Leadership for Learning Activity
1. Leadership Dimensions Linking Leadership with Student Outcomes
Robinson, Lloyd & Rowe looked at different studies on educational leadership from all over the world to try and isolate what are the leadership practices that have a significant impact on student outcomes. Their research suggests 5 sets of leadership practices that make a real difference to student outcomes. These are as follows:
The following has been extracted from Robinson, Lloyd & Rowe’s research [2008: 656] and gives some brief additional details on each of these practices or dimensions.
- Establishing goals and Expectations
Includes the setting, communicating, and monitoring of expectations learning goals, standards, and expectations, and the involvement of staff and others in the process so that there is clarity and consensus about goals.
- Promoting and participating in teacher learning and development
Leadership that not only promotes but directly participates with teachers in formal or informal professional learning
- Strategic resourcing
Involves aligning resource selection and allocation to priority teaching goals. Includes provision of appropriate expertise through staff recruitment.
- Ensuring an orderly and supportive environment
Protecting time for teaching and learning by reducing external pressures and interruptions and establishing an orderly and supportive studies environment both inside and outside classrooms.
- Planning, coordinating, and evaluating teaching and the curriculum
Direct involvement in the support and evaluation of teaching through regular classroom visits provision of formative and summative feedback to teachers. Direct oversight of curriculum through schoolwide coordination across classes and year levels and alignment to school goals.
You can listen to what Robinson herself says about the five leadership practices that she and her team identified in the following two minute YouTube clip below:
2. Effect Sizes
Robinson, Lloyd & Rowe’s research was able to measure the effect sizes on student outcomes of each of these 5 leadership practices as follows:
In effect one leadership practice was measured as having an effect size of 0.84, double the next two practices which came in joint equal in second place. While all 5 practices have a positive effect on student outcomes, the 0.84 is a really significant figure. As Robinson, Lloyd & Rowe [2008: 670] point out:
‘There is no single approach to the interpretation of effect sizes. The convention used for the interpretation of effect sizes in this article is as follows: from 0.0 to 0.2 (no effect to weak effect); from 0.2 to 0.4 (small effect); from 0.4 to 0.6 (moderate effect); more than 0.6 (large effect).’
Geoff Petty quotes the work of John Hattie, [both these links to Petty and Hattie lead to further OPTIONAL LINKS ONLY to the work of Hattie], a leading proponent of the use of effect sizes by school staff, as follows:
'...‘effect sizes’ are much the best way of answering the question ‘what has the greatest influence on student learning’. An effect-size of 1.0 is typically associated with:
- advancing learner’s achievement by one year, or improving the rate of learning by 50%
- a correlation between some variable (e.g., amount of homework) and achievement of approximately .50
- average students receiving that treatment exceeding 84% of students not receiving that treatment
- A two grade leap in GCSE, e.g. from a C to an A grade.
An effect size of 1.0 is clearly enormous! (It is defined as an increase of one standard deviation)'
3. Leadership Practices Quiz
Click on the link below and complete the leadership practices quiz. This will allow you to allocate what you think is the correct effect size to each of the 5 Leadership Practices that Robinson et al identified.
Note that your do not have to understand effect sizes to do this task. All you are being asked to do is rank the practices in the order that you think Robinson and her colleagues identified.
Once you have submitted the quiz, review the results which will come up against each of your answers. Do the findings surprise you or do they accord with your own experience?
Leadership Practices Quiz
4. Key Leadership Practices for Pupil Learning
On completion of the Leadership Practices Quiz move onto the following: Key Leadership Practices for Pupil Learning
Robinson, V., Lloyd, C. & Rowe, K. [2008] 'The impact of leadership on student outcomes: an analysis of the differential effects of leadership types', Educational Administration Quarterly, 44 (5) pp 635-674.