Archived Articles on Leadership and the Role of the Principal

These articles are about various aspects of your role as school leader.

• Professional Learning Guide for School Leaders, New Jersey - a comprehensive guide to being a school leader.
• Improving Relationships Within the Schoolhouse - “Strengthen those relationships, and you improve professional practice.”
• Critical Issue: Creating High-Achieving Learning Environments - "School leaders need to help teachers create high-achieving learning environments for all students, where the most advanced curriculum and instruction techniques combine to support learning. In a high-achieving learning environment, teachers engage students in complex problem solving and exploring ideas and issues, and classroom activities draw on students' culture, experiences, and knowledge."
• Critical Issue: Building a Collective Vision - This site contains several papers on the topic.
• Who's at a New School This Year? - The French have a saying: “Everyone arrives at each phase of life as an amateur.”
• Education Quotes - a large range of quotes related to motivation and education.
• Leadership in Learning at St Peter’s Primary School - from Gay Nicholls, Literacy Co ordinator, St Peter's Primary School. "St Peter’s Primary School in Epping, Victoria, has won a number of national awards over the past three years. One of them was given to the principal, Katherine Hudson, who has this year received a National Award for Quality Schooling in the category of ‘Excellence by a Principal Highly Commended’. Katherine has been the principal at St Peter’s for six years. During this time she has demonstrated her deep commitment to Catholic education, engaging the mind and nurturing the spirit of all members of the St Peter’s community. The strategic direction she has offered, and the high expectations for quality teaching and learning she has set, have made the school a leader in literacy, numeracy, elearning, student wellbeing and teacher professional learning and leadership."
• Effective School Leadership - "Relatively few research studies have sought information from heads recognised as effective, and fewer still have sought educated opinion from those who know most about them. In 1998, the National Association of Headteachers, the largest in the UK, commissioned such a 360-degree study." (Note: this is a PDF file).
• The Harristown Story - Read about the initiatives undertaken at Harristown School in Queensland. "Harristown State School (Toowoomba) is a PY-07 campus of 386 students with an increasingly diverse multicultural background including 75 Indigenous students and 19 Sudanese students. urrently, there is a staff of 39 teachers and teacher aides and one Indigenous teacher aide (fraction 0.2). The school is currently undertaking a Parent School Partnership Initiative (PSPI) federally funded through the Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST). In 2006, Harristown became an IDEAS school and is currently in the Envisioning Phase."
• Re-examining Management by Walking Around - This article has been contributed by Ray Boyd, principal of West Beechboro Primary School, Western Australia and Neil MacNeill, principal of Ellenbrook Primary School, Western Australia.
• Principals Offer Practical, Timely "Time Management" Tips - "Have you mastered the 3 D's (Delegate it, Dump it, or Do it)? Could a "closed-door policy" help you better manage your time? Maybe you should set up "satellite offices" or find a hiding place?"
• Issues of Management and Accountability in Parent-Controlled Christian Schools - a paper by Lorraine Scott. Synopsis: "a preliminary paper which reports on the first of three case studies which looks at the problems encountered by schools of this genera and seeks solutions based on the charter school concept and processes as developed and implemented in the State Education Department in Victoria, as a means to review their current practice, to set future directions and identify means to improve their performance."
• Preparing Students for Their Future - by Willard R. Daggett, Ed.D., President of the International Center for Leadership in Education, presented at June 2005 Model Schools Conference.
• Leading People: Research - research articles that have leading people as a focus.
• Successful Schools: From Research to Action Plans - 7 meta-studies of school reform, with a focus on 9 characteristics of high-performing US high schools (2005).
• Leading and Learning for the 21st Century - Ideas on school reform by Michael Fullan from 2002.
• Effective School Leadership: The contributions of school effectiveness research - Eight areas have been identified as important in determining the quality of leadership. (127Kb PDF file)
• What Does Smart Leadership Look Like? - "What does leadership really look like in the year 2004? What qualities are essential for effectively leading students into a future we can't yet clearly imagine?"
• Principal Leadership Standards - High Performing leaders have a personal vision for their school and the knowledge, skills, and dispositions to develop, articulate and implement a shared vision that is supported by the larger organization and the school community.
• Leading and Learning for the 21st Century - Ideas on school reform by Michael Fullan.
