Instructional leadership: The role of promoting teaching and learning

EMASA Conference 2011 Presentation

Mathakga BothaWits school of Education

Agenda

• Background• Roles of instructional leadership• Use of assessment data to improve teaching

and learning• framework for data-driven decision making• Creation of professional learning communities• Action to initiate change in schools

Roles of instructional leadership• share a common vision and goals to bring about

change • have a key role to play in increasing the performance

of pedagogical leadership practice in their schools• focus on activities maximising learning outcomes and

learner performance• Leadership engage the whole school in conversations

concerning meaningful use of assessment data • use of data for inquiry and decision making• to create professional learning communities and

encourage participation and leadership

Use of data to improve teaching and learning

• a tool to enable school leaders and teachers to implement change in schools

• promote a culture of high standards and the use of appropriate assessment for improving learning

• to use data to understand where learners are academically • to establish improvement plans that are targeted• effective when teacher decisions about instructional

effectiveness are based on assessments of learners’ actual proficiencies in various skill areas

• understand and use of a continuum from data to information, to building knowledge

Collect

Organize Analyze

Summarize Synthesize

Prioritize

ImpactImpact

ImplementImplement

DATA

KNOWLEDGE

INFORMATION

feed-back

feed-back

feed-back

Framework for Data-Driven decision making

Challenges of using data

• problems with the format of the data• schools have difficulty analysing and

interpreting data• teachers not using relevant educational

questions to enable them analyse data• data not used to understand how learners

think • schools having difficulties making linkages

between data and improvement strategies.

Professional Learning Communities to promote teaching and learning

• all educators to engage in collaborative discussions

• shift in schools thinking and the structure of their professional development

• allows school leadership and teachers to communicate and share their classroom encounters

• understand issues that need intervention to improve learner achievement

Challenges of professional learning communities

• vague understanding of a community’s depth of ‘shared beliefs’, ‘interdependency’, and ‘meaningful relationships’

• existence of competing tensions uncomfortable

• critical nature of the communal learning challenging and ambiguous work

• Teachers’ lack understanding of the nature of the interdependence required

• Encourage collaboration towards promoting effective teaching and learning;

• provide a school culture that aims for high standards of achievement;

• have common beliefs about reform to improve learner achievement;

• create capacity building that provides consistency and focuses collectively on learner problems, to find solutions;

• share teaching practices to promote higher standards of learning.

School leadership action to initiate change in schools