Jo Blase

Principals' Instructional Leadership and Teacher Development: Teachers' Perspectives

In recent years, reflective, collaborative, inquiry-oriented approaches to supervision of teachers and teacher development have been discussed in the professional literature. However, few published studies have directly examined teachers’perspectives on principals’everyday instructional leadership characteristics and the impact of those characteristics on teachers. This article describes the everyday strategies of principals practicing exemplary instructional leadership and how these principals influenced teachers. The data were drawn from a qualitative study of more than 800 teachers in the southeastern, midwestern, and northwestern United States. An open-ended questionnaire was designed to provide teachers with the opportunity to identify and describe in detail the characteristics of principals that enhanced their classroom instruction and what impact those characteristics had on them. Inductive analyses of the data generated two major themes comprising 11 strategies, which were used to construct the Reflection-Growth (RG) model of instructional leadership. This article emphasizes those strategies and the meanings teachers identified with them.

Effective Instructional Leadership: Teachers' Perspectives on How Principals Promote Teaching and Learning in Schools.

Few studies have directly examined teachers’ perspectives on principals’ everyday instructional leadership characteristics and the impacts of those characteristics on teachers. In this study, over 800 American teachers responded to an open‐ended questionnaire by identifying and describing characteristics of principals that enhanced their classroom instruction and what impacts those characteristics had on them. The data revealed two themes (and 11 strategies) of effective instructional leadership: talking with teachers to promote reflection and promoting professional growth.

The Micropolitics of Instructional Supervision: A Call for Research

This article examines the applicability of the micropolitical perspective to understanding various dimensions of instructional supervision. A brief discussion of the centrality of micropolitics to supervisory structures, processes, and practices is followed by reviews of two emergent streams of research: the micropolitics of teaching and the micropolitics of instructional supervision. Suggestions for further research are discussed in detail. The authors also discuss implications of a micropolitical perspective for preparation programs and administrator practice.

The Micropolitical Orientation of Facilitative School Principals and Its Effects on Teachers' Sense of Empowerment.

Describes the everyday micropolitical facilitative strategies and personal characteristics of exemplary school principals who have influenced and enhanced teachers’ sense of empowerment. The data discussed here were drawn from a qualitative study of teachers in 11 schools affiliated with Glickman’s League of Professional Schools in Georgia. An open‐ended questionnaire designed by the researchers, according to general guidelines for grounded theory inquiry, provided teachers with the opportunity to identify and describe in detail characteristics of principals that enhanced their sense of empowerment. Inductive analyses of the data generated a description of facilitative leadership that includes seven major “facilitative” strategies and one set of facilitative personal characteristics that enhanced teacher empowerment. Focuses on the strategies and characteristics teachers identified as facilitative principal leadership. Discusses findings in terms of the relevant empirical and theoretical literature.

Implementation of shared governance for instructional improvement: principals’ perspectives

Describes the practices, thoughts, and feelings of shared‐governance principals as they confront the challenges of school restructuring. The focus is on the principals’ perspective on shared governance and democratic schooling; the challenges of becoming involved in collaborative decision making with teachers, parents, and students; and the principals’ own professional growth as they strove to become “one among equals” with their colleagues. The data discussed here were drawn from a qualitative study of principals in nine schools affiliated with Glickman’s League of Professional Schools in Georgia. A protocol of open‐ended interview questions designed by the researchers, according to general guidelines for grounded theory inquiry, provided principals with the opportunity to identify and describe in detail their perspective on shared governance leadership in schools. Inductive analysis of the data generated a description of the implementation of shared governance that includes five salient themes: meanings, becoming involved, letting go of power, supportive processes, and supportive structures. Discusses findings in terms of the relevant empirical and theoretical literature.

The Dark Side of School Leadership: Implications for Administrator Preparation

ABSTRACT In this article, we briefly review conceptual, theoretical, and empirical knowledge about a rapidly developing topic of organizational research, workplace mistreatment (e.g., bullying, mobbing, abuse, aggression) as well as our research about principal mistreatment of teachers. Following this, we discuss the importance of preparing prospective and practicing school principals to deal with personal and organizational factors that may interact to produce the kinds of leadership that seriously damage teachers, teaching, and student learning.

The phenomenology of principal mistreatment: teachers’ perspectives

This article, the first empirical study of its kind, presents findings from a larger qualitative study of principal mistreatment of teachers. A grounded theory method was used to study a sample of 50 US teachers who were subjected to long‐term mistreatment from school principals. The authors discuss descriptive, conceptual, and theoretical findings about principals’ actions that teachers define as mistreatment. In addition, the inductively derived model briefly looks at the harmful effects of principal mistreatment and abuse on teachers, psychologically/emotionally and physically/physiologically. Implications of study findings are discussed for administrator and teacher preparation, for school district offices, and for further research.

Excellence in clinical teaching: the core of the mission

The core of clinical education is the dialogue between physician teachers and their students and residents. Several years ago the authors began to examine the nature of the “talk” in one-on-one ambulatory clinical teaching encounters. Discourse analysis, a qualitative method for examining communication, can identify patterns of interaction and can highlight the factors that impede useful teaching conversation and learning in the contexts of clinical education. Further, it can identify the microskills that physician-teachers need to teach effectively and humanistically. Having faculty members coach each other is an effective institutional approach to teaching these microskills, and it is especially valuable to have teachers examine the language they use in clinical teaching, so that they can understand the different impacts that different kinds of language can have on learners. Physicians are responsible for cultivating humanistic attitudes in their students. When a physician is humanistic in helping a student learn, the student can, in turn, use the same attributes with the patient. The humanistic behaviors that are valuable parts of the physician-patient relationship are the same ones that must also characterize the relationship between physicians and their students. Excellent one-on-one teaching in clinical settings requires two major things: first, medical educators must understand the special communication skills that create effective and humanistic teaching; and second, administrators must re-recognize that teaching is the true heart of our medical schools and teaching hospitals, and therefore support the faculty professional development needed to foster excellent teaching.

Shared Governance Principals: The Inner Experience

Todays principal operates in a climate of school restructuring and reform wherein bureaucratic structures are fast giving way to collaborative endeavors among groups of education professionals. But letting go of old roles and power while being accountable for decisions made by others can be challenging and stressful.

Preceptors' use of reflection to teach in ambulatory settings: An exploratory study.

Purpose Reflection on ones teaching behavior is a means to question teaching events to bring teaching actions to a conscious level, to interpret the consequences of those actions, and to conceptualize alternative teaching actions. Ambulatory teaching settings are variable, unpredictable, and discontinuous, often resulting in lessfocused teaching. The authors sought to measure the level of reflection on teaching used by preceptors to plan teaching in these settings. Method Three preceptors who had participated in the Case Western Reserve Universitys peer-coaching program each answered four questions about how they planned to respond to two teaching case studies. The questions were posed by a medical educator who, for three of the four questions, also prompted the preceptors to stimulate their reflection. The audiotaped responses were assessed using Sparks-Langer and Coltons framework for reflective thinking. Results The levels of reflective thinking increased after prompting, but they did not exceed the rather low technical and practical levels, particularly for the more complex of the two cases. Conclusion This exploratory intervention suggests that faculty rely more on external and non-reflective levels of thought when planning to teach in the ambulatory setting. The authors recommend further research to foster discussions about the cognitive processes involved in planning for teaching in this setting.