Companies such as SUIS need to be extra acute in who they eventually decide to hire for a school leader position. Even a “strong leader” who fits the profile flawlessly will come with some drawbacks. The type of individual able to lead a school to success is often engaging and forceful, willing to take orders during the initial period of induction, but eager for a less restrictive environment. Too little direction from the company may come at the expense of fidelity to the organization’s model. Too much direction will generate bitter conflicts of interest. The company must take consideration in how it will gradually prescribe power and how a mutual exchange of trust and respect will develop.
Training begins as a period of intense mentoring that gradually phases into less direct support. Although SUIS follows training as recommended by several theorists, its effects will not be revealed until after the new leader begins managing the school unsupervised. Few leaders are ready-made for success and it is the responsibility of the company to keep close checks and administer thorough and consciously designed evaluations at regular intervals. Problems must be identified early and accurately so that they can be dealt with to conclusion.
Aside from keeping leaders sharp, they must also be kept committed. Strong leaders mean nothing if they are not dedicated to the job. The school leadership position should have a sense of worth and purpose to it. SUIS must ensure that its design is made to be challenging and that a supportive network is available when tasks begin to overwhelm. The assurance that the company they work for is aware and understanding of their concerns allows school leaders to maintain dignity and a sense of respect for their employer.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
IV. Inducing Commitment
The pressures and expectations that come with being a for-profit education institute are immense. As an education provider, the company is held highly accountable for all outcomes emerging from their schools, and when confronted by parents, stake holders, and media, the company must be able to address any issues with confidence and authority. Naturally, SUIS tries to assume as much control over its schools as possible which includes everything from knowing which instructional programs are running to tracking every detail of profit and spending.
When it comes to finding and directing school leaders, it is probably difficult for the company to have to accept that so much of each school’s success is due to the plans and actions of a single individual rather than the mechanisms that drive its comprehensive design. Successful scalability would call for a design that was “leader proof” similar to the “teacher proof” curricula proposed and tinkered with in the 1960s. Until such a school design miraculously becomes available, companies have little choice but to travail somewhere between “leader proof” and “leader dependent.” The SUIS principal evaluations for instance, clearly demonstrate the company’s attempt to maintain control of their model while relying on the foresight, proaction, and direction of a strong capable leader.
As discussed previously in Section II, the company’s need to remain in command is at odds with the type of charismatic school leader needed to run a school. When a company such as SUIS first opens a school, it is almost always successful because the school leader was either part of the founding team or had a much larger stake in the business. However with the drive towards expansion and scaling, school leaders hired from outside the company are required to be just as vigorous and dedicated while also adhering to strict company procedures. Inducing commitment in school leaders is a major challenge especially if companies such as SUIS want good leaders to stay on board for a period longer than their initial contract.
Steven F. Wilson documents several cases of companies attempting to keep their school leaders committed without compromising organizational models and indicates that none of them are completely successful. The now defunct Advantage Schools tried to expand job flexibility by allowing leaders to “take any actions with respect to parental involvement.” (242). Beacon Schools invested heavily trying to train staff at the corporate office to be able to assist leaders at any time of the day by phone. (244). SABIS provided leaders with a program whereby they could gradually earn more control of their school after completing specific objectives (245). And National Heritage Academies “convenes all principals once a week to identify and resolve common issues. […] If a principal could make a clear argument for a proposed change in curricula, the organization would give full support.” (248).
SUIS too finds it challenging to encourage loyalty in their leaders. While the company allows their leaders a respectful amount of flexibility in choosing academic programs and in staffing, mandatory and encompassing procedures such as “East meets West” can be discouraging. In comparison to the examples cited by Wilson, SUIS employs methods similar to SABIS and National Heritage Academies. Leaders can earn more control of their curriculum by meeting certain expectations, and they are also given opportunities to convene with other leaders to discuss curriculum changes with the director of the international stream.
Inducing commitment is a balancing act between keeping to objectives and respecting the school leader’s dignity. Specific objectives may differ at each site and some leaders will demand more for their loyalty than others, so a precise plan of action would be difficult to conjure. On the other hand, understanding why leaders lose interest in their jobs can offer some tactical knowledge in how to make commitment more stable. Peter Earley and Dick Weindling’s study on the “shelf-life” of school leaders found that the biggest factor contributing to a leader’s commitment is the availability of “fresh challenges.” (82). Leaders want a sense of purpose in their work and once their work becomes repetitive, satisfaction will begin to wane. An anonymously published study in Education Week, offers a different reason claiming that a loss of commitment is caused mostly by work exhaustion. The study claims that leaders feel frustrated by the insufficient time provided for strategic planning and that “matching expenses with enrollment-driven income are anxiety-provoking and time-consuming concerns.” (‘The High Wire Job’ 8).
