Transformational school leadership effects on student achievement

Este estudio, basado en la síntesis de una investigación inédita sobre liderazgo transformacional en la escuela (LTE) realizada en los últimos catorce años, aborda la naturaleza del LTE y sus efectos sobre el logro de los estudiantes empleando métodos de revisión que incluyen un meta-análisis estándar y técnicas de recuento. Los resultados muestran un amplio espectro de prácticas de LTE que han sido medidas en investigaciones previas, sugieren que el LTE tiene un pequeño pero significativo efecto en el logro de los estudiantes y que algunas prácticas de LTE son explicaciones poderosas de estos efectos. También se ha demostrado que un número importante de variables hacen de moderadores y mediadores de los efectos del LTE sobre los estudiantesBased on a synthesis of unpublished transformational school leadership (TSL) research completed during the last 14 years, this study inquired into the nature of TSL and its effects on student achievement using review methods including standard meta-analysis and vote-counting techniques. Results identift a wider range of TSL practices than typically has been measured in previous TSL research. Results also suggest that TSL has small but significant efli!cts on student achievement, some TSL practices are especially powerful explanations of these effects, and a large handful of variables both moderate and mediate TSL effects on student

¿Cómo liderar nuestras escuelas? Aportes desde la investigación

Liderazgo directivo y mejor educación van de la mano. El libro plantea que la educación chilena requiere urgentemente un poderoso impulso de liderazgo en sus directivos si se quiere dar un salto en los resultados de aprendizaje de los alumnos. No es que los directores puedan reemplazar el trabajo cotidiano de los docentes de aula, pero pueden potenciarlo y cualificarlo, ayudando a que cada profesor realice mejor su compleja tarea, así como a que se cree una verdadera comunidad de profesionales en la escuela. De ahí que lograr mejores directivos equivale a alcanzar más calidad en la enseñanza. Pero esta convicción mayor no basta. Para avanzar en las políticas educacionales y en la acción de sostenedores, universidades y ministerio, la pregunta persiste: ¿cómo mejorar la dirección escolar? Más precisamente, ¿cómo lograr atraer y retener a los mejores candidatos en la difícil posición directiva? ¿qué características debe tener una buena carrera directiva? ¿cómo y dónde formar a los nuevos y actuales directivos en las competencias requeridas? ¿cuáles son las atribuciones que los sostenedores deben delegarles? ¿qué modos de organización conviene darle a los equipos directivos? ¿cuánto pueden y deben distribuir internamente el poder los directores? ¿cómo pueden construir una relación productiva con los padres y la comunidad?

Education Research in the Canadian Context

This special issue of the International Journal of Education Policy & Leadership (IJEPL), Research in the Canadian Context, marks a significant milestone for the journal. Throughout our twelve-year history, we have sought to publish the best research in leadership, policy, and research use, allowing authors to decide the topics by dint of their research. While this model still serves as the foundation for IJEPL content, we decided to give researchers a chance to engage in deeper conversations by introducing special issues. In our first special issue, researchers discuss their work within the scope of education policy, leadership, and research use within the Canadian context. While many aspects of leadership, teaching, and learning can be seen as similar across contexts, there are also issues of particular concern within national, regional, provincial, or local spheres, particularly when looking at policy and system changes. The researchers featured in this issue provide an important look into education in Canada.PolicyIn the policy realm, Sue Winton and Lauren Jervis examine a 22-year campaign to change special education assessment policy in Ontario, examining how discourses dominant in the province enabled the government to leave the issue unresolved for decades. Issues of access and equity play out within a neoliberal context focused on individualism, meritocracy, and the reduced funding of public services. While Winton and Jervis highlight the tension between policy goals and ideological contexts, Jean-Vianney Auclair considers the place of policy dialogues within governmental frames, and the challenge of engaging in broadly applicable work within vertically structured governmental agencies. One often-touted way to move beyondResearch useWithin the scope of research use, Sarah L. Patten examines how socioeconomic status (SES) is defined and measured in Canada, the challenges in defining SES, and potential solutions specific to the Canadian context. In looking at knowledge mobilization, Joelle Rodway considers how formal coaches and informal social networks nserve to connect research, policy, and practice in Ontario’s Child and Youth Mental Health program.LeadershipTurning to leadership, contributing researchers explored the challenges involved in staff development, administrator preparation, and student outcomes. Keith Walker and Benjamin Kutsyuruba explore how educational administrators can support early career teachers to increase retention, and the somewhat haphazard policies and supports in place across Canada to bring administrators and new teachers together. Gregory Rodney MacKinnon, David Young, Sophie Paish, and Sue LeBel look at how one program in Nova Scotia conceptualizes professional growth, instructional leadership, and administrative effectiveness and the emerging needs of administrators to respond to issues of poverty, socioemotional health, and mental health, while also building community. This complex environment may mean expanding leadership preparation to include a broader consideration of well-being and community. Finally, Victoria Handford and Kenneth Leithwood look at the role school leaders play in improving student achievement in British Columbia, and the school district characteristics associated with improving student achievement.Taken together, the research in this special issue touches on many of the challenges in policy development, application, and leadership practice, and the myriad ways that research can be used to address these challenges. We hope you enjoy this first special issue of IJEPL

