Susan M. Printy

Principal Leadership and School Performance: An Integration of Transformational and Instructional Leadership

Focusing on school leadership relations between principals and teachers, this study examines the potential of their active collaboration around instructional matters to enhance the quality of teaching and student performance. The analysis is grounded in two conceptions of leadership—transformational and instructional. The sample comprises 24 nationally selected restructured schools—8elementary, 8middle, and 8high schools. In keeping with the multilevel structure of the data, the primary analytic technique is hierarchical linear modeling (HLM). The study finds that transformational leadership is a necessary but insufficient condition for instructional leadership. When transformational and shared instructional leadership coexist in an integrated form of leadership, the influence on school performance, measured by the quality of its pedagogy and the achievement of its students, is substantial.

Shared Leadership for Teacher and Student Learning.

The article synthesizes research findings from studies examining how principals and teachers contribute to shared instructional leadership and the relationship of shared instructional leadership to teacher and student learning. Principals and teachers contribute to the leadership equation in each school in different ways, according to school context and personnel, but an important finding is that the ways in which teachers and principals lead are in tension. It is this tension, however, that is characteristic of leadership in schools that make steady, incremental, and effective instructional improvement. Teachers learn more when teachers and principals find balance in the gradual movement between the status quo and intentional change. Two other factors enhance teacher learning: the shared belief that teachers can and must educate every student, and respectful and open relationships among colleagues. With these conditions, teachers learn to be better teachers and student achievement increases.

Principals' influence on instructional quality: Insights from US schools

This article seeks to explain the ways in which leadership makes a difference to the quality of instruction in US schools by reviewing research published since 2000. The review of research is presented in three major sections, organised according to the methodology used in each study. The first section looks into quantitative studies that probe the structural relationships among members and activities related to teaching and learning. Primarily drawing on surveys completed by school stakeholders, these studies uncover patterns of influence using advanced statistical methods. The second section summarises findings from qualitative case study research, which provide specific examples of conditions that support the leadership patterns previously identified. The final section offers further explanations of how these patterns of influence operate by examining the alignment of formal and social components of interactions through network methodology.

How school context and educator characteristics predict distributed leadership: A hierarchical structural equation model with 2013 TALIS data

Distributed leadership is a dynamic process and reciprocal interaction of the leader, the subordinates and the situation. This research was inspired by the theoretical framework of Spillane in order to contextualize distributed leadership and compare the variations using the Teaching and Learning International Survey 2013 data. The two-level structural equation model utilized the school contextual variables and staff characteristics as exogenous and endogenous variables simultaneously in order to investigate the reciprocal effects of these variables on each other, and the ultimate influences on the extent to which leadership is distributed. The results suggest mutual respect among staff, funding resource of the school, together with principals gender and employment status, are critically important factors with regard to the extent of distributed leadership in a school.

Principals’ Decisions Implementing Response to Intervention

The reauthorization of the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) of 2004 spurred sweeping changes for how special education students are identified in the United States. IDEA 2004 encourages schools to use Response to Intervention (RTI) as a new method for identifying special education students. As schools implement RTI, the principal becomes a key figure in determining the success of RTI. This study examines the policy ecology that influences principals’ views, beliefs, and considerations of RTI in determining the school plan for implementation. We find that implementation at the school level is distinguished by two types of implementation communities, what we term integrated or differentiated. Understanding the range of pressures and supports may inform district and school practitioners seeking to implement policy and policy makers as they consider the design of future policies.

Choosing a superintendent: A decision framework

Hiring the right personnel has been shown to be among the best forms of quality control for organizations (Collins, 2001). Hiring a superintendent can be a quandary for selection committees, since it is impossible to know how things will work out in the future when decisions are based on each candidate’s past history and the district’s current status. Who will adequately lead the district into the projected future? What are the critical considerations? How do you make decisions? This chapter introduces the quandary of hiring a new superintendent for a small, rural, but rapidly changing school district. In this case, a decision needs to be made about which of two finalists should be offered the superintendency.