New thinking about instructional leadership is the emperor’s new clothes

Traditionally instructional leadership has meant focusing on teachers and teaching. For example Gupton (2003, 32) delineated the term as “direct or indirect behaviors that significantly affect teacher instruction and, as a result, student learning.” In my opinion there is an implied behavioristic approach to learning, when you speak about instructional leadership as if we intend to change student behavior to be better in our point of view instead of transforming learning to be better.

Unfortunately  much of the current research on the topic of educational management is overshadowed by the concept of instructional leadership, which is deeply embedded in American educational literature. The term instructional leadership has an almost oxymoronic quality, where the instruction is problematic and the leadership aspect is often ignored or misunderstood.

Many scholars in American educational literature use instruction as a synonym for teaching or pedagogy, but instruction is a limiting, clinical term that relates to one part of the teaching and learning cycle (MacNeill, Cavanagh & Silcox 2005) . In my opinion, learning in schools should be a cooperative and collaborative thing, but the word “instruction” is contaminated with pejorative connotations of power. The command, “I instruct you to do X,” leaves a second party in no doubt about the power relationship between the speaker and the person being spoken to.

While a new view of instructional leadership emphasizes organizational management for instructional improvement rather than day-to-day teaching and learning, there still is a danger of teachers becoming little more than deprofessionalized piece workers in a Taylorist culture of scientific management. Concentrating on instruction can lead to a de-professionalization of teaching accompanied by a push to employ untrained and partly trained teachers and in the whole disempower the staff even more leading to an “I just work here” attitude. An organization filled with such workers is not an expert learning organization, where a staff-member is capable of self-assessment.

New thinking about instructional leadership promotes strong organizational managers. Strong managers develop the organizational structures for improved instruction more than they spend time in classrooms or coach teachers. Strong organizational managers are said to be effective in hiring and supporting staff, allocating budgets and resources, and maintaining positive working and learning environments, but for example the support concerns only those goals that are decided by the principal or in the upper level of the administration and if you fail in your own effort in teaching you’ll soon become a persona non grata or even ex-teacher. So instruction does not promote academic risk taking or the experiments of your own. In all, instructional leadership is actually instructional management and a manager focuses on systems and structure; the leader focuses on people.

REFERENCES

Gupton, S.L. (2003). The instructional leadership toolbox: A handbook for improving practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

MacNeill, H, Cavanagh, R.F. & Silcox, S. (2005).  Pedagogic Leadership: Refocusing on Lear­ning and Teaching. International Electronic Journal for Leadership in Learning 9 (2).