Jessica G. Rigby

Three Logics of Instructional Leadership

Purpose: This study examines conceptions of instructional leadership in the institutional environment. We know that principals’ practices affect student learning and that principals are influenced by ideas in the broader environment. This article examines and defines the multiple conceptions of what it means for principals to be instructional leaders. Research Methods/Approach: This empirical article relies on the methodology of content analysis. Refinements of the conceptions of instructional leadership were done through iterative data collection and analyses cycles. Findings: I define three conceptions of instructional leadership in the institutional environment that I term prevailing, entrepreneurial, and social justice logics. The ubiquitous prevailing logic was broad and flexible without explicit goals or directions for principals as instructional leaders. From this ambiguous conception, the two alternatives highlighted particular practices and backgrounded others. The entrepreneurial conception relied on innovations and mechanisms borrowed from the private sector, including a reliance on data and specific leadership actions. The social justice logic focused on the experiences and inequitable outcomes of marginalized groups, challenging the current “neutral” systems that engender the reproduction of inequity in our schools. Implications for Research and Practice: This study contributes to the field by providing a language that can help specify what “instructional leadership” looks like in practice and conceptions, thus explicating the tacit and ambiguous term. This is important for researchers to understand and explore the impact of the principalship on student achievement, and for principal preparation programs and school districts to assume a common language in expectations, professional development, and evaluation.

Principals' Sensemaking and Enactment of Teacher Evaluation.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to look across six first-year principals to investigate their engagement with and sensemaking of specific messages of instructional leadership around teacher evaluation. Design/methodology/approach – This research project, a cross-case study, was carried out using in-depth qualitative observations and interviews of six first-year principals over one school year. Sensemaking theory was used to analyze both how and the mechanisms through which principals understood their roles as teacher evaluators. Findings – The results demonstrate that first, principals received a variety of messages about how to conduct teacher evaluations, and second, that connections to specific individuals influenced their associations to specific messages they received about instructional leadership and how they enacted teacher evaluation practices on their campuses. Research limitations/implications – This is an in-depth qualitative analysis, and therefore is not generalizable to all first-yea...

Building schools, rethinking quality? Early lessons from Los Angeles

Purpose – Newly designed schools for centuries have projected fresh ideals regarding how children should learn and how human settlements should be organized. But under what conditions can forward‐looking architects or education reformers trump the institutionalized practices of teachers or the political‐economic constraints found within urban centers? The purpose of this paper is to ask how the designers of newly built schools in Los Angeles – midway into a

Principals’ Conceptions of Instructional Leadership and Their Informal Social Networks: An Exploration of the Mechanisms of the Mesolevel

27 billion construction initiative – may help to rethink and discernibly lift educational quality. This may be accomplished via three causal pathways that may unfold in new schools: attracting a new mix of students, recruiting stronger teachers, or raising the motivation and performance of existing teachers and students.Design/methodology/approach – We track basic indicators of student movement and school quality over a five‐year period (2002‐2007) to understand whether gains do stem from new school construction. Qualitative field work and interviews ...

Administrator Observation and Feedback: Does It Lead Toward Improvement in Inquiry-Oriented Math Instruction?:

First-year principals encounter multiple messages about what it means to be instructional leaders; this may matter for how they enact instructional leadership. This cross-case qualitative study uses a qualitative approach of social network analysis to uncover the mechanisms through which first-year principals encountered particular beliefs about instructional leadership. To do so, I studied six first-year principals who came to their positions through four distinct paths, examining their informal social networks. I found, first, that their networks’ structures influenced the spread of instructional leadership ideas from the environment to individuals at the mesolevel. Second, the findings suggest that preparation programs mattered for how the principals conceptualized instructional leadership. This research contributes to our understanding of the relationship between institutional ideas and practice in schools, principal preparation, and professional development. It also extends research on social network analysis by elucidating beliefs in the content of interaction in social networks.

