Reshaping the Landscape of School Leadership Development

A Global Perspective

Philip Hallinger

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2003
• ISBN:
  9781135302900
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Government & Business
• Index: Business

Reshaping the Landscape of School Leadership Development: A Global Perspective traces developments in this arena as they evolved since 1980. The book is comprised of chapters authored by the leading scholars in the fields of educational leadership and school leadership development from the United States, Canada, Europe, Asia, and Australia. The vol

Section II

Global Approaches to School Leader Preparation and Development

6

Developing School Leaders: One Principal at a Time

Dr. Dennis Littky

National Director, Principal Residency Network, The Big Picture Company, Providence, RI, USA

Dr. Molly Schen

Director of Program Development, Principal Residency Network, The Big Picture Company, Providence, RI, USA

The program’s design focuses on leadership learning for moral courage, moving the vision, and relationship building and is individualized to meet the needs of each aspiring principal. It is not enough to get the right people into the right program around core leadership challenges. The Principal Residency Network, based at the Big Picture Company, is also dedicated to changing the conditions of work by designing and partnering with small, personalized schools where the rewards of leadership can be realized.

This chapter is a principal’s personal account of how an apprenticeship-based preparation program evolved out of his experience. Having a mentor, knowing oneself well enough to take important stands, cultivating leadership in others – these all figured prominently in Dennis Littky’s work experience and were confirmed by research in leadership development. The creation of the Principal Residency Network, its mission, philosophy, design and program components, are detailed.

The program relies on a careful selection process of both aspiring principal and mentor principal, with attention to encouraging people of color into school leadership. Recognizing that people will only want to become school principals if the job is doable and rewarding, the Principal Residency Network acknowledges the need for small, personalized schools and, with its umbrella organization, the Big Picture Company, is working to do just that.

Raising Bulldogs

I walked into his office at 6 a.m. on February 4, 1969 after my first day of work as a school principal, to analyze a minor crisis. ‘Help,’ I asked. ‘What went wrong?’ From that day, Rhody became my mentor. He was a man fighting for African American students in New York City. He believed these kids had the right to be taught and cared about in the same way that white students were taught and cared about in the suburbs. Rhody was committed to saving these urban children and worked tirelessly and boldly to carry out his dream.

Most importantly, Rhody would not compromise when it came to saving students’ lives. He acted like a bulldog. (He also raised bulldogs, which always made me wonder: Who was the mentor in this situation?) Rhody was not afraid to die for his cause. He was a black man ahead of his time. He threatened people by his mere presence. He knew he could die for his cause and he was still willing to fight. In Rhody I observed moral courage in its purest form. Nothing is a risk if you are willing to die for your actions. Because Rhody was willing to die for his cause, he was free to stand up for what he believed. He did not have to compromise his views and actions. Rhody is still living today.

What a first mentor! It not only allowed me to observe moral courage in its purest form, but also influenced every decision I made as a twenty-five year old. I did not realize at the time the power that mentorship would have in the rest of my life. It was the beginning of my learning the real meaning of moral courage. I was not and am not today willing to die for my cause … but nor am I afraid to be fired. So in my own way, I have freed myself up to fight for the same urban children, thirty years later in a different city. In fact, in each of my jobs, there were major attempts to fire me. These situations gave me strength and freed me up to fight.

As a small school principal for twenty-five years, I have had the opportunity to witness and encourage many teachers in their pursuit of the principalship. I was a good role model for these teachers. I loved my job, worked hard and wouldn’t compromise when it came to providing learning opportunities for my students and support for my staff. My focus is and has always been building relationships with kids. It is both as simple and as complicated as that.

It makes sense to involve others in decisions affecting the school, and so in the schools I have led, teachers work through hiring choices and budget priorities and the direction of curriculum with the kids in mind. I realized early on that this student-focused, collaborative style of leadership appealed to many teachers and at the same time gave them the opportunity to hone their own decision-making and leadership skills. All of the teachers became leaders in their own way. Tom Peters, management guru, in his PBS video Leadership Alliance, looked at what we were doing and said that he found that all the teachers in this school had become outstanding leaders. He concluded that good leaders help develop good leaders.

For years, I watched teachers in my schools – at least one dozen teachers – make the decision to pursue the principalship and then embark on many semesters of evening coursework at a nearby college. Typically, these courses had little connection to teachers’ work in the school. There may have been a project here or there, or an interview or occasional job shadow. But there was a gulf between theory and practice, between their course-based principal preparation and the long-term, many-layered complexities of taking the lead for something consequential in the life of school. I couldn’t help but note the chasm between the preparation of principals and the work of principals. As an avid reader of leadership literature in many fields, I have no bone to pick with reading lists or with theory. I just think that, on balance, people need a lot more practice in walking like a leader.

