In one word, “What kind of school

leader do you aspire to be?”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVBep8tcvBI
 Successful School
Leadership
PRESENTED BY RINNELLE LEE -PIGGOTT (PHD)
Session Objectives
By the end of this session, you would have:

 distinguished between leadership and management;

 defined educational leadership;

 collaboratively constructed through researching, writing and presenting a literature

review of successful school leadership;

 come to value the importance of and the nature of principals’ practices in leading
schools to success;

 reflected on principalship in your school through the lens of ‘successful school leadership
practices’.
Leadership vs management

Same or different? How?

Discuss, in groups:

1. Can a leader be a manager and vice versa?

2. Are all leaders managers and vice versa?

3. Is it possible to lead in management?

 Leadership = Management
Many researchers (e.gs. Cuban, 1988; Day, 2003) say they are not the same.

“…leadership is essentially the process of building and maintaining a sense of vision, culture
and interpersonal relationships, whereas management is the coordination, support and
monitoring of organizational activities” (Day, 2003).

Cuban (1988, cited in Bush, 2011) links leadership to change; management to maintenance
[See quote in Bush (2011, pp. 8-9].*
See Bolman & Deal
(1997, pp. xiii-xiv cited
Leadership and management are both needed in Bush, 2011)
for improvement and effectiveness
 Educational Leadership: what is it?
• There are different conceptualizations of educational leadership largely due to conceptual
borrowing from disciplines such as sociology, political science and organizational
management

• A concept that may be usefully defined as concerned with influence, values and practices
towards accomplishing a vision and group goals (Bush, 2011).

• Mainly conceptualized as uni-directional (influence from leader to followers/context);

rather than relational (two-way influence between leaders and followers/context)

• The principal’s leadership, in particular, “acts as a catalyst” in providing the conditions

necessary for school success (Leithwood et al., 2006, p. 4)
What does successful leadership look like?
Think-Write-Pair-Share Activity

Think about someone you consider to be a successful principal

 Identify two of their leadership practices and how they do it? – 10

mins

 In pairs, share and compare your responses! – 5 mins

Successful Leadership: the evidence
• While there are other types of leadership practices and theories, there is strong
evidence that successful principal leadership is mainly transformational and
instructional
Transformational Leadership

• setting directions
• developing people
• redesigning the organisation

Instructional Leadership

• managing the teaching/learning

environment and instructional
programme
Sectional

◦ What do you understand about leadership?

◦ What is successful leadership?

◦ What practices, according to empirical evidence, constitute successful

leadership?
 Jigsaw Activity: Successful Leadership
• Each person in your home group gets a number.
• Form new groups called expert groups consisting of persons having the same
number.
• Each expert group deals with one aspect of successful leadership, naming two key
players
• 1 – setting directions
• 2 – developing people
• 3 – redesigning the organization
• 4 – managing the teaching/learning environment & programme

• After 20 mins, return to your home group and share for another 20 mins. Everyone
should know all 4 aspects.
• Revisit the leadership practices identified in our first activity and match them to the
successful leadership practices (1-4 above)
Successful Principal Leadership in T&T
schools?

Use the 4 successful school/principal leadership practices (identified in

literature) to assess principal leadership in your school?

In your assessment, identify: (a) two reasons why they may or may
not be happening in your school and (b) two related
effects of each of these reasons. Share in your groups (20 mins)
Summary & Closure

Revisiting the session objectives:

On your exit card, write at least one major ‘take away’ for
you from today’s session that either confirms or disavows
your earlier idea of the kind of school leader you hope to
be?
Post Assessment
Visit our course blog by clicking on the link below to comment on the
topic:

School principals in Trinidad and Tobago can lead their

schools successfully if they try.

Link to blog: https://prinicpalshipfortheglobalsouth.weebly.com/