A Review of Evidence about Equitable School Leadership

This paper reviews the results of 63 empirical studies and reviews of research in order to identify those school leadership practices and dispositions likely to help improve equitable school conditions and outcomes for diverse and traditionally underserved students. Guided by a well-developed framework of successful school leadership, results indicate that most of the practices and dispositions in the framework can be enacted in ways that contribute to more equitable conditions and outcomes for students. A handful of these practices and dispositions appear to make an especially significant contribution to the development of more equitable schools as well as several additional practices and dispositions associated with equitable leadership merit mastery by equitably-oriented leaders. Among the especially significant practices are building productive partnerships among parents, schools, and the larger community as well as encouraging teachers to engage in forms of instruction with all students that are both ambitious and culturally responsive. Leaders are likely to be more effective when they adopt a critical perspective on the policies, practices, and procedures in their schools and develop a deep understanding of the cultures, norms, values, and expectations of the students’ families. The paper concludes with implications for practice and future research

Revista de educación

Se analiza una investigación centrada en la idea del liderazgo transformacional en el contexto de la reestructuración de las escuelas. Se abordan tres cuestiones principales: la conveniencia de considerar seriamente el liderazgo transformacional en la escuela, el marco general que sirve de guía en estudios de liderazgo transformacional, y los efectos del liderazgo transformacional. Por último, se hace una descripción de las implicaciones de los resultados para la teoría del liderazgo.Ministerio Educación CIDEBiblioteca de Educación del Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte; Calle San Agustín, 5 - 3 Planta; 28014 Madrid; Tel. +34917748000; [email protected]

The Personal Resources of Successful Leaders: A Narrative Review

Leaders’ practices or overt behaviors are the proximal causes of leaders’ effects on their organizations; they also dominate the research about successful leadership and often the content of leadership development programs, as well. But knowledge about those practices is, at best, a necessary but insufficient explanation for successful leadership and how it can be developed. This paper explores three categories of “personal leadership resources” that help explain why especially successful leaders behave as they do. These resources are often referred to as “dispositions”, a term sometimes considered synonymous with traits, abilities, personal leadership resources and elements of a leader’s personal “capital”. The focus of this chapter is on three categories of resources (social, psychological and ethical) identified primarily through systematic research methods. For each category, the paper identifies the conceptual lens through which its dispositions are viewed and provides an explanation for how each of the specific dispositions within the category contributes to leaders’ success. The paper also reviews a sample of evidence about contributions each disposition makes to leaders’ success in achieving valued organizational outcomes. Implications for research and leader development are discussed in the concluding section of the paper

Leading school turnaround: how successful leaders transform low-performing schools / Kenneth Leithwood, Alma Harris, Tiiu Strauss

The aim of this book is to build on evidence currently available about how to quickly and significantly improve the performance of exceptionally underperforming schools and sustain those gains. Reflecting on the evidence about successful turn-around processes in organizational sectors other than schools, we assumed that the influence of leaders is a crucial feature of this process

Leithwood, Kenneth A., Curriculum Diffusion, pp. 1181-1183 in T. Husen and T. N. Postlethwaite, eds., International Encyclopedia of Education. New York: Pergamon, 1984.

Defines curriculum diffusion and briefly cites research and criticism on the topic