Deidre M. Le Fevre

The Interpersonal Challenges of Instructional Leadership: Principals’ Effectiveness in Conversations About Performance Issues

Purpose: Principals commonly struggle to have effective conversations about staff performance issues, tending to tolerate, protect, and work around such issues rather than effectively addressing them. This article evaluates principals’ effectiveness in having “difficult” conversations with parents and with teachers. Research Methodology: This article reports a partial replication of a previous study in which the theoretical framework of Argyris and Schön was used to analyze the interpersonal effectiveness of newly appointed principals in a conversation with a parent. In this study, the results of these same 27 principals are compared with those gained in a second difficult conversation, this time with a teacher. The conversations were standardized by limiting each to 7 minutes and using the same actor to play the part of the parent complainant and teacher. Findings: Overall, principals demonstrated consistently low to moderate levels of skill across the two conversations. Typically, principals were more skilled in advocating their own position than in deeply inquiring into and checking their understanding of the views of the parent or teacher. Implications: Leaders need the confidence and skills to engage in productive and respectful conversations about the quality of teaching and learning to be effective instructional leaders. Consistent low to moderate capabilities demonstrated in these conversations suggest that educational improvement demands targeted professional learning for leaders. This research contributes to a research and development agenda by identifying the patterns of reasoning and action that constrain and facilitate more effective interpersonal capabilities.

When Others’ Performance Just Isn't Good Enough: Educational Leaders’ Framing of Concerns in Private and Public

Effective instructional leadership demands that leaders address the inevitable problems and concerns that exist in any educational organization. Unfortunately, much evidence suggests that many important concerns, including teacher performance issues, continue to be unaddressed and unresolved. This article portrays the nature of concerns facing 77 educational leaders about others’ performance and the variable effectiveness of their attempts to resolve them in both private and public contexts. The majority of concerns identified by these leaders were about behavioral issues, with others being about attitudes, relationships, effectiveness, and capability. Concerns were found to persist longer than is desirable, and leaders reported difficulty in resolving them.

Genuine inquiry Widely espoused yet rarely enacted

The concept of inquiry is central to contemporary discussions of teacher and leader professional learning and problem solving in interpersonal contexts. However, while few would debate its value, there has been little discussion of the significant challenges inherent in engaging in genuine inquiry. In this article, we distinguish between genuine and pseudo-inquiry, and define the former as motivated by an open-minded stance and desire to learn. We argue in our literature review, that while both forms of inquiry may share the same linguistic features, deeper analysis of underlying thoughts and motives is required to distinguish the two types of inquiry. We then report a descriptive study of how 13 school leaders (in a simulated setting) inquired into their concerns about a teacher’s behaviour. The analysis of their conversation transcripts showed that they engaged in limited genuine inquiry. Leaders’ capacity for genuine inquiry was constrained by their judgmental thinking, tendency to avoid negative emotion and desire to maximize staying in control of the conversation. Implications for further research on inquiry and for leadership development are discussed.

From Persuasion to Learning: An Intervention to Improve Leaders' Response to Disagreement

In this study we bring together Argyris and Schön’s theories of interpersonal effectiveness and research on negotiation to develop a model of effective leadership behavior in conversations involving actual or anticipated disagreement. A concurrent mixed-methods design was used to assess shifts in how 18 Australian superintendents responded to disagreement that arose in conversations about performance problems. The intervention included discussion of the model and its application to participants’ own practice through analysis of transcripts, modeling, coaching, and feedback. Assessments of conversation skills and outcomes showed moderate to large intervention effects. The implications for leadership development and double-loop learning are discussed.

How Leaders Communicate Their Vulnerability: Implications for Trust Building.

Purpose The notion of vulnerability underlies relationships of trust. Trust between leaders and staff is needed to solve concerns that hinder equity and excellence in teaching and learning. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether and how leaders show vulnerability by disclosing own possible contributions to concerns they try to resolve. Design/methodology/approach Data included transcripts of conversations held by 27 educational leaders about a concern with another staff and a questionnaire about the nature, causes and history of the concern. Questionnaire analysis identified if and how leaders described their own possible contribution prior to the conversation. Transcript analysis identified instances of leaders’ contribution disclosure. Findings Results indicate that while two-thirds of leaders identified an own contribution, when prompted prior to the conversation, one-third saw no own contribution. Leaders indicated contributing by not acting on the concern, by acting in ways inappropriate or insufficient to resolve the concern, or by not clearly communicating their concern in the past. Eight of the 27 leaders publicly disclosed their contribution in the actual conversation. In some conversations this disclosure prompted reciprocal disclosure of information about the concern and its causes by the other person, aiding a more effective concern resolution. Originality/value Through examining leaders’ interpersonal behavior in difficult conversations, the importance of leaders’ acknowledgments of own mistakes and communication of their own vulnerability is highlighted. A positive view of vulnerability is argued for, epistemic vulnerability, which manifests itself in the willingness to be honest and open to learning by accepting one’s own fallibility.

Re(cognizing) Leadership: Women in Early Childhood Education and the Academy

The internal conflict between “work” and “life” is a defining experience for many women. There exist competing demands in academic work and one’s private life and this chapter examines the extent to which these cause connectedness or dissonance for women in the academy. Is it a matter of time available for participation in these different spheres or is it something more complex than this? We examine how women experience their position within the academy in relation to the perceived norms of the institution, exploring the apparent sense of disequilibrium between the self in one’s private life and the expectation of the self in the academy. We examine this disjunctive by engaging in a narrative method of inquiry (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000) framed by gendered experiences. A sense communicated through the conversations analyzed is that there are many “perceived norms” that interrupt a sense of continuity for women between self and identify in the academy. For example, Tompkins (1996) identifies the perceived norm of competition saying “An atmosphere of competitiveness, never spoken or named, permeated the classes and the casual conversation. You could taste it in the coffee and smell it in the corridors” (p. 77). Such norms have implications for the engagement and recognition of women and the extent to which the “disappearing” of women’s leadership and contribution can become an institutional practice (Fletcher, 2004).