A work environment that encourages loyalty and satisfaction is something that needs to be constantly maintained through some kind of support and involvement by the company. Issues such as work exhaustion should be identified and dealt with before they become debilitating using strategies such as close monitoring, regular evaluations, and the encouragement of open communication with the head office. In cases where leaders are overwhelmed with several demands at once, the company should also be available to help with prioritizing and distributing certain tasks. Overall, if leaders cannot have full reign of their schools, they should at least be given the assurance of a supportive work environment.
Less direct contentions such as a lack of fresh challenges will likely involve a different sort of involvement by the company. “Fresh challenges” is not something that can be readily provided (for instance in the form of new objectives and curriculum changes), but rather something the leader needs to be able to find on his or her own. Truly charismatic leaders will always find a new challenge and truth be told, few leaders working for SUIS will ever feel “bored” as the school design is never allowed to plateau. Therefore, the availability of challenges is a quality embedded in the school’s mission. If a school leader is to ever sincerely complain about the lack of challenges, the leader is either supernaturally competent or the school’s mission is in need of some major revision.
When it comes to finding and directing school leaders, it is probably difficult for the company to have to accept that so much of each school’s success is due to the plans and actions of a single individual rather than the mechanisms that drive its comprehensive design. Successful scalability would call for a design that was “leader proof” similar to the “teacher proof” curricula proposed and tinkered with in the 1960s. Until such a school design miraculously becomes available, companies have little choice but to travail somewhere between “leader proof” and “leader dependent.” The SUIS principal evaluations for instance, clearly demonstrate the company’s attempt to maintain control of their model while relying on the foresight, proaction, and direction of a strong capable leader.
As discussed previously in Section II, the company’s need to remain in command is at odds with the type of charismatic school leader needed to run a school. When a company such as SUIS first opens a school, it is almost always successful because the school leader was either part of the founding team or had a much larger stake in the business. However with the drive towards expansion and scaling, school leaders hired from outside the company are required to be just as vigorous and dedicated while also adhering to strict company procedures. Inducing commitment in school leaders is a major challenge especially if companies such as SUIS want good leaders to stay on board for a period longer than their initial contract.
Steven F. Wilson documents several cases of companies attempting to keep their school leaders committed without compromising organizational models and indicates that none of them are completely successful. The now defunct Advantage Schools tried to expand job flexibility by allowing leaders to “take any actions with respect to parental involvement.” (242). Beacon Schools invested heavily trying to train staff at the corporate office to be able to assist leaders at any time of the day by phone. (244). SABIS provided leaders with a program whereby they could gradually earn more control of their school after completing specific objectives (245). And National Heritage Academies “convenes all principals once a week to identify and resolve common issues. […] If a principal could make a clear argument for a proposed change in curricula, the organization would give full support.” (248).
SUIS too finds it challenging to encourage loyalty in their leaders. While the company allows their leaders a respectful amount of flexibility in choosing academic programs and in staffing, mandatory and encompassing procedures such as “East meets West” can be discouraging. In comparison to the examples cited by Wilson, SUIS employs methods similar to SABIS and National Heritage Academies. Leaders can earn more control of their curriculum by meeting certain expectations, and they are also given opportunities to convene with other leaders to discuss curriculum changes with the director of the international stream.
Inducing commitment is a balancing act between keeping to objectives and respecting the school leader’s dignity. Specific objectives may differ at each site and some leaders will demand more for their loyalty than others, so a precise plan of action would be difficult to conjure. On the other hand, understanding why leaders lose interest in their jobs can offer some tactical knowledge in how to make commitment more stable. Peter Earley and Dick Weindling’s study on the “shelf-life” of school leaders found that the biggest factor contributing to a leader’s commitment is the availability of “fresh challenges.” (82). Leaders want a sense of purpose in their work and once their work becomes repetitive, satisfaction will begin to wane. An anonymously published study in Education Week, offers a different reason claiming that a loss of commitment is caused mostly by work exhaustion. The study claims that leaders feel frustrated by the insufficient time provided for strategic planning and that “matching expenses with enrollment-driven income are anxiety-provoking and time-consuming concerns.” (‘The High Wire Job’ 8).