• Guiding School Change through Inquiry: A Systemic Reform Support System - for anyone undertaking a school improvement effort.
• 7 Time-Saving Tools - Imagine if a technology could shave an hour off your day - or even 15 minutes.
• Preparing and Supporting School Leaders: The importance of assessment and evaluation - "This leadership brief distills authentic conversations, anchored by participants’ insights gleaned from experience in the field."
• Preparing Leaders for Rural Schools: Practice and Policy Considerations 143Kb pdf file.
• Indicators for Effective Principal Leadership in Improving student Achievement - 5 performance areas have been identified as the critical leadership skills a principal must demonstrate to effectively lead a school in improving student achievement.
• Essentials for Principals - Meeting the Challenges of High Stakes Testing. 771Kb PDF file.
• Leadership Matters - programs offered by the American Association of School Administrators' Center for System Leadership™.
• Influencing Transformative Learning for Leaders - Steve Davis says superintendents can stimulate learning for school leaders.
• Principals on the Move: Tips for Making a Smooth Move. "Want to make a good impression in your new school?"
• Leading and Managing in Education - a South Australian Centre for Leaders in Education article that draws on the work of Bolman and Deal, (Bolman, Lee G., and Terrence E. Deal, Reframing Organizations, Jossey-Bass, 1991) who developed a very useful template for analyzing the culture of schools.
• Teacher Leadership Resources - what it means to be a teacher leader and explores leadership in action.
• Teacher Leadership: Switching Roles - teacher leaders need to be trained in strategies for working with adult learners.
• School Governance, Management & Administration - information for schools, boards and staff from New Zealand.
• Marriage, Family, and the Principalship: Making It All Work - Principals offer their advice.
• Leadership: Unlocking the Door to Literacy - the Nine Action Steps for the Literacy Leader.
• What are the 3 DNA Elements of School Leadership? This article outlines the 3 elements: Academic focus; Shared beliefs and values; and Productive Professional Relationships
• What does leadership capacity really mean? - Linda Lambert, looks at 6 critical factors that exemplify high capacity leaders.
• Critical Issue: Leading and Managing Change and Improvement - article that includes many links to informative sites.
• Role of principal leadership in increasing teacher retention - a report of a study done in the U.S.A. on this issue.
• Utilizing Conflict to Create a Positive School Culture - this article puts a different positive perspective on conflict.
• Portrait of the 'Super Principal' - article about the workload of school principals in the U.S.A., with some ways of easing the burden.
• PR for Principals - quick tips for busy principals intent on improving home-school-community communication.
• Advice for First-Year Teachers -- From the Principals Who Hired Them! - pointers that will ensure a successful first year and a successful career.
• Leadership and Gender: from Wildrose School - the impact of gender on perceptions of leadership efficacy and success are discussed.
• Leading Continuing Professional Development in School Networks: Adding Value, Securing Impact (672Kb PDF file).
• How to end a meeting - "One aid to effective meetings ... is properly ending a meeting." Read the article to find out more.
• Sustaining Excellence in Experienced Principals? - a critique of a professional learning community approach in New Zealand.
• Principals Share "Best Meetings of the Year" - Principals share ideas on ways to improve and lighten meetings.
• Who Leads? A contextualized perspective on organizational leadership and learning (open and scroll down).
• Leadership Succession - by Andy Hargreaves - succession planning and why it doesn’t always work.
• How Effective Principals Think While Solving Problems - problem-solving processes and strategies of ten school principals with reputations for high effectiveness.
• Save Time, Increase Efficiency with Calendar Tools - Principals Who Can’t Live Without Technology - Easy access to technology has changed the way school principals work.
• Guiding Principals: Addressing Accountability Challenges - the place of testing accountability.
• Principal Walk-Throughs are being used to gauge the climate of schools and levels of student learning.
• Leadership and Learning Communities - summaries of three articles on leadership and learning communities.
• What Does Leadership Capacity Really Mean? - from the Journal of Staff Development (Spring 2006), by Linda Lambert.
• Leadership Case Studies.
• "How I Handled ..." - situations that are familiar and at times tricky to deal with and achieve a positive result.
• Emotional Leadership - by Daniel Goleman - recent findings on the social nature of the brain and how principals can use this new knowledge to strengthen school cultures.
  
• What do principals do? From student perspective.
  
• "Creating High-Achieving Learning Environments" - creating high-achieving learning environments.
• "Leading and Managing Change and Improvement".
• "Building a Committed Team" - effective development of high performing teams.