How leadership influences student learning
All current school reform efforts aim to improve teaching and learning. But there are huge differences in how they go about it. Some reforms, for example, attempt to improve all schools in a district, statei or countryii at the same time. Other reformsiii attempt to influence the overall approach to teaching and learning within a school, but do so one school at a time. Still others, focused on innovative curricula (in science and mathematics, for example), typically address one part of a school’s program and aim for widespread implementation, while innovative approaches to instruction, such as cooperative learning, hope to change teachers’ practices one teacher at a time. As different as these approaches to school reform are, however, they all depend for their success on the motivations and capacities of local leadership. The chance of any reform improving student learning is remote unless district and school leaders agree with its purposes and appreciate what is required to make it work. Local leaders must also, for example, be able to help their colleagues understand how the externally-initiated reform might be integrated into local improvement efforts, provide the necessary supports for those whose practices must change and must win the cooperation and support of parents and others in the local community. So “effective” or “successful” leadership is critical to school reform. This is why we need to know what it looks like and understand a great deal more about how it works. As the first step in a major research project aimed at further building the knowledge base about effective educational leadership, we reviewed available evidence in response to five questions:
What effects does successful leadership have on student learning?
How should the competing forms of leadership visible in the literature be reconciled?
Is there a common set of “basic” leadership practices used by successful leaders in most circumstances?
What else, beyond the basics, is required for successful leadership?
How does successful leadership exerciseits influence on the learning of students?