A work environment that encourages loyalty and satisfaction is something that needs to be constantly maintained through some kind of support and involvement by the company. Issues such as work exhaustion should be identified and dealt with before they become debilitating using strategies such as close monitoring, regular evaluations, and the encouragement of open communication with the head office. In cases where leaders are overwhelmed with several demands at once, the company should also be available to help with prioritizing and distributing certain tasks. Overall, if leaders cannot have full reign of their schools, they should at least be given the assurance of a supportive work environment.
Less direct contentions such as a lack of fresh challenges will likely involve a different sort of involvement by the company. “Fresh challenges” is not something that can be readily provided (for instance in the form of new objectives and curriculum changes), but rather something the leader needs to be able to find on his or her own. Truly charismatic leaders will always find a new challenge and truth be told, few leaders working for SUIS will ever feel “bored” as the school design is never allowed to plateau. Therefore, the availability of challenges is a quality embedded in the school’s mission. If a school leader is to ever sincerely complain about the lack of challenges, the leader is either supernaturally competent or the school’s mission is in need of some major revision.
Friday, February 26, 2010
IV. Evaluation
When I think about evaluations, I try to imagine a scenario where somewhere there is a school leader performing exceptionally well. Test scores are high, enrollment is up, teachers are driven, and parents immensely satisfied. Would the leader’s superiors find it necessary to administer an evaluation? Not unless they wanted to learn precisely what this leader was doing correct, but for the most part as long as production and profit continue to increase, an evaluation is hardly the first thing on anyone’s mind.
Then imagining the opposite scenario, a school leader with good intentions is struggling to keep test scores from falling below standard. Drop-out rates are higher than desired. Admissions steadily plummet. In this case an evaluation seems urgently necessary. The leader’s superiors would want to know what is being done incorrectly so that it can be fixed as soon as possible, signifying that evaluations are mostly defined by the need to locate deficiencies.
With these principles in mind, we can have an honest and more accurate discussion about the role that evaluation plays in helping companies develop strong leaders and successful schools. Few leaders arrive on the job “ready-made” for success and even the most capable will experience difficulty trying to manage and navigate a dynamic school environment. Through the use of data and reflection on experience, evaluations can improve the skills, and tighten the focuses of an already good leader. Patterns and correlations emerging from the data can also be useful in devising new training methods, making revisions to designs, and improving recruitment methods. The aim of designing a useful evaluation then should be on how accurate it is at targeting problem areas that can be corrected through concentrated training and education. This section will study the SUIS evaluation procedure and how far it goes in developing the type of leader suggested in this practicum.
The Principal Evaluation
At SUIS, the initial training period is complete once the director of the international stream approves of the new leader’s progress and capabilities in managing the school unsupervised. Then after six months of working on one’s own volition, SUIS commences the first sequence of “principal evaluations” designed to assess how well the new leader is following protocol and raising student achievement. After the first evaluation, subsequent ones follow every year.
In an environment as mission and results-driven as SUIS, evaluations hold a significant position. As shown on the company’s staff organization structure, there is a separate department under the head office which strictly handles administering and processing every type of evaluation from staff members to entire schools. For evaluating school leaders, SUIS employs what human resources call a “360-degree appraisal” whereby a self-assessment is accompanied by feedback from subordinates, peers, and supervisors.
The principal evaluation is an important event planned well in advance. Since the evaluation will consist of feedback from all areas of the school, notices for the upcoming evaluation are forwarded to all participating staff members. On the day of the evaluation, a schedule is released indicating who will be meeting with the evaluation department at which times. The school leader is given a letter detailing the evaluation procedure including assurance that the interview will be strictly confidential.
The majority of the evaluation is composed of assessments from a questionnaire. Along with a self-assessment, additional assessments are conducted by the director of the international stream, the director of the local stream, and the teachers and administrators under the school leader’s direction. The questionnaire is divided into six sections each with its own value out of 100. For each question, participants are required to mark a score on a scalar rating system. The following is a brief summary of what the questionnaire covers.
