The role of school leaders is changing.

It is a big challenge for school leaders to strengthen the recruitment, development and retention of teachers, as well as lift student outcomes.

In order to meet the heightened, multiple expectations now placed on schools, as well as to have engaged teachers, it is argued that school need to become learning organizations, consciously and continuously pursuing quality improvement. Within schools that are learning organizations evolve new types of relationships between student, teachers and leaders based around a reasonably common set of characteristics that include a trusting and collaborative climate, a shared and monitored mission, taking initiatives and risks, and going, relevant professional development.

The key relationships in the ways school leaders strengthen teacher recruitment, development and retention were shown to include factors such as teacher satisfaction, school effectiveness, improvement capacity, teacher leadership, organizational learning, and development. School leaders can be a major influence on these school-level actors as well as help butter against the excesses of the mounting and sometimes contradictory external pressures. A skilled and well-supported leadership team in schools can help foster a sense of ownership and purpose in the way that teachers approach their job. Conferring professional autonomy to teachers will enchance the attractiveness of the profession as a career choice and will improve the quality of the classroom teaching practice. Teachers who work together in meaningful and purposeful ways have been found to be more likely to remain in the profession because they feel valued and supported in their work.

Research suggests that while decentralization may have occurred from the system to school level, it has not necessarily occurred within schools. Further, where decentralization has occurred within schools it tended to be about administrative rather than education matters. This situation should be of concern, especially given evidence teachers are attracted to, and stay in, the profession if they feel they belong and believe they are contributing to the success of their school and students.

One of the most consistent finding from studies of effective school leadership is that authority to lead need not be located in the person of the leader but can be dispersed within the school between and among people. There is a growing understanding that leadership is embedded in various organizational contexts within school communities, not centrally vested in a person or an office. The real challenge facing most schools is no longer how to improve but, more importantly, how to sustain improvement. Sustainability will depend upon the school’s internal capacity to maintain and support developmental work and sustaining improvement requires the leadership capability of the many rather the few.

Recent research shows that:

• The leadership that makes a difference is both position based (principal) and distributive (administrative team and teachers) but both are only indirectly related to student outcomes;
• Organizational Leader, or collective teacher efficacy, is the important intervening variable between work and then student outcomes;
• Leadership contributes to OL, which in turn influences what happens in the core business of the school-the teaching and learning.  It influences the way students perceive teachers organize and conduct their instruction, and their educational interactions with, and expectations for, their students;
• Pupils’ positive perceptions of teachers’ work directly promote participation in school, academic self-concept and engagement with school; and,
• Pupil participation is directly and pupil engagement indirectly (through retention) related to academic achievement.

It is indeed that School leaders remain of crucial importance for continued improvement of education.

 

By: Jocelyn P. Reyes | Principal I | PantalanLuma Elementary School | Orani, Bataan