Interviews
The most important procedure prior to making a decision is the interview, which is used to “elicit specific personal and professional attitudes and behaviors” as well as “allow more objective assessment of candidates’ strengths and weaknesses” (Kirkpatrick 5). When seeking new leadership, education companies such as SUIS use interviews to identify experience that is relevant to the school environment along with experience that can improve current standards. Interviews are also a way to assess whether or not a candidate’s personality fits with the school’s design and protocols such as the mandatory “East meets West” occupancy agreement.
As the purpose of this practicum is to study plausible ways to increase the number of quality leaders, interview questions that assess potential leadership ability should be given some focus. However, considering that interviews are unique for every candidate and outcomes based on the professional and “gut” instincts of the interviewer (the Director of the International Stream), I am not fit to decide how an interview should be conducted nor how a final decision should be made. Instead, I will study the interview questions presented in The Academy for International School Heads (AISH) Recruiting Handbook which is where SUIS references its interview guidelines. The seventeen-page text includes over sixty interview questions designed to assess the quality of potential teachers and administrators. I will examine how well the AISH handbook holds up in evoking the professional experience and character qualities for strong leadership I have developed up to this point in the practicum.
Instructional Experience
The first step to identifying exemplary leaders is to assess their level of instructional ability and whether their knowledge of instruction is analytical enough to earn the trust and commitment of teachers and students. At SUIS, school leaders are also responsible for selecting and maintaining major sections of the curriculum including training and certifying teachers which further necessitates the need for someone who knows instruction in and out.
Of the many questions that deal with instruction in the AISH handbook, about 15 are directed towards classroom teaching (ex. “How do you design a lesson plan?”) while only about five of them address instructional skills at a level relevant to school leadership.
“How have you raised student achievement in your school?”
“What are the three things that should be done in your current school to make it more effective?”
“How have you been involved in helping your school be more efficient and effective?”
“How do you create a purposeful and orderly learning environment?”
“If your administrator gave you a task or instruction you thought was inappropriate for your students, what would you do?”
Aside from being broad, two of these questions are almost identical and a few of them are so vague I almost reconsidered including them here. Without a doubt these questions do not adequately address the seriousness of making quality of instruction a primary focus in a leadership position. Questions that would elicit more relevant responses should reference the finer details and challenges of improving student learning on a large scale. For instance if the interviewer were to ask questions such as “What kind of real-time data would you use to assess whether or not an instructional program was gaining traction?” or “What techniques would you use to convince teachers of differing instructional attitudes to adopt a new method or program?”, the evoked response could tell much about the candidate’s level of expertise and attention to detail in raising academic ability. Such questions are especially important considering many candidates (i.e. public school principals) are likely to lack adequate instructional leadership experience.
Business Attitudes
Working in a for-profit institute such as SUIS requires a leader who can reach both academic and financial goals. From what was learned in the principal’s job description, SUIS expects its leaders to be able to function in a corporate environment which includes tasks such as formulating long-term strategies and effectively managing a line of colleagues. In Section II, I discussed the rarity in finding leaders who were equally skilled in both business and education so taking into account the importance of instructional ability, I proposed the idea that a school leader should be someone well-trained in instructional methods and yet convinced by the efficacy of business.
Interview questions should be designed to assess not business experience, but whether or not the candidate possesses the types of attitudes that would allow him or her to flourish under a business environment. Several articles in the literature review mention certain traits that school leaders working under a business environment should have such as proaction (Hallinger and Snidvongs 11), strategic planning (‘The High Wire Job’ 8), perseverance (Ripley 3), systematic and efficient problem solving skills (Leithwood and Jantzi 502), and being outcome focused (Lukaszewski 17). The interviewer should ask questions that would evoke these traits from the candidate’s responses and allow the company to gauge them based on appropriateness.
The AISH handbook includes several questions that address long term goals and past accomplishments. These questions and ones like them can be used by SUIS to determine how successfully driven each candidate is. For example, “What are your three best accomplishments in your current position?” “What do you hope to be doing five years from now?” and “What is the most interesting thing you have ever done in your life?” Since these questions are far more general than the ones about instructional experience, the answers would have to be analyzed carefully with a predetermined set of expectations.
Enterprising yet Loyal
The SUIS school design, with its mission-driven objectives and mandatory procedures, is also scattered with areas that require school leaders to “fill in the blanks” and problem solve according to his or her best judgment. On one end, a leader who cannot proceed without direction from above will be unable to navigate through the daily myriad of unique and unforeseen challenges. On the other end, a leader far too confident in his or her judgment may make decisions at the expense of the school’s design and protocols (Wilson 241).
Searching for ways to reconcile this complication, I suggested SUIS take up the challenging task of seeking leaders who are cleverly resourceful and yet respect and believe enough in the validity of the school design to want to follow it as outlined. If the interview is going well and the previous two criteria have been met, the interview should then be used to identify candidates who carry an appropriate balance of enterprise and loyalty. Additionally, the interview at this stage should be used to sell a convincing and credible school design that would attract this caliber of leader (without involving the issue of salary, yet). As difficult as this task may be, there would be far-reaching benefits to identifying potential leaders most likely to invest long-term commitment to the company.
To evoke this kind of affinity, the interviewer should illustrate the company’s sincerity in using business methods to produce quality education as well as demonstrate unyielding confidence in the school design. Keeping in mind that great leaders are more often than not extraordinary and dynamic individuals, the aim of the interview is to detect mutual goals and outlooks between the candidate and the company, but more importantly, to convince the candidate that the school is worthy of his or her commitment.
Interview questions should address the idiosyncrasies of the school leader position, and be stimulating enough to motivate the candidate into formulating an adept response. In practice, the interview is conducted by one of the company’s professional experts who have several prewritten questions intended to evoke different attitudes; however the AISH handbook offers several good questions for this function so long as the interviewer knows how to engage a response and build on it.
“What is your philosophy of education?”
“What can you do for us that someone else may not be able to do? How long would it take you to make a positive contribution to our school?”
“Describe a current situation in which your work has been criticized. What did you do about it?”
“What do you look for in hiring staff?”
“What are the most important attributes of a principal with whom you would want to work?”
Such questions illustrate the need for the interviewer to be as clever and resourceful (if not more) as the leader the company is trying to seek. Questions intended to assess certain principles and conceptions require careful scrutiny supported by professional expertise. It would therefore be a good idea to invite a senior school leader to either participate in conducting interviews or help in evaluating responses. A “team approach” to interviewing is also recommended in the AISH handbook (Kirkpatrick 5).
Other Areas
The sixty interview questions in the AISH handbook cover many other important areas of school leadership. Several questions address the candidate’s self-awareness, life-satisfaction, and opinion on international schooling. The latter issue is particularly important to SUIS due to the mandatory occupancy agreement with the local Shanghai institute, but my view is that qualities such as international focus are trivial if the qualities discussed previously are not met first.
The purpose of this section was to study how effective the AISH Recruiting Handbook would be in recruiting the type of leaders befitting the profile developed in this practicum. The verdict is that the handbook should add more focus on hiring administrators with adequate instructional ability, but aside from that, the conditions of the interview are determined significantly by the competence of the interviewer and the expectations of the company. Overall, a majority of the published interview questions can be useful and I have no doubt that The Academy for International School Heads have published an effective handbook.
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