The evaluation department compiles the individual assessments into a finalized form. Then using the data interpreted from test scores, enrollment numbers, financial reports, and interview answers the department publishes a fully-detailed evaluation report which includes a highlight of strong and weak areas to be reviewed and discussed by the school leader and the director of the international stream.
A “Healthy Leader”
How can an evaluation work towards developing a strong leader? A good starting point would be to consider what Elliot W. Eisner identifies as the “diagnosis” (168). Like a doctor examining a patient, an evaluation seeks to find out where the leader is “sick” so that a proper treatment can be administered. As such, an evaluation would first have to establish what it means to be a “healthy leader” in order to have a set of criterion in which accurate judgments are made against.
A strong leader is almost directly responsible for the success of a school so the standards for what constitute "good health" would have to be considerably high. Judging by the percentage points assigned to each topic in the SUIS appraisal, the company’s main criteria for healthy or strong leadership are in the ability to perform specific managerial tasks, followed by the ability to lead teachers. Although a strong school leader is characterized foremost by exceptional instructional ability rather than business skills, SUIS acknowledges that school management is inherently more difficult than instructional leadership, and so puts more emphasis on the area during the evaluation process.
For the moment we will trust that SUIS’s standards for a school leader are accurate to the company’s needs. The diagnosis is now dependent on the individual objectives that make up the ideal leader. Due to the dynamic nature of school leadership, evaluations are structured as a checklist of what the company has witnessed over the years to be proper attitudes and correct forms of action. Good communication with parents for instance likely affects enrolment; delivering clear objectives likely earns the trust and support of teachers; and initiating cross-stream teaching likely enhances “East meets West” collaboration. While these observable “good” qualities of leadership are decided by experienced professionals, there is not much guarantee that they are specifically relevant to the relationship between leadership and success.
The uncertainty in knowing which actions and interactions actually constitute success may hinder the evaluation’s purpose in diagnosing a leader. On one hand, the company’s use of a 360-degree appraisal which considers feedback from all areas of the school seems to follow a solution offered by Eisner which is to ‘cast a wider net’ on evaluative objectives (174). This means more criteria, including ones that do not appear strongly linked to school success, should be included in the evaluation in case unforeseen yet valuable relations are generated. On the other hand, a 360-degree appraisal is mainly used for business strategies which may cloud some intended educational targets. A diagnosis of deficiencies is only part of the aim of a 360-degree appraisal; its main function is to provide indication of performance in terms of cost and quantity, and a basis for decisions such as salary increases and contract renewal. Since quality of leader and school success are inextricably linked, SUIS would have to put extra effort into its evaluations to ensure that both business and educational objectives converge towards some common goals.
Relationship with Teachers
One evaluative objective which encompasses both business and educational strategies is the school leader’s relationship with teachers. The majority of a leader’s daily activity comprises of getting teachers together to accomplish desired goals particularly when it comes to achieving academic success. This is reflected by the fact that a large portion of the 360-degree appraisal addresses the leader’s ability to manage teachers through both instructional and administrative leadership. The various feedbacks that the evaluators use to conjure up a final score are also mostly derived from the teachers under the leader’s guidance. Nevertheless, after considering what several education theorists have had to say about this topic, there is reason to suggest that SUIS could improve its evaluation by expanding on the leader’s relationship with the teachers in the school.
As mentioned earlier, the school leader’s first evaluation takes place six months after the initial training has wrapped up. According to Peter Earley and Dick Weindling, the first 3-12 months of a new leader’s control is the “honeymoon” period which is the most critical stage for earning the trust of teachers (75). A strong leader is someone who has the command and commitment of the school’s teachers so evaluators will want to pay particularly close attention to how the leader has interacted with staff so far, and especially how the teachers score the leader’s performance.
Teachers are particularly sensitive to a leader’s interpersonal skills; yet the SUIS principal evaluation only mildly covers this issue with a handful of questions addressing the delivery of clear guidelines and basic teaching support. In many cases, the school leader may believe that his or her guidance is clear, but to teachers, the messages come across as mixed and competing (Spillane 150). School leaders are also required to keep to the company’s objectives, but those who come across as too domineering and intolerant to alternate views will stifle the development of a cooperative atmosphere (Hannay and Seller 256). Furthermore, some leaders who have been leading schools for years have never consciously thought about the qualities that make up good teachers (Kimball and Milanowski 58). These points as well as others should be included in the evaluation if the school leader is to learn early on the pivotal effect good teacher relationships have on success.
