CHRACTERS AND QUALITIES
Like leaders of any other organization, school leaders
Hargreaves, A. and Fink,
D. (2006), Sustainable
Leadership, Jossey-Bass,
San Francisco, CA
Fullan, M. (2005),
Leadership and
Sustainability: System
Thinkers in Action, Corwin
Press,Thousand Oaks, CA.
McLaughlin, M.W. and
Talbert, J.E. (1993),
Contexts that Matter for
Teaching and
Learning,Context Center
on Secondary School
Teaching, Palo Alto, CA.
Chrispeels, J. (2004),
Learning to Lead
Together: The Promise and
Challenge of
SharingLeadership, Sage
Publications, Thousand
Oaks, CA.
Honig, M. (2004), “Crafting
coherence: how schools
strategically manage
multiple,
externaldemands”,
Educational Researcher,
Vol. 33 No. 8, pp. 16-30.
Togneri, W. and Anderson,
S.E. (2003), Beyond
Islands of Excellence:
What Districts Can Do to
Improve Instruction and
Achievement in All
Schools, The Learning First
Alliance and the
Association for Supervision
and Curriculum
Development,
should have certain qualities and character traits such as
honesty, decency, perseverance,empathy, and respect
(Marlow, 2007).
According to Rutherford (2006) the continual expansion of a
principal’s role makes it difficult for many principals to
accomplish all their daily obligations. In
Leadership is needed in organizations and social
institutions because the success or failure of an
organization or social institution dependson the leadership
(Kaiser, Hogan, & Craig, 2008).
This “reform churn”, while intended to improve
performance,often constrains efforts at organizational
improvements as change-weary schools often engage
reforms with a lack of depth and breadth (Coburn, 2003;
Datnow et al., 2006; Hubbard et al., 2006).
Above all, the balance of this work suggests the need for a
more interconnected systems approach to organizational
change (Fullan, 2005; Hargreaves and Fink, 2006;
McLaughlin and Talbert, 2003), requiring that district and
site leaders, “think systemically about schools and their
development and see educational organizations in terms of
their interdependent parts” (Smylie et al., 2003, p. 155).
Studies of successful districts that applied more systemic
approaches in developing
Smylie, M., Wenzel, S. and Fendt, C. (2003), “The Chicago Annenberg
challenge: lessons on leadership for school development”, in Murphy,
J. and Datnow, A. (Eds), Leadership Lessons from Comprehensive
School Reforms, Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA, pp. 135-58.
Studies of successful districts that applied more systemic
approaches in developing collaboration across teams
suggest a range of specific strategies that educators can
engage in building stronger intra-organizational ties
(Chrispeels, 2004; Honig, 2004; Togneri and Anderson,
2003). These strategies include: creating structures for
increased collaboration and knowledge exchange within
schools (McLaughlin and Talbert, 2003);
enhancing communication channels and support focusing
on teaching and learning (Agullard and Goughnour, 2006);
distributing leadership (Leithwood et al., 2007; Spillane,
2006);\ providing opportunities for input on decision-making
(Brazer and Keller, 2008);and . building a collective sense
of efficacy (Goddard et al., 2004).
Goddard, R.D., Hoy, W.K. and Hoy, A. (2004), “Collective efficacy:
theoretical development,empirical evidence, and future directions”,
Educational Researcher, Vol. 33 No. 3, pp. 3-13.
Leithwood, K., Mascall, B., Strauss, T., Sacks, R., Memon, N. and
Yashkina, A. (2007),
“Distributing leadership to make schools smarter: taking the ego out
Washington, DC. of the system”,
Leadership and Policy in Schools, Vol. 6 No. 1, pp. 37-67.
Agullard, K. and
Goughnour, D.S. (2006), Brazer, S.D. and Keller, L.R. (2008), “A design research approach to
Central Office Inquiry: investigating educational decision making”, in Kelly, A.E., Lesh, R.A.
Assessing Organization, and Baek, J.Y. (Eds), Handbook of DesignResearch Methods in
Roles, Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Learning and
and Actions to Support Teaching, Routledge/Taylor and Francis, New York, NY, pp. 284-96.
School Improvement,
WestEd, San Francisco,
CA.