For years, I garnered occasional commentary from these same teachers in my schools, many of whom are now principals with schools of their own. They told stories about how they had truly learned the art of the principalship. It was not from their courses, although they gleaned important tidbits of legal knowledge, historical perspective and analytic skills from their coursework. (In truth, many could not even remember their courses.) Their practice, they said, had been influenced by working with me, watching me, and reflecting on why we were doing the things we were, and how things were turning out. They talked about how the most crucial learning – how to be strong, not to back down, to persist in doing what is right for kids – could not be taught through textbooks. They spoke of my vision and how they remembered me pushing the staff to stay on track. They spoke of the tenacity we had as a staff to examine and re-examine our practice. And they talked about the important role that communication played in our school, with three group meetings each week, individual meetings with me once a month, weekly newsletters to which all staff contributed, journal sharing between them and me, regular retreats and summer workshops.

These principal colleagues appreciated the stances I took and structures I created. They understood that I needed to exercise moral courage to sustain the vision for our kids. They realized that the various forums for meeting with one another – through writing as well as conversation – were necessary vehicles for communicating with different people. It was clear that their in-school opportunities to be teacher-leaders and my modeling of leadership qualities, more than formal coursework or short-term internship, had shaped these aspiring principals.

Creating The Big Picture

Then the time came when I became more than casually interested in their comments. In my own work, I moved from a school reformer to a school creator to a school designer. I developed an eye toward growing many schools with certain features, schools we now dub Big Picture Schools. Each of our new Big Picture Schools would need a principal. Suddenly it was apparent that I had landed squarely in the land of leadership preparation. Even as I put a tremendous amount of stock in leadership, I put very little stock in leadership preparation as it was traditionally carried out.

A rapid scan of the field was rewarding. Fellow principals of democratic, student-centered schools reported that they also had an unusually high number of teachers go on to become principals. They, too, found that their aspiring principals relied heavily on mentoring and modeling to learn the craft of the principalship. Research confirmed these anecdotes. In a study by Brent, Holler and McNamara, principals rank formal coursework last in relation to impact on their practice. Our aspiring principals were the lucky few who had an experienced mentor help them learn to lead through the cycle of action and reflection, augmenting the knowledge and skills they were acquiring in their courses.

Time to formalize

My colleagues and I were heartened by the possibility of preparing principals differently, and we decided to get together to dream up the ideal way for principals to be prepared. Our group included Roland Barth, founder of the Harvard Principals’ Center; Elliot Washor, Co-director of the Met School; and exemplary principals from across the USA.

Together, we dreamed up a new model of school leadership training. We met a creative, entrepreneurial dean from Lewis and Clark College, Jay Casbon, who was willing to grant certification to promising aspiring principals who took part in our intensive, school-based principal residency. (Since then, Northeastern University, Johnson & Wales University, Rhode Island College, Providence College, and Keene State College have also put their college seals on the program.) We have been assisted considerably in our work by the support of the Wallace-Readers’ Digest Funds, and by Rhode Island’s Business Education Roundtable and Human Resource Investment Council.

A group of exemplary principals from around the country who believed in mentoring were brought together in Rhode Island to design the specifics of a new model of school leadership training. It was a pretty simple idea, as I told Bess Keller of Education Week: ‘You get the best people in the field, and the students get trained by them’ (Keller, 2000).

Four years and fifty-three aspiring principals later, the design that was once radical has already become a state-approved program. The article continues by saying that our program is ‘more radical than other programs,’but the good news is that it ‘is far from the only recent attempt to move the training of principals in new directions (Keller, 2000).

Quietly, under the cover of educational lingo and university requirements, reformers around the country have established beachheads of clinical education for principals. The programs view schools – not university lecture halls, as the proper training ground for future leaders’ (Keller, 2000). In truth, we do hope to help reshape principal preparation around the country.

In a Commonwealth article, Ann Duffy, associate commissioner of education in Massachusetts, says we already have. According to Duffy, the Principal Residency Network has ‘influenced Massachusetts Department of Education’s rules governing administrator certification’ and adds, ‘They are the benchmark. We are really looking hard to see what we can learn from the success they’ve had’ (Gerwin, 2001, p. 34).

Rigor in the Residency

What does the program look like? In this section, we describe the heart of the program – what we are training people to be able to do as school leaders – as well as the design principles and program components. Aspiring principals in the Principal Residency Network learn the craft of the principalship by working as full-time interns under the guidance and with the support of a strong mentor principal for at least a year.

At the core of the Residency are consequential school-based projects that contribute to the school while fostering the individual’s leadership learning. Through this project work, aspiring principals ‘walk the high wire’ of school leadership, taking risks in their project work. They know full well that they may take a fall, but trust that the safety net beneath will prevent lasting damage to them and to the community. The mentors are close by, coaching, pushing, encouraging, and sometimes pulling the plug when the risk is too great. In this model of real-world training, performance assessment is inevitable and meaningful. Aspiring principals recognize that their work impacts and is evaluated by the entire community. The goal of project work is not to earn a grade or credit, but to contribute to the school community, to earn the trust of one’s staff and the respect of one’s community.

The Principal Residency Network is based on the belief that people learn best through an ongoing cycle of action and reflection. Experience alone is not sufficie...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• Dedication
• Introduction: Reshaping the Landscape of School Leadership Development: A Global Perspective
• Section I: School Leadership Development As a Global Challenge
• Section II: Global Approaches to School Leader Preparation and Development
• Section III: Global Trends, Conclusions and Implications
• Author Biographical Information