Accountability
A school leader evaluation must include some sort of objective for accountability as conflict is sure to arise when leaders, believing they were only following company policy, are asked to explain failures or shortfalls. Accountability in schools is often seen as burdensome and interfering by those it is assigned to (Guskey 29) because it focuses starkly on meeting outcomes without any respect for the processes. SUIS will want to change this perspective by showing its leaders early on that accountability is more to do with planning ahead than explaining end results. There is reason to believe that a leader willing to take responsibility for his or her actions can be cultivated with an evaluation that diagnoses the frequency of particular actions. Thomas R. Guskey identifies several of these actions: the ability to replace personal defensiveness with professional inquisitiveness, the ability to openly share results, and the ability to defer assigning blame (31). These points are well suited to an evaluation, in particular one that takes into account feedback from all corners of the school.
It should be noted that accountability goes both ways. If a school leader is expected to take responsibility for certain actions, the company and evaluators must also ensure that the problems identified can be solved and that a pathway to successful leadership can be outlined. If problems are benign or too basic for training to have any effect, the company will have failed in effectively cultivating a strong leader for its school.
Then imagining the opposite scenario, a school leader with good intentions is struggling to keep test scores from falling below standard. Drop-out rates are higher than desired. Admissions steadily plummet. In this case an evaluation seems urgently necessary. The leader’s superiors would want to know what is being done incorrectly so that it can be fixed as soon as possible, signifying that evaluations are mostly defined by the need to locate deficiencies.
With these principles in mind, we can have an honest and more accurate discussion about the role that evaluation plays in helping companies develop strong leaders and successful schools. Few leaders arrive on the job “ready-made” for success and even the most capable will experience difficulty trying to manage and navigate a dynamic school environment. Through the use of data and reflection on experience, evaluations can improve the skills, and tighten the focuses of an already good leader. Patterns and correlations emerging from the data can also be useful in devising new training methods, making revisions to designs, and improving recruitment methods. The aim of designing a useful evaluation then should be on how accurate it is at targeting problem areas that can be corrected through concentrated training and education. This section will study the SUIS evaluation procedure and how far it goes in developing the type of leader suggested in this practicum.
The Principal Evaluation
At SUIS, the initial training period is complete once the director of the international stream approves of the new leader’s progress and capabilities in managing the school unsupervised. Then after six months of working on one’s own volition, SUIS commences the first sequence of “principal evaluations” designed to assess how well the new leader is following protocol and raising student achievement. After the first evaluation, subsequent ones follow every year.
In an environment as mission and results-driven as SUIS, evaluations hold a significant position. As shown on the company’s staff organization structure, there is a separate department under the head office which strictly handles administering and processing every type of evaluation from staff members to entire schools. For evaluating school leaders, SUIS employs what human resources call a “360-degree appraisal” whereby a self-assessment is accompanied by feedback from subordinates, peers, and supervisors.
The principal evaluation is an important event planned well in advance. Since the evaluation will consist of feedback from all areas of the school, notices for the upcoming evaluation are forwarded to all participating staff members. On the day of the evaluation, a schedule is released indicating who will be meeting with the evaluation department at which times. The school leader is given a letter detailing the evaluation procedure including assurance that the interview will be strictly confidential.
The majority of the evaluation is composed of assessments from a questionnaire. Along with a self-assessment, additional assessments are conducted by the director of the international stream, the director of the local stream, and the teachers and administrators under the school leader’s direction. The questionnaire is divided into six sections each with its own value out of 100. For each question, participants are required to mark a score on a scalar rating system. The following is a brief summary of what the questionnaire covers.
Individual Performance – 4 percent of total evaluation
The first section evaluates important character qualities: determination, adaptability, problem solving, and interpersonal skills.
Managerial Performance – 12 percent of total evaluation
The second section focuses on general leadership capability. Does the leader consistently set high standards and inspire and motivate staff to reach them? Does he or she deliver clear guidelines? Is he or she knowledgeable in both academic and non-academic departments?
Education Philosophy – 15 percent of total evaluation
The third section evaluates the school leader’s levels of belief in certain theories of education relevant to the school design: “East meets West,” international education, and holistic education.
School Management – 35 percent of total evaluation
The fourth and largest section evaluates specific procedures in running a school.
