LEADING A SCHOOL FOR IMPROVED STUDENT OUTCOMES

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LEADING A SCHOOL FOR IMPROVED STUDENT OUTCOMES

• Professor Stephen Dinham
• Research Director Teaching, Learning and
  Leadership
• ACER
• CURRICULUM CORPORATION
• Melbourne 11th November 2008

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WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT?

• Schools do make a difference
• The teacher is the major in-school influence on
  student achievement
• How teacher expertise develops
• What works in teaching
• Leadership matters

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The Effects of Quality Teaching
(Findings from meta-analytic research)
gt 30
50
5-10
5-10
Hattie (2003, 2005)
4
Its the Teacher

• ... the most important factor affecting student
  learning is the teacher. ... The immediate and
  clear implication of this finding is that
  seemingly more can be done to improve education
  by improving the effectiveness of teachers than
  by any other single factor.
• Wright, S. Horn, S. Sanders, W. (1997).
  'Teacher and Classroom Context Effects on Student
  Achievement Implications for Teacher
  Evaluation', Journal of Personnel Evaluation in
  Education, 11, pp. 57-67.

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Four Fundamentals of Student Success (Dinham,
2008)
QUALITY TEACHING
FOCUS ON THE STUDENT (Learner, Person)
LEADERSHIP
PROFESSIONAL LEARNING
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Unpacking Leadership (Dinham, 2008)
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PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER WHAT SUCCESSFUL
EDUCATIONAL LEADERS DO

• They make students, as learners and people, the
  central focus of the school.
• They make teaching and learning the central
  purpose of the school.
• They ensure that student welfare policies and
  programs are integrated with and underpin
  academic achievement.
• They have a vision for where they want their
  school to go and for what they want it to be.

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PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER WHAT SUCCESSFUL
EDUCATIONAL LEADERS DO

• They are effective communicators at all levels.
• They are able to balance the big picture with
  finer detail.
• They possess perspective and can prioritise.
• They place a high priority on and invest in the
  professional learning of themselves and others.
• They are informed, critical users of educational
  research.

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PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER WHAT SUCCESSFUL
EDUCATIONAL LEADERS DO

• They continually seek to improve the quality of
  teaching in their school.
• They seek ways for every student to achieve and
  experience success.
• They act as talent spotters and coaches of
  talented teachers and release individual and
  organisational potential.
• They question and push against constraints.
• They seek benefits from imposed change.
• They are informed risk takers and encourage
  others to do the same.

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PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER WHAT SUCCESSFUL
EDUCATIONAL LEADERS DO

• They have a positive attitude and seek to drive
  out negativity.
• They model the values they expect in others such
  as integrity, altruism and self-growth.
• They build a climate of trust, mutual respect,
  collegiality and group identity.
• They believe in education for the benefit of the
  individual and society.
• They work for students, staff, the school and
  community, rather than for themself.

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PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER WHAT SUCCESSFUL
EDUCATIONAL LEADERS DO

• They can read and respond to people and build
  relationships.
• They have high professional standards and expect
  high levels of professionalism in return.
• They possess courage and demonstrate persistence
  and resilience.
• They build productive external alliances with
  parents, the community, government agencies,
  business and the profession.
• They entrust, empower and encourage others
  through distributed leadership and engage in
  productive team building.

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PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER WHAT SUCCESSFUL
EDUCATIONAL LEADERS DO

• They provide timely and constructive feedback,
  good and bad.
• They are approachable and good listeners they
  can read and reach people.
• They create an environment where people strive to
  do their best and where they are recognised for
  their effort and achievement.
• They emphasise and use evidence, planning and
  data.

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PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER WHAT SUCCESSFUL
EDUCATIONAL LEADERS DO

• They are constantly concerned with lifting school
  performance nothing is permitted to get in the
  way.
• They see themselves and their school as being
  accountable for student achievement.
• Overall, they are authoritative, being highly
  responsive and highly demanding of individuals,
  teams and groups, and above all, themselves.

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Implications

• If we hope to promote student achievement, we
  need to begin by understanding the research
  evidence, particularly meta-analytic effect size
  research, about what influences student learning.
• The classroom teacher is the major in-school
  influence on student achievement. The differences
  we see in student achievement are larger within
  schools than between schools.

