Significant change begins with leaders

Significant change begins with leaders

The habits that produce significant change in teaching and learning begin with significant change in what leaders think, say, and do.

By Dennis Sparks

Results, October 2003

Leaders matter. Reform that produces quality teaching in all classrooms requires skillful leadership at the system and school levels. Such leadership is distributed in a broad and meaningful way to teachers and others in the school community. Because leaders are critical in transforming schools, it is important that school systems develop the habits of mind and practice essential in such transformation.

The habits that produce significant change in teaching and learning begin with significant change in what leaders think, say, and do. The implications of this are profound. It means, for instance, that leaders begin reform efforts by changing themselves before considering how others must change. It means that leaders carefully examine how their own assumptions, their own understanding of significant issues, and their own behaviors may be preserving current practices. It also means that leaders take on the intentional and disciplined process of changing professional habits that may be both ineffectual and deeply ingrained. In addition, it requires exposure and risk because new learning will often be public in nature and, like all learning of consequence, may sometimes lead to failure.

Professional development for school leaders, therefore, means something different than "parade of speakers" institutes or "sit and get" meetings during which leaders whose minds are rendered relatively inert receive "expertise" from others. Instead, professional development of a very different type will lead to deep understanding of important issues and practices, transformational learning at the level of beliefs and assumptions, and unrelenting action to apply this knowledge.

Leadership development that produces deep understanding is designed so administrators and teacher leaders explore subjects relevant to their day-to-day work--for instance, the nature of learning in the various subject areas and the methods of instruction that produce such learning--and elaborate on them in various ways. That means leaders will spend most of their time reading, writing, and considering ways to apply their professional learning. Leaders will also engage in simulations and real-life problem solving that will provide fresh perspectives on the issues at hand and not just formulaic answers.

Transformational learning may occur through dialogue as leaders explain their assumptions and consider the perspectives of others. Transformational learning may also occur when leaders experience strong emotions or cognitive dissonance as they make site visits to successful schools, interview students, or are confronted by disaggregated data that break through walls of denial.

Of course, deep understanding and transformational learning will mean little if they don't produce a continuous stream of powerful goal-focused actions. Consequently, workshops, meetings, and other such events will end with clear commitments to action and to mutually-held expectations that those actions will be carried out.

Because leaders matter and because as Gandhi put it, "We must become the change we seek in the world," the most powerful forms of leadership development will produce leaders who possess deep understanding, act from a core of clearly expressed and enabling beliefs and assumptions, and align their daily actions with those understandings. That is the type of leadership that creates high-performing cultures and outstanding teaching in all classrooms.