- Implementation of instructional programs
- Admissions
- Standards and policies
- Staffing
- Staff management
- Parent relations
- Financial management
Teaching and Learning – 25 percent of total evaluation
The fifth section focuses on components of instructional leadership.
- Knowledge of curriculum
- Teaching guidance
- Disciplinary procedures
- Curriculum development
- Cross Stream Teaching
Others – 9 percent of total evaluation
The sixth and final section is dedicated to the leader’s ability to evaluate staff, train staff, and manage non-academic areas of the school.
The evaluation department compiles the individual assessments into a finalized form. Then using the data interpreted from test scores, enrollment numbers, financial reports, and interview answers the department publishes a fully-detailed evaluation report which includes a highlight of strong and weak areas to be reviewed and discussed by the school leader and the director of the international stream.
A “Healthy Leader”
How can an evaluation work towards developing a strong leader? A good starting point would be to consider what Elliot W. Eisner identifies as the “diagnosis” (168). Like a doctor examining a patient, an evaluation seeks to find out where the leader is “sick” so that a proper treatment can be administered. As such, an evaluation would first have to establish what it means to be a “healthy leader” in order to have a set of criterion in which accurate judgments are made against.
A strong leader is almost directly responsible for the success of a school so the standards for what constitute "good health" would have to be considerably high. Judging by the percentage points assigned to each topic in the SUIS appraisal, the company’s main criteria for healthy or strong leadership are in the ability to perform specific managerial tasks, followed by the ability to lead teachers. Although a strong school leader is characterized foremost by exceptional instructional ability rather than business skills, SUIS acknowledges that school management is inherently more difficult than instructional leadership, and so puts more emphasis on the area during the evaluation process.
For the moment we will trust that SUIS’s standards for a school leader are accurate to the company’s needs. The diagnosis is now dependent on the individual objectives that make up the ideal leader. Due to the dynamic nature of school leadership, evaluations are structured as a checklist of what the company has witnessed over the years to be proper attitudes and correct forms of action. Good communication with parents for instance likely affects enrolment; delivering clear objectives likely earns the trust and support of teachers; and initiating cross-stream teaching likely enhances “East meets West” collaboration. While these observable “good” qualities of leadership are decided by experienced professionals, there is not much guarantee that they are specifically relevant to the relationship between leadership and success.
The uncertainty in knowing which actions and interactions actually constitute success may hinder the evaluation’s purpose in diagnosing a leader. On one hand, the company’s use of a 360-degree appraisal which considers feedback from all areas of the school seems to follow a solution offered by Eisner which is to ‘cast a wider net’ on evaluative objectives (174). This means more criteria, including ones that do not appear strongly linked to school success, should be included in the evaluation in case unforeseen yet valuable relations are generated. On the other hand, a 360-degree appraisal is mainly used for business strategies which may cloud some intended educational targets. A diagnosis of deficiencies is only part of the aim of a 360-degree appraisal; its main function is to provide indication of performance in terms of cost and quantity, and a basis for decisions such as salary increases and contract renewal. Since quality of leader and school success are inextricably linked, SUIS would have to put extra effort into its evaluations to ensure that both business and educational objectives converge towards some common goals.
Relationship with Teachers
One evaluative objective which encompasses both business and educational strategies is the school leader’s relationship with teachers. The majority of a leader’s daily activity comprises of getting teachers together to accomplish desired goals particularly when it comes to achieving academic success. This is reflected by the fact that a large portion of the 360-degree appraisal addresses the leader’s ability to manage teachers through both instructional and administrative leadership. The various feedbacks that the evaluators use to conjure up a final score are also mostly derived from the teachers under the leader’s guidance. Nevertheless, after considering what several education theorists have had to say about this topic, there is reason to suggest that SUIS could improve its evaluation by expanding on the leader’s relationship with the teachers in the school.
As mentioned earlier, the school leader’s first evaluation takes place six months after the initial training has wrapped up. According to Peter Earley and Dick Weindling, the first 3-12 months of a new leader’s control is the “honeymoon” period which is the most critical stage for earning the trust of teachers (75). A strong leader is someone who has the command and commitment of the school’s teachers so evaluators will want to pay particularly close attention to how the leader has interacted with staff so far, and especially how the teachers score the leader’s performance.
