Introduction
The authors introduce this chapter by emphasizing the importance of having a vision with a well designed plan. The introductory section of the chapter summarizes what have already been covered in the first six chapters of the book.
They admire the contribution made by Richard Elmore who concluded that identifying the right work is critical to the success of a school. This is acknowledged as helping in the understanding of conditions that mediate the impact of school leadership.
Marzano, Waters and McNulty all agree that the findings from the preceding findings are crucial in understanding school leadership. They however point out that these findings do not constitute a plan on their own.
The main objective of the chapter is to present the research findings and conclusions. This will in turn facilitate the planning of appropriate action that will help any school leader articulate and realize desired goals. The chapter identifies five major steps which are discussed next.
Develop a Strong School Leadership Team
In this section, the authors defend their findings about the responsibilities characterizing the job of an effective school leader. Compared with other findings, it has been found that a long list of responsibilities is required for effective leadership in school. They observe that leading a school requires a range of complex skills.
However, this common conclusion brings about some problem since it is difficult, indeed, for a single individual to master and execute these complex skills; this is demanding too much from the leader.
The challenge is to reconcile the fact that effective school leadership requires 21 or more responsibilities but that it is utterly impossible for an individual to master all of them at once. Taken uncritically, this observation implies that only those with superhuman abilities or readiness to attain superhuman status could qualify as effective leaders of a school.
However, creating effective leadership is made possible if the focus shifts from an individual to a group of individuals. The authors argue that the 21 responsibilities can be found from a team of leaders instead of relying on the school principal to provide all leadership.
A number of theories in chapter two are believed to have addressed the need for shared leadership duties. Marzano and the team believed that effective leadership can be obtained from the natural outgrowth of a purposeful community. They propose that the school can be divided into a purposeful community for the design of an effective team.
Crafting a Purposeful Community
This subsection involves the formation of groups of people with collective efficacy and ability to develop and use available resources to achieve the desired goals. This is usually through well agreed-upon processes. According to Goddard, Hoy, and Hoy, the collective efficacy of the teachers in a school is a crucial component when it comes to student academic achievement (2004).
The authors go further in their analysis and break down the statement concerning a purposeful community. Four elements are identified and discussed. The first concept is collective efficacy. The second one focuses on the development and use of all assets at disposal.
These resources may either be tangible or intangible. The third concept is that it brings about goals that matter to all members of the community. The fourth important concept is the agreed-upon processes. These processes are aimed at promoting communication among the community members.
Nine major responsibilities are picked from the 21 responsibilities which may help in facilitating the development of a purposeful community. The 9 responsibilities selected include; optimizer, affirmation, ideals/beliefs, visibility, situational awareness, relationships, communication, culture, and input. The school leadership should execute effective responsibilities of optimizer and affirmation.
The principal of the school should be seen as the champion who inspires his staff members to become agents of change as a team.
This is despite the findings of many researchers and theorists that school faculties do not always operate from the common belief that they can make a difference as a group (DuFour, 1998, 2004; Sergiovanni, 2004). This implies, according to the authors, that school leaders should fight the isolationist tendencies if group efficacy is to be fostered.
The school may employ timely strategies in cultivating the virtue of collective efficacy especially by starting very early in the academic year. The authors identify the tactics used by great companies which in spite of the challenges experienced; they have managed to prosper in their endeavors. Principals should be able to “get the right people in the bus” if collective efficacy is to be attained (Collins, 2001).
The authors emphasize the need for supporting collective efficacy with examples of how and where it has been successfully implemented (Sergiovanni, 2004). This can be achieved by affirmation where legitimate success of individuals are recognized and celebrated.
The chapter goes on to elaborate the rest of the concepts and how they can be effectively used to build a purposeful community. The authors acknowledge the fact that although these various actions are labor intensive, they are most likely the preconditions for a purposeful community, which itself is a precondition for a strong and effective leadership team.
Setting Up and Maintaining a Leadership Team
The authors stress the fact that the desire to create a purposeful community is a journey rather than a destination or an end in itself. They believe that a school can never stop striving to attain a purposeful community. Therefore, a school principal may want to start developing a team of leaders. In this chapter, the authors identify two major generalizations that can be applied to a well-functioning leadership team.
The first one is that the members appointed to the leadership team should be willing to be part of that particular team. This implies that there should be no predesigned format for taking given responsibilities in the team.
The membership should be out of one’s voluntary decision to commit oneself to the course of enhancing the effective functioning of the school. Hence, the leadership team should constitute individuals with a common goal of promoting the general well-being of the school.
The second generalization as far as the leadership team is concerned is that it is important to establish strong operating principles and agreements. These principles should be derived from the members once they start working together. This is aimed at ensuring productive operation. These “working principles” are quite useful when addressing issues that may arise from the leadership team.
The authors highlight some of the operating principles that may help the team. They include; significance, quality, responsibility, integrity, ethics, and openness. In addition to identifying the operating principles, the leadership team must formalize agreements among the members of the team so as to make these principles operational. This effort ensures that every member of the team is aware of what is expected of them.
Allocate Some Responsibilities throughout the Leadership Team
Once the leadership team has been established, the next thing is to ensure that the 12 responsibilities are distributed throughout the leadership team. The authors point out that this distribution does not mean that the leader (principal) excludes himself/herself from the execution of responsibilities but rather remain part of the team.
This section goes ahead to describe some of the 12 distributed responsibilities and how they might be addressed by the leadership team. It is concluded that 12 of the 21 responsibilities can be effectively distributed throughout the leadership team.
Select the Right Work
This step emphasizes the need to ensure that the most appropriate work is selected for execution by the leadership team. Having a well crafted purposeful community, out of which a strong leadership team is constituted without the right work, the efforts by the school principal, the leadership team, and the school in general will be null, particularly as far as student achievement is concerned.
The chapter summarizes the 39 action steps that may be considered the right work to be done in a given school with an aim of enhancing student academic achievement. Researchers administered these questions to the faculty members with an aim of establishing the right work for a school.
Identify the Order of Magnitude Implied by the Selected Work
The third step facilitates the identification of a specific area of work on which attention is to be directed. Once the work has been identified, the authors point out that the leadership team will then be expected to gauge the magnitude of change implied by the work chosen. The challenge in this step is to harmonize the opinions of the members concerning the classification of the selected work in their order of significance.
This is greatly influenced by the way people respond to the intended innovation which to a large extent depends on the knowledge, experience, values, and flexibility of the individual or the group perceiving the change.
The chapter identifies some characteristics which may determine whether an initiative is perceived as a first-order change or a second-order innovation. Relevant questions and approaches that can help in gauging people’s perceptions about whether a selected work is first-order or second-order have been designed.
Match the Management Style to the Order of Magnitude of the Change Initiative
By the time the leadership team is through with step 4, they should be in a position to tell whether their selected work is first-order or second-order in magnitude. The fifth step is concerned with the matching of the management style to the perceived magnitude of the innovation.
The authors emphasize that the management style for each of the two perceived initiatives varies significantly. The chapter goes on to elaborate the management of both the first-order and second-order changes and how distinct they are. The school leader is expected to declare his/her stand on the proposed change initiatives.
Summary and Conclusion
The authors offer a summary of what has been covered in the chapter. They briefly describe the first step through the fifth, highlighting what each step entails.