IV. Training

Recall once again what the purpose of this practicum is. By finding means to increase the quantity of strong leaders, an education organization would have a better chance of bringing a successful school design to scale. In other words, the organization relies more on the innate character qualities of the school leader than it does on its own school design for achieving success. Hence, the idea of a “strong leader” carries somewhat of a paradox when it comes to the issue of training. Aside from learning objectives and procedures specific to the particular school, a strong leader should really only require a small amount of training if any at all. After all, if “strong leaders” were something that could be trained and developed from scratch, somewhere a resourceful organization would have discovered the formula by now and the issues discussed in this practicum would cease to exist. But for now, organizations can only rely on finding individuals who meet predetermined criteria during the recruitment stage and try to “train” these new leaders into ones capable of raising student achievement and increasing enrollment numbers.

Steven M. Kimball and Anthony Milanowski note that new principal training in public schools focused primarily on understanding the procedures of the school system so that one could learn to manage the processes (42). However, for organizations such as SUIS, “managing” a school is not enough. Aside from running a school, leaders are required to actively seek means that would promote continuous academic and financial improvement. Therefore training would have to involve more than an understanding of system procedures. Training must allow for the development of a deep understanding of the school’s priorities so that new leaders will know how to diagnose key issues (Earley and Weindling 75).

SUIS takes its training very seriously using tightly controlled measures that are in stark contrast to the flexible work environment described previously. A training period can encompass several months and typically consists of the following phases. New school leaders begin their training by mentoring the director of the international stream every day on everything from basic tasks to long-term planning. The amount of close monitoring will depend on how quickly the new leader can adjust to the school’s systems, procedures, and culture after which mentoring will decrease to only a few hours a week or simply to contact by phone. During this intense training period new leaders are not permitted to make any major decisions without approval from the director of the international stream. New leaders are also required to contact the head office directly for assistance on any procedures they are unfamiliar with. At some point, the training will change focus to a concentrated and thorough understanding of the school’s international curriculum (IB PYP, ICE, IPC, etc...) which will include learning how to manage teachers under the program. Then after three months, SUIS takes the leaders from each school on a weekend retreat with the purpose of discussing and sharing ideas for better operating the SUIS design. Particular focus is given to new leaders and ways to better induct them into the organization’s protocols. New leaders are to treat this as an opportunity to learn as much as possible from the experience of more seasoned leaders. After the retreat, training is steadily phased out and more control is handed over to the new leader.

It is easy to understand why SUIS chooses to train leaders under such tight measures. A significant portion of the school design involves exploiting the mandatory “East meets West” collaboration process which can be extremely difficult without direct support. As early as possible, SUIS wants its leaders to know how to share resources, including teachers, with the Xiehe local stream without compromising the quality and aim of its international curriculum. This would also include finding ways that would allow international students to flourish under a certain number of local Chinese classes.

A literature review indicates that SUIS is in general agreement with several researchers in how school leaders should be trained especially when considering the challenging nature of the curriculum. With regards to understanding “East meets West” and international curriculum protocol, Kenneth Leithwood and Doris Jantzi found that district leaders’ direct efforts to train school leaders had important impacts on developing “masterly experience” and providing an appropriate model to follow (508). On developing a deep understanding of the international programs for the sake of leading teachers, Steven M. Kimball and Anthony Milanowski write that principals should be trained to “develop a firm understanding of effective teaching and learning in at least one content area [which] can be applied to professional development.” (65). With regards to mentoring the director of the international stream followed by the weekend retreat, Peter Earley and Dick Weindling found that most school leaders agree that “off-the-job training and development complemented the experiences gained as a deputy working with a good practitioner.” (74). Additionally, a study published in Education Week notes that “Expanding peer-mentoring opportunities for leaders is an easy and effective way for new leaders to learn and get support from experienced ones.” (‘The High Wire Job’ 8).

Unfortunately most of the research on leader training comes from survey results and not from methodological long-term studies on “effective” training methods. This lack of published studies could be due to the fact that training a school leader is an elaborate process only as useful as the quality of leader being trained, thereby making it difficult to design a study aimed towards standardizing the most effective procedures. As mentioned earlier, a leader trusted by the company to raise academic achievement is unlikely to need much training at all except for the most specific policies. This idea is alluded to in a study by Kenneth Leithwood and Doris Jantzi who researched school leaders’ self-efficacy – the belief that one is capable of performing in a certain manner to attain certain goals. The researchers found that the positive effects of direct training are limited to a certain timeframe. Afterwards direct training has almost no effect on a school leader’s self-efficacy (522).

Even though companies such as SUIS invest so much into their leader training, there is little evidence to suggest that training is enough to build the type of strong leader described in this practicum if the individual chosen lacks certain desired qualities. While specific procedures and mandatory objectives are a necessary part of the job, much of the skill and competence of a good leader are inherent and selected for during the recruitment stage. The effort put into training should go towards enhancing and promoting the acquirable skills of an already competent person as opposed to trying to build the ideal leader from a blank slate. Effective training can only follow effective selection; therefore companies such as SUIS should invest deeply in recruitment before over-spending resources to improve training.