Teachers are particularly sensitive to a leader’s interpersonal skills; yet the SUIS principal evaluation only mildly covers this issue with a handful of questions addressing the delivery of clear guidelines and basic teaching support. In many cases, the school leader may believe that his or her guidance is clear, but to teachers, the messages come across as mixed and competing (Spillane 150). School leaders are also required to keep to the company’s objectives, but those who come across as too domineering and intolerant to alternate views will stifle the development of a cooperative atmosphere (Hannay and Seller 256). Furthermore, some leaders who have been leading schools for years have never consciously thought about the qualities that make up good teachers (Kimball and Milanowski 58). These points as well as others should be included in the evaluation if the school leader is to learn early on the pivotal effect good teacher relationships have on success.
Accountability
A school leader evaluation must include some sort of objective for accountability as conflict is sure to arise when leaders, believing they were only following company policy, are asked to explain failures or shortfalls. Accountability in schools is often seen as burdensome and interfering by those it is assigned to (Guskey 29) because it focuses starkly on meeting outcomes without any respect for the processes. SUIS will want to change this perspective by showing its leaders early on that accountability is more to do with planning ahead than explaining end results. There is reason to believe that a leader willing to take responsibility for his or her actions can be cultivated with an evaluation that diagnoses the frequency of particular actions. Thomas R. Guskey identifies several of these actions: the ability to replace personal defensiveness with professional inquisitiveness, the ability to openly share results, and the ability to defer assigning blame (31). These points are well suited to an evaluation, in particular one that takes into account feedback from all corners of the school.
It should be noted that accountability goes both ways. If a school leader is expected to take responsibility for certain actions, the company and evaluators must also ensure that the problems identified can be solved and that a pathway to successful leadership can be outlined. If problems are benign or too basic for training to have any effect, the company will have failed in effectively cultivating a strong leader for its school.
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.
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.
IV. Post-Recruitment
Over and over, the shared experience of education organizations is that the one factor separating a successful school from a mediocre one is the quality of the school leader. A strong school leader is a charismatic and forward-thinking individual, able to announce ambitious goals for student achievement and inspire the deep commitment of staff to realize them. In an ideal situation, the organization would need to intervene only a few times as the school leader would naturally solve all problems with only a motivating speech and some powerful hand gestures.
Back on earth this is almost never the case. No leader comes “ready-made” for success and even the most experienced and highly skilled leaders run into difficulty managing a school with or without mission-driven objectives. The previous sections of this practicum discussed finding strong leaders. The contents of this section will discuss what companies such as SUIS can do to develop and cultivate strong leaders after recruitment. The topics covered are training, evaluation, and inducing commitment.
Back on earth this is almost never the case. No leader comes “ready-made” for success and even the most experienced and highly skilled leaders run into difficulty managing a school with or without mission-driven objectives. The previous sections of this practicum discussed finding strong leaders. The contents of this section will discuss what companies such as SUIS can do to develop and cultivate strong leaders after recruitment. The topics covered are training, evaluation, and inducing commitment.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
III. Conclusion
Understanding the impact that leadership has on the success of a school should compel both organizations and school districts to think clearly about their hiring practices when seeking new leadership. The recruitment procedure, even one that is thorough and systematized, will be unruly because the standards for a strong leader are bound to exclude a large number of candidates.
It is worth summarizing a typical recruitment procedure again. Following the release of a recruitment ad, organizations must sift through an assortment of resumes and applications (which could vary from a hundred or so to just a small handful). Suitable candidates (if any) are chosen based on objective criteria such as past experience and certifications, which afterwards are verified again through interviews are reference checks. Whatever decisions still left to be made are based on internal feelings and leaps of faith.
While recruitment is a far more technical procedure than was made out to be in this practicum, the purpose of this section was to shed light on areas that would help in making final decisions more accurate and predictable. Understanding the motives and aspirations of potential candidates helps narrow down a pool of applicants; and identifying relevant interview questions helps focus the lens on the most qualified individuals.
However, even if a thorough and well-checked hiring procedure had been executed, there is still no guarantee that the individual chosen will prove successful. Whoever the organization decides to hire to lead a school will have considerable short and long term effects on the organization’s reputation. The next section will explore ways strong leaders can be developed by the organization as well as actions the organization must take in keeping a strong leader committed to the school over a long period of time.
