision making in your own life.

• Schein, E.H. (2007, August). Career anchors revisited: Implications of career development in the 21st century. NHRD Journal 1(4), 27 – 33. Available at : https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/

We are living in a time of tremendous organizational soc societal change. In studying careers longitudinally, Edgar Schein, professor emeritus at the MIT Sloan School of Management, noted that “it became evident that most people form a strong self-concept which holds their internal career together even as they experience dramatic changes in their external career. I called this self-concept a "career anchor" and found that an understanding of it helped to illuminate how people made career choices. But will the concept of "career anchor" still be applicable in this rapidly changing world…?” After reading the article, consider the following:

• 1. Define “career anchor” as Schein sees it.
• 2. Describe your own career anchors and how your choice of anchors has evolved as you have gained occupational and life experience.
• 3. Rank order your top five career anchors today and compare them to your career anchors as a new college graduate.
• 4. Which career anchors does Schein predict will have the most – and least – difficulty in the 21st century environment? How does this prediction impact you?

• Da’as, R., Schechter, C., & Qadach, M. (2018). Switching cognitive gears: School leaders‘ cognitive complexity. NASSP Bulletin, 102(3), 181 – 203. https://doi.org/

 

The role of school leaders is inherently complex. Research in the business field has found leader’s cognitive complexity to be a predictor of leader and organizational effectiveness whereas the notion of school leader’s cognitive complexity remains undeveloped in the educational leadership and management field. This article suggests a framework for school leaders’ cognitive complexity.
After reading this article, consider the following:

• 1. Define cognitive complexity (CC) and describe what a person with CC can do that cognitively simple people cannot do.
• 2. After reading “Switching Cognitive Gears: Differentiation and Integration” (pp. 185 – 188), explain the cognitive complexity model, Figure 1, p. 186. Where do you think you fit in this model – and why?
• 3. Using the descriptions for school leaders’ CC for high and low CC, Table 1, describe how having CC can advantage principals in dynamic, complex situations – and give an example for each of school Leaders’ activities (noted in left-hand column).
• 4. Explain how the authors suggest prospective school leaders increase their cognitive complexity.

• Kelliher, C.; Richardson, J.; Boiarintseva, G. (2019). All of work? All of life? Reconceptualising work-life balance for the 21st century. Human Resource Management Journal, 29(2), 97–112. https://doi.org/

What is “life” in “work-life balance”? This paper argues that the study of work-life balance – the relationship between work and non-working time – has been too restricted. Authors propose extending ideas of work and life to incorporate different life worlds and social groups and different working arrangements and employment relationships that have emerged in the 21st century.

After reading the article, consider the following:

• 1. Describe the evolution the concept of “work-life balance.”
• 2. Explain the current gaps – which populations are missing – n our understanding of the work-life balance (rom limits on the populations studied to date).
• 3. Identify some of the contemporary working arrangements and employment relationships that are missing from our understanding of work-life balance.
• 4. Explain how this Human Resource Management perspective can influence how principals define and manage their own work-life balance – and how they might help their teachers and staff better define and manage their own work-life balance.