Leading and Managing Instruction: Adopting a Diagnostic and Design Mindset

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Leading and Managing Instruction

Instruction has not figured prominently into research and development work on school administration in the U.S. Though visible on the radar screen in recent decades, instruction is still something of a fringe interest. Student achievement and teachers’ working conditions are typically the dependent variable of interest, rather than instruction. More important, instruction is rarely used as an exploratory variable in research on school leadership and management.

Just as instructors specialize in fields of teaching (reading, mathematics, etc.), so, too, do school leaders specialize in particular school subjects within their leadership and management of instruction. This highlights the problematic nature of the inattention paid to instruction and legitimizes the demand that research and development work on leading and managing instruction must be anchored in the school subject because the subject matters. Specifically, how school leaders think about the work of leading and managing, the arrangement of formally designated leaders, and the patterns of interaction among school staff differ by subject (Burch & Spillane 2003; Burch 2007; Hayton & Spillane 2008; Zoltners Sherer 2007; Spillane 2005, 2006).

School leaders do not treat all school subjects the same and occasionally design organizational routines that target some subjects but not others. At Adams School on Chicago’s South Side, for example, the Real Men Read routine focused exclusively on reading. Concerned that their African American male students perceived reading as something that was not masculine, they designed and implemented the Real Men Read routine, where prominent African American males from the community read to students. The routine was intended to challenge popular perceptions of reading among male students in an effort to motivate their involvement in reading instruction. For practitioners and researchers, diagnostic and design work has to take serious account of instruction – both the curricular domain and the aspect of instruction (e.g., teaching approach, content coverage).

The Real Men Read organizational routine at Adams School also foregrounds two additional issues about leading and managing. First, by focusing only on the interactions among school staff, interactions involving students – which may be critical occasions for leading and managing instruction are overlooked. In the performance of the Real Men Read routine, students are key. A study employing Experience Sampling Methods logs of forty-two school principals in one mid-sized urban school district in the southeastern U.S. is informative with respect to the role of students. Overall, school principals in the study reported co-performing almost half (47 percent) of the administration and the instruction- and curriculum-related activities that they led, though among principals there was tremendous variation. Principals reported co-leading 14.3 percent of these activities with students (Spillane, Camburn & Pareja 2007).

Second, individuals outside the school, such as the community members in the case of the Real Men Read routine, are also important in thinking about leading and managing in schools. In the study mentioned above, principals identified non–school members including parents, community members, and district staff as either leading or co-leading some of the activities in which they participated, though they identified them much less frequently than school staff (Spillane, Camburn & Pareja 2007). Other recent studies also underscore the need to extend investigations of leading and managing beyond the schoolhouse walls to school districts (Mayrowetz & Smylie 2004; Firestone & Martinez 2007; Leithwood et al. 2007). Diagnostic work on leading and managing instruction in schools must take into account those individuals who, though not a member of the school organization, still take responsibility for the work of leading and managing in that school.

Getting to Design

Viewed from a distributed perspective, the practice of leading and managing is emergent. One cannot design practice but can diagnose practice and design for its improvement. One way of doing this is through attention to the infrastructure that enables and constrains leadership and management practice in schools. Leaders can focus their design work on multiple facets of the school infrastructure from the protocols they use to do their work (e.g., teacher-evaluation protocols) to organizational routines (e.g., grade-level meetings, school improvement planning).

Organizational routines are one aspect of the infrastructure that enables and constrains leadership and management practice. Organizational routines involve “a repetitive, recognizable pattern of interdependent actions, involving multiple actors” (Feldman & Pentland 2003, p. 311). To count as an organizational routine, something must be repeated over time, be recognizable to school staff, and involve two or more staff members. Organizational routines are staples in schools, as they are in all organizations.

The design and redesign of organizational routines figured prominently in school leaders’ efforts to transform the practice of leading and managing in order to reform instruction in the Chicago schools we studied (Spillane 2006). Indeed, organizational routines were one of the primary mechanisms used by school leaders in an effort to build stronger connections between school leadership and management, on the one hand, and classroom instruction, on the other (Spillane et al. 2007). At Kelly School in Chicago, Assistant Principal Brown, collaborating with teachers, developed a “skill chart” that teachers were to use in tracking student progress, as well as to align their lesson plans to standardized tests, district standards, and students’ skill mastery. Teachers were expected to use the skill charts, described by Ms. Brown as “a tool to keep you focused and on track,” to plan instruction (Diamond 2007). When Principal Koh took over at Kosten School, she redesigned existing organizational routines and designed new ones, including Report Card Review, Grade Book Review, and Lesson Plan Review, in an effort to improve student achievement (Hallett 2007). At Baxter school, Mr. Stern worked with his staff to design and implement organizational routines that would involve teachers in decision making about instruction. Central to his efforts were the Faculty Leadership Group and Grade-Level Cycle routines. The Faculty Leadership Group met monthly and included the chairs from each grade-level cycle, along with key school administrators. Grade-Level Cycles (K–2, 3–5, and 6–8) met twice a month and were designed to allow teachers to plan curriculum together (Burch 2007).

Organizational routines are often taken for granted by school staff. As staff members come and go, the theory of action and design principles behind routines can be lost. Moreover, school leaders often inherit organizational routines from prior administrations, and some routines are mandated by external authorities. Considering the time and effort most schools put into implementing routines, it is important to conduct periodic inventories of organizational routines to explore their theories of action and their effectiveness.

Getting to the Practice of Leading and Managing

The practice of leading and managing must be central in school leaders’ diagnosis and design work. Getting to practice is difficult, especially given that roles, positions, and styles dominate the conversation about improving school leadership and management. But practice is where the rubber of leadership and management meets the road of instructional improvement, through direction setting, human capital development, and developing the organizational infrastructure. Practice is about interactions. Hence, diagnosing it and designing for its improvement is all the more challenging.

It is time for school leaders to embrace their role as key agents in improving the practice of leading and managing. It is also time for those who work with school leaders on developing that practice to recognize that an implementation mindset only goes so far. Even the best-laid designs will ultimately depend on the savvy and skill of school leaders on the ground. Hence, cultivating a diagnosis and design mindset among school leaders and honing the skills needed to adequately do this work should be central in efforts to develop school leadership and management.

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References

Benford, R. D., and D. A. Snow. 2000. “Framing Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and Assessment,” Annual Review of Sociology 26:611–639.

Berman, P., and M. McLaughlin. 1977. Federal Programs Supporting Educational Change. Vol. 7, Factors Affecting Implementation and Continuation. Santa Monica, CA: RAND.