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Implications

• Many of the changes we see in schooling consist
  of fiddling around the edges - changes to the
  conditions of teaching, which have small measured
  effect sizes - rather than changes to the quality
  of teaching, which has a large effect size.
• We now have a fairly accurate picture of what
  quality or effective teaching looks like. The
  challenge is to spread and upscale such
  teaching.

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Implications

• Teacher quality can be improved under the
  influence of leadership and through professional
  learning.
• The challenge for educational leaders is to
  penetrate the classroom door and to help teachers
  change their knowledge, thinking and practice.
• The most effective schools have a central focus
  on students as learners and people. Student
  welfare and student achievement are not
  dichotomous but are mutually reinforcing. The
  best teachers and schools emphasise each.

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Implications

• Likewise, the teaching of highly effective
  teachers is both teacher-directed and
  student-centred again, the two are not
  dichotomous.
• Student welfare is not an end in itself but a
  means to enhance the learning and development of
  every student. The best way to boost student
  self-esteem is through achievement. Every student
  can be successful.

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Implications

• Socio-economic status does have a large effect on
  student learning, but only as far as it
  determines advantage/disadvantage. SES does not
  indicate innate learning capacity. Effective
  teachers and successful schools overcome or
  reduce such disadvantage.
• Effective educational leaders help create a
  climate where teachers can teach and students can
  learn.
• Successful school leaders (and teachers) are both
  highly responsive and highly demanding of others,
  i.e., they are authoritative, rather than
  permissive, authoritarian or uninvolved.

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Implications

• Successful school leaders set high professional
  standards for themselves and others and model and
  invest in professional learning. They are risk
  takers and empower others to do the same.
• While we largely know what effective educational
  leadership looks like, the challenge is to
  attract new leaders and develop their leadership
  capacity, along with that of our current leaders.
• There are no quick fixes or recipes for success,
  but there are useful frameworks for reflection,
  planning, action and evaluation.

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Implications

• Context is important. School history and context
  must be taken into account, but context can also
  act as a swamp, in that failure to improve can
  be rationalised and schools can be too internally
  focussed.
• Turning around and lifting up a school isnt
  easy, but it can be done. The research shows us
  how. It cant, however be accomplished alone and
  educational leaders need to build teams and
  increase capacity through distributed leadership
  and professional learning to accomplish this
  task.
• Teachers and educational leaders are not born.
  Every teacher and school leader is capable of
  improving his or her knowledge and practice.

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Implications

• Principals are not the only leaders, but they are
  the key leaders.
• I have yet to see a successfully turned around
  or lifted up school where there wasnt a change
  in leadership at or near the top.
• It is possible to have quality teaching in some
  classes without effective leadership, but it is
  impossible to have a successful school without
  effective leadership.
• While the measured effects of school leadership
  on student achievement are small compared with
  those for the classroom teacher, they are
  nevertheless significant.

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Leadership

• While leadership explains only three to five per
  cent of the variation in student learning across
  schools, this is actually about one quarter of
  the total variation (10-20 per cent) explained by
  all school-level variables.
• (Leithwood, et al , 2004).

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FINALLY

• At the school level, the challenge for
  educational leaders is to initiate change that
  penetrates the classroom door. Once again,
  research tells us what effective educational
  leadership look like, but attracting, preparing
  and supporting suitable leaders and spreading and
  increasing leadership expertise across more
  educators and schools is difficult.
• Research also tells us that quick fixes are a
  mirage and that intensive, strategic,
  collaborative work under the influence of
  leadership are needed turn around and lift up a
  school. The good news is that it can be done. The
  bad news is that it isnt easy.

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Finally

• We need to learn from the experiences of
  successful teachers, successful educational
  leaders and successful schools but it is a
  mistake to reduce this understanding to a series
  of points or a recipe for an instant pudding.
• Achieving quality teaching, school improvement
  and student success is more an ongoing journey
  than arriving at a destination, with the most
  successful teachers and schools always striving
  to move forward. This attitude helps explain
  their success.

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(2008) ACER Press
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Contact Details

• Professor Stephen Dinham
• Research Director Teaching, Learning and
  Leadership
• ACER
• Private Bag 55
• Camberwell Vic 3124
• Email dinham_at_acer.edu.au
• Phone [phone]
• Website www.acer.edu.au/staffbio/dinham_stephen.h
  tml