What is Instructional Leadership? — Cathryn Magno 1 October 2019

“One of the things that has come out of education field is this leadership theory called instructional leadership, which suggests that every decision a school leaders makes, he or she has to make it with the idea of how does it improve student learning? It places a constant focus on student learning. As a school leader, everything, no matter what you do, you are guided by this idea: how can I improve student learning? What that does is set up how teachers work with each other and how they work with students and how they work with a leadership team in a different way than was traditionally done.  Because what it forces teachers to do is help each other and learn from each other and not only focus on what students are learning and how they are learning and how much they are learning but also how what the students are not learning should inform their own instruction. Everything comes back to what am I doing that can be done better to improve student learning.

The leader’s responsibility in that environment is to create new architecture in the school that allows teachers to meet in groups at the grade level or in the subject area on a continual basis, built into the school week, built into the job, to give them time to discuss particular students’ work, to discuss how they are approaching different topics, to discuss how they are analyzing student learning and assessments that they give. This was something that was not done before. Teachers usually had their own classrooms, they closed the door, however they taught, they taught. However students came out, it was the students’ responsibility to perform or not. Instructional leadership completely changes that scenario, that orientation.

The orientation now is that everything we do is open, everything we do is transparent. Your colleagues know what you are teaching and how you are teaching it.  Professional learning communities need to be cultivated and they need to be organized well and there needs to be support and training for them. You can’t expect teachers to suddenly be put in groups, you can schedule that, but they might talk about coffee or what they did over the weekend. They won’t talk about the substance unless you prepare them for that. So the school leader is responsible for training teachers to be better at interacting with each other and assessing student learning and all of that. That’s what professional learning communities are, that’s what communities of practice are and that’s how they relate to and implement instructional leadership.”

How to learn from this case study?

Potential overall critical thinking questions:

1. How would you describe your leadership approach to improving quality teaching and learning?
2. How would you best describe the (Australian) education environment in accepting radical change?
3. What evidence do you collect to make informed decisions on quality teaching and learning (e.g. training, content, assessment, delivery)?
4. In your own words, how would you describe personalised learning and leading?
5. How would you respond to the following statement: Education should not be about how much you learn but what you learn?
6. Do you agree with the idea that educational leaders should focus more on teaching and learning than on other administrative duties?

Suggested class activities (pre-, during-, or post-class):

1. The participants could reflect on what they think is important about different types of leadership, how they can differ from and complement each other. This could be a written or verbal exercise.
2. The participants could form small groups, and each prepare a short presentation of a certain type of leadership. They discuss them in class and collect advantages and disadvantages of each type and discuss those in class.
3. The participants could develop their own instructional leadership manual in light of their own experience(s).
4. The participants could discuss similarities and differences of school leaders versus leaders of other institutions.
5. The participants could analyze the commonalities and variances between Gonski’s and Shankshaft’s approaches.
6. The participants could write or discuss responses to scholarly articles, policies, empirical evidence or other materials.

Related Video

For more detailed information on school leadership in Australia see the following:

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