Understanding How Structure and Agency Influence Education Policy Implementation and Organizational Change

Purpose: This study examines the content and efficacy of instructional leaders’ expectations and feedback (press) in relation to the improvement of middle school mathematics teachers’ instruction in the context of coherent systems of supports. Research Method/Approach: This mixed methods study is a part of a larger, 8-year longitudinal study in four large urban school districts across the United States. We used transcripts of interview data, surveys, and video recordings of instruction of 271 cases, over 4 years, to determine the content of administrator press, as reported by teachers, and the relationship between the content and change (if any) in instruction. To do so we used qualitative coding of interview transcripts, and ran a series of statistical models to examine the nature of the variance in and impact of administrative press. Findings: Most of the administrators’ press, as reported by teachers, was not targeted toward specific teachers’ mathematics instruction in ways that would likely lead toward improvement in those practices. Rather, the press focused on content-neutral instructional practices or classroom management and organization. Implications for Research and Practice: The instructional leadership practice of administrator observation and feedback is widespread, yet understudied as it relates to changes in teacher practice. Our findings indicate that current policies that mandate principals to spend substantial time in classrooms are unlikely to result in significant improvements in the quality of instruction unless meaningful resources are invested to support administrator learning.

Leadership Development Through Design and Experimentation: Learning in a Research–Practice Partnership:

Policy implementation is a daily event in schools and districts. Educators engage with policies in many forms and must consider how to implement their multiple ideas in a coordinated manner. Take a classroom teacher who manages the following policies for one child identified with a disability: the federal policy on disability (IDEA), state policies around curriculum standards, her district’s policy on access to assistive technology, her school’s policy on inclusion, and her individual classroom policy on homework. Ample implementation research demonstrates that policies are rarely implemented as written nor necessarily as intended (e.g., Cohen and Hill 2001; Correnti and Rowan 2007; Kennedy 2005; Rowan and Miller 2007; Rowan et al. 2004; Stein et al. 1996). Yet while the policies rarely dictate exactly what happens in districts and schools, they do shape the daily work of the actors in these organizations (Coburn 2004; Drori and Honig 2013; Sherer and Spillane 2011). Across the United States, and internationally, reforms are both delivered to schools and districts at an

Coaching for Coherence: How Instructional Coaches Lead Change in the Evaluation Era:

A core function of district leadership is providing instructional vision and support for school leaders and teachers. In this article, a Research–Practice Partnership focused on the improvement of elementary mathematics teaching and learning provides the context to study leadership development. We examine the process of one design team within the Research–Practice Partnership consisting of district leaders and university researchers using organizational learning. We found that as the team iteratively negotiated the design and implementation of a practical measure aimed at assessing and improving elementary mathematics instruction system-wide, the team’s learning transformed the tools and routines of its work.

Leading for Instructional Improvement in the Context of Accountability: Central Office Leadership

Instructional coaching has emerged as a prevalent and much-lauded instrument for capacity building. This essay argues that coaching can be aligned with teacher evaluation systems to work toward the effective implementation of instructional reforms, including Common Core State Standards and Next Generation Science Standards. Within the current policy context, coaching can support reform by (a) developing shared understandings, (b) modeling practices, and (c) brokering ideas. We discuss examples of coaches’ leadership actions related to the evaluation process, thus illustrating the potential for coaching to promote coherence in instructional improvement. We conclude by discussing barriers to the enactment of reform-aligned coaching as well as implications for leaders positioned at multiple levels of the education system.

Alternative Teacher Compensation: A Primer.

This case was written to help prepare central office leaders who are expected to design systems and lead toward instructional improvement in the context of both educational accountability and implementation of standards with increased rigor. The intent of this case study is to encourage educators to examine the complex and multiple challenges of policy design and implementation when policy goals are far from current practice. Educators studying this case should examine the costs and benefits of bridging and buffering across organizational levels and how to best craft coherence between goals, needs, and resources at the central office and school levels.