Journal of Staff Development, Fall 1999 (Vol. 20, No. 4)

What is the role of the school principal in a professional learning

community? Principals have been called upon to:

• Celebrate the success of their schools and to perpetuate discontent with the status quo;
• Convey urgency regarding the need for school improvement and to demonstrate the patience that sustains improvement efforts over the long haul;
• Encourage individual autonomy and to insist on adherence to the school’s mission, vision, values, and goals;
• Build widespread support for change and to push forward with improvement despite resisters;
• Approach improvement incrementally and to promote the aggressive, comprehensive shakeup necessary to escape the bonds of traditional school cultures.

Principals have been portrayed as middle managers in the school district hierarchy and as leaders of their respective buildings. They have been lauded as the critical element in a school improvement initiative and criticized for making their schools overly dependent upon them.

Confronted with these conflicting messages, what is a principal to do?

The message to principals is particularly confusing is the area of leadership styles. On the one hand, the importance of the principal serving as a strong instructional leader has almost become a cliche. On the other hand, there are increasing calls for principals to delegate, collaborate, and empower others to make decisions (Lezotte, 1997; Lieberman, 1995). As one study concluded:

"Principals in schools with strong professional communities delegate authority, develop collaborative decision-making processes, and step back from being the central problem solver. Instead they turn to the professional community for critical decisions."(Louis, Kruse, and Marks, 1996.)

Can a principal be a strong instructional leader and empower others to make important decisions?

There is little question that the role of the principal has changed since the days when the effectiveness of the principal was based primarily on his or her ability to "run a tight ship." The National Association of Secondary School Principals acknowledged that the authoritarian leadership style that distinguished principals of the past is ineffective in an era of site-based decision making and shared responsibility (1996). But while the role of the principal has changed, the importance of the principalship has not. Schools need strong principals more than ever.

Principals can promote the shared decision-making and collaborative culture of a learning community and demonstrate strong instructional leadership if they attend to the following leadership responsibilities.

1. Lead through shared vision and collective commitments rather than rules and authority. A learning community, by definition, is a group of people working together toward a shared vision. Therefore, building a shared vision and a collective commitment to act in ways that advance that vision is one of the most important responsibilities of principals in learning communities. When teachers have reached consensus on the questions, "what do we want our school to become," and "what are we prepared to do to get it there," principals can exercise "loose-tight" leadership. They can be "loose" on the particular strategies teachers might use to advance the vision, but passionately "tight" on upholding the vision and demanding adherence to the collective commitments. Rather than emphasizing rules or resorting to the authority of the position to control the work of teachers, they provide staff with a sense of direction by promoting and protecting shared vision and collective commitment.

2. Create collaborative structures that focus on teaching and learning. Principals must recognize two important facts: (1) A collaborative culture is essential to a learning community, and (2) inviting people to collaborate will not create such a culture. Principals must develop structures and strategies that systematically embed collaboration into the daily life of the school. They must:

• Provide time for teachers to collaborate in teams during the school day and year;
• Help each team develop effective working relationships by facilitating the development of protocols for how members will operate with one another;
• Clarify the purpose of the collaboration and the products that should be generated as a result of teachers working together; and
• Insist that each team identify specific, measurable performance goals to create the results orientation essential to a learning community.

3. Pose the questions that help the school focus on issues of teaching and learning. In schools that have been most successful in creating a professional learning community, principals have focused on posing questions rather than dictating solutions (Louis, Kruse, and Raywid, 1996). The questions convey their priorities and point people in the right direction. When principals engage faculty in substantive dialogue on key questions such as those listed below, they develop the capacity of the staff to function as a learning community.

• Do we have a shared vision of the school we are trying to create?
• What commitments must each of us demonstrate for our vision to be realized?
• What goals should we establish this year to move closer to the school we desire?
• Are we clear on what students should know and be able to do as a result of each grade level, course, unit of instruction?
• What strategies are in place for responding to students who are having difficulty in achieving the intended learning?
• Have we clarified the criteria we will use in assessing student work?
• How will we know if we are becoming more effective as a school? What evidence is important to us?

4. Provide staff with the training, information, and parameters they need to make good decisions. There is no reason to believe that simply involving teachers in decision making and providing high levels of teacher autonomy will improve a school. Uninformed people do not make good decisions. Principals must provide staff with relevant background information and research findings. They must ensure that teachers receive the training and support to master the skills that will make them more effective in achieving the school’s goals. They must develop monitoring procedures that supply teacher teams with the data, information, and feedback that enable them to make necessary course corrections and improvements. In short, they must recognize that they must function as staff developers.

Principals must do more than encourage teacher autonomy and then hope for the best. Effective principals recognize that they do not empower others by disempowering themselves. Empowered teachers and strong principals are not mutually exclusive; the learning community must have both.

Lezotte, L. (1997). Learning for All. Okemos, MI.: Effective School Products.

Lieberman, A. (Ed.). (1995). The Work of Restructuring Schools. New York: Teachers College Press.

Louis, K.S., Kruse, S., and Marks, H. (1996). Schoolwide professional community. Fred Newmann and Associates (Ed.), Authentic Achievement: Restructuring Schools for Intellectual Quality. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Louis, K.S., Kruse, S., and Raywid, M.A. (1996). Putting teachers at the center of reform. NASSP Bulletin, 80 (580), 9-21.

National Association of Secondary School Principals. (1996). Breaking Ranks: Changing an American Institution. Reston, Va.: NASSP.