It is worth summarizing a typical recruitment procedure again. Following the release of a recruitment ad, organizations must sift through an assortment of resumes and applications (which could vary from a hundred or so to just a small handful). Suitable candidates (if any) are chosen based on objective criteria such as past experience and certifications, which afterwards are verified again through interviews are reference checks. Whatever decisions still left to be made are based on internal feelings and leaps of faith.
While recruitment is a far more technical procedure than was made out to be in this practicum, the purpose of this section was to shed light on areas that would help in making final decisions more accurate and predictable. Understanding the motives and aspirations of potential candidates helps narrow down a pool of applicants; and identifying relevant interview questions helps focus the lens on the most qualified individuals.
However, even if a thorough and well-checked hiring procedure had been executed, there is still no guarantee that the individual chosen will prove successful. Whoever the organization decides to hire to lead a school will have considerable short and long term effects on the organization’s reputation. The next section will explore ways strong leaders can be developed by the organization as well as actions the organization must take in keeping a strong leader committed to the school over a long period of time.
Monday, February 8, 2010
III. Making a Decision
Several theories exist regarding the most effective means of using interviews to make final hiring decisions. These theories encompass a large realm of knowledge and expertise that will not be covered in this practicum. However, careful discrimination should be exercised when hiring for a role as significant as school leader so organizations would be wise to implement a plan of action for choosing one favorite among several finalists. Here are a few recommendations for what such a plan should include.
Select for certain qualities
Organizations must decide ahead of time what the most critical qualities are for the desired school leader. This practicum suggests a few broad qualities (instructional ability, business attitudes, loyalty, etc.) but it is important that organizations also decide on some that are specific to the school that is hiring. For instance, should the leader be bilingual? Should he or she possess any particular certification? Whichever qualities the organization culls, there should be questions designed to evoke the desired responses. Candidates who fail to meet the most critical qualities are unlikely to make exceptional leaders.
Assign a value for each quality based on the candidate’s response
Each question should be assigned one or two qualities that can be given a score based on the answer. For instance, if the organization is seeking someone proactive, they will ask candidates to talk about controlling a situation, and then rank their proaction based on their answers. By the end of the last interview, each candidate should be represented by a score sheet assigning a numerical value to each desired quality. This will make it easier to compare each candidate’s suitability.
Do not settle for less
Depending on the timetable, a final decision should not be made in haste. If the outcome is that there are no exceptional candidates, then it is recommended that the organization continue its search even if it means delaying a school’s opening (Wilson 203). Steven F. Wilson writes that settling for a less than exceptional school leader will lock the school in mediocrity (203). Organizations should use as much time and resources necessary to locate a leader they feel fully confident in hiring.
Select for certain qualities
Organizations must decide ahead of time what the most critical qualities are for the desired school leader. This practicum suggests a few broad qualities (instructional ability, business attitudes, loyalty, etc.) but it is important that organizations also decide on some that are specific to the school that is hiring. For instance, should the leader be bilingual? Should he or she possess any particular certification? Whichever qualities the organization culls, there should be questions designed to evoke the desired responses. Candidates who fail to meet the most critical qualities are unlikely to make exceptional leaders.
Assign a value for each quality based on the candidate’s response
Each question should be assigned one or two qualities that can be given a score based on the answer. For instance, if the organization is seeking someone proactive, they will ask candidates to talk about controlling a situation, and then rank their proaction based on their answers. By the end of the last interview, each candidate should be represented by a score sheet assigning a numerical value to each desired quality. This will make it easier to compare each candidate’s suitability.
Do not settle for less
Depending on the timetable, a final decision should not be made in haste. If the outcome is that there are no exceptional candidates, then it is recommended that the organization continue its search even if it means delaying a school’s opening (Wilson 203). Steven F. Wilson writes that settling for a less than exceptional school leader will lock the school in mediocrity (203). Organizations should use as much time and resources necessary to locate a leader they feel fully confident in hiring.
III. Interviews
Analyzing potential candidates for a school leader position can help companies such as SUIS make informed decisions about the types of individuals who may end up running one of their schools. If reviewing applicants that have responded to a recruitment ad, knowing more about public and private school principals could make screening and selection more efficient. Or if a leader vacancy is on the horizon, understanding the ambitions of senior teachers could result in a leader who is already familiar with the school’s day to day routines. Everything considered, knowing as much as possible about potential candidates is useful in the initial stages of recruitment as selecting candidates who appear most qualified to be leaders is based on what can be learned from their previous experience and references.
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.
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.
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.
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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