The Principals Leadership Role in Creating Effective Schools (Sashkin & Huddle)

This kinda answers DOM's question on how to put the previous post into practice.

Sashkin and Huddle give slightly more concrete measures that principals can take.

======================

Reflections –

The Principals Leadership Role in Creating Effective Schools (Sashkin & Huddle)

Rossert (1985) asserts that one of the characteristics common to effective schools is “a school principal who is a strong programmatic leader and who sets school goals, maintains student discipline, frequently observes classrooms and creates incentives for learning.”

Bossert (1985) identifies two commonalities among effective principals.

The first is organisational visibility. This is similar to the practice of “management by walking around as described by Peters and Waterman (In Search of Excellence, 1980).

The second consists of using information and insights to make clear decisions and take specific actions linked to the creation of an effective learning environment, and getting others to understand the need to take such action and its link with the learning environment.

In sum, “effective leadership helps a school’s staff articulate shared values, goals and approaches to school improvement.”

Corcoran (1985) also agreed that principals play critical roles in articulating school ideology.

Firestone and Wilson (1985) identify two ways in which principals create effective schools.

First, principals must be good bureaucratic administrators, creating and manipulating rules, procedures and authority relationships.

Second, they must create “cultural linkages” by establishing norms, symbols, rituals and stories, and by serving as role models.

Most effective principals act with respect to both bureaucratic and cultural linkage.

Bureaucratic Linkage

They act with bureaucratic linkage by prioritising their time according to what is most important and putting first those activities over which they have the greatest control. (Austin, 1979)

Less effective principals tend to often act according to the demand of others. 

More effective principals address their own priorities, not just responding to those of their district superiors. They do this in the following three ways:

-       By being more selective in how they use their personal time.

-       By going beyond district minimum requirements in areas important to them.

-       By influencing their own superiors to provide commitment and support needed for the principal to take action.

Cultural Linkage

They act with Cultural Linkage in the following three ways:

-       By “managing” the creation and spread of stories of real incidents that focus on, illustrate and support major organisational values.

-       By creating symbols and rituals (awards for achievement, staff award ceremonies, etc) that reinforce people’s beliefs about the positive consequences of behaviours in-line with organisational values.

-       By constantly and consistently, through their own interpersonal behaviours, voice and display norms of behaviour that are in tune with organisational values and beliefs.

Critical Functions of an Organisation

Parsons (1960) argued for four critical functions that any organisation must do to survive:

-       Adapt to Change in the Environment.

-       Attain Goals as desired by Client or Customer

-       Integrating and Coordinating the Actions of People in the Organisation

The Most Basic of these Four defines and determines how the other three are addressed.

-       Articulating and Maintaining a Pattern of Actions through the development of a set of common values, beliefs and norms of behaviour.

As an organisational leader, the principal defines, constructs and indicates shared values, beliefs and norms with respect to these three areas of Change, Goals and People.  He then needs to gain the commitment of organisation members to these cultural factors.

Creating Culture through:

Stories                                    -> Values       -> Innovation (Positive Attitude to Change)

Symbols & Rituals               -> Beliefs       -> Rewarding and Recognising (Acknowledging Goals)

Principal’s Behaviour         -> Norms        -> Treating People Right (Coordinating People)

What do Principals do to Create Effective School Cultures?

The effective leader creates a vision, a concept of what the organisation can be, and makes that vision real by constructing an organisational culture to support the vision.

The vision will be consistent with broader district level (or national level) goals, but is more specific, applying broader goals to the specific school context and often going beyond them to create a new and somewhat unique vision of what the school should be.

Three ways to Translate Vision into Action

1)    Develop a Clear and Brief Statement of the Vision. (Organisational Philosophy)

Statement must be clear enough for everyone to express and created with the active involvement of key personnel.

The Organisational Philosophy identifies clearly the values that are the basis of the organisational culture.

2)    Create Practices that Live Up to the Principles that have been Defined.

These can be in the form of programs or policies and requires a commitment of time and resources. The principal acts as participant, catalyst and chief decision maker.

These practices create clear cause-and-effect linkages, strengthening staff belief about the consequences of goal attainment.

3)    Practice Specific Leadership Behaviours by Principals.

Sashkin (1986) identified 5 such behaviours for leaders to focus people’s attention on key points and issues.

o   Communicate well and with effective listening skills

o   Display a consistency in behaviour that leads people to trust them (even if they do not agree with them) because they do not change their minds easily

o   Constantly display and express respect for self and others on a personal level

o   Identify sensible risks for all to take ownership of so as to ensure success

o   Develop a variety of reinforcement and reward systems to encourage others to take risks. (Immediate and tangible rewards for starters but must be followed by intrinsic rewards to institutionalise new approaches.)