Educational Leadership Instructional Strategy Research Paper

Abstract

Uplift Triumph Preparatory is a public charter school in Dallas, Texas. Since 2013, Uplift Education has offered students at all grade levels the opportunity for personal, moral, and academic achievement. Although Uplift celebrates its successes in creating the type of supportive environment required for educational achievement, strong leaders understand the need to strategically plan for change and continually update goals. This Instructional Leadership Plan outlines the vision for Uplift Triumph Preparatory School, the K-5 segment of the Uplift Education group of charter schools. In this report are included an outline of the leadership team and its contributions to creating a purposeful community, a selection of three core goals that constitute the right work for our school, the ideal programs and practices to facilitate meeting goals, and how to overcome barriers to change.

Vision Statement

The Uplift Triumph Preparatory School vision is multifaceted, addressing both learning outcomes and the environment in which learning takes place. Learning outcomes are focused on the promotion of qualities that will allow students to evolve into competent scholars and members of their community. In particular, “all scholars are encouraged to strengthen their critical thinking, communication, and leadership skills,” (“About Uplift Triumph Preparatory,” 2018, p. 1). Thus, the vision is to cultivate a class of future scholars who think critically, communicate effectively, and promote social justice through their actions, words, and deeds. The vision for the learning environment is to create “a joyful, supportive place to grow and learn,” (“About Uplift Triumph Preparatory,” 2018, p. 1). The emphasis on joy and support shows how educators and other faculty members can approach their own role in the purposeful community created on campus.

Leadership Team: A Purposeful Community

Creating a leadership team is an evidence-based process, not an arbitrary one (“A Plan for Effective School Leadership,” n.d.). Moreover, creating a leadership team diffuses responsibility and removes the pressure to find a single unicorn-like leader who fulfills all the qualities associated with effective educational leadership (“A Plan for Effective School Leadership,” n.d.). The theory of shared leadership combines elements of visionary, transformational, and democratic leadership and helps Uplift Triumph create a purposeful community. A purposeful community has collective efficacy: the knowledge and belief that together, the team can achieve its goals (“A Plan for Effective School Leadership,” n.d.). Of course, collective efficacy also requires that all team members share the same goals and vision. The effectiveness of the leadership team also requires that members pay attention to available assets and understand how to leverage them according to guiding principles and foundational ideals. Finally, the vision, values, and goals of the community may change over time, or as the demographics or normative climate changes. The community needs to continually meet to share concerns and to create consensus with agreed-upon goals and processes to meet those goals (“A Plan for Effective School Leadership,” n.d.). The following is an outline of how a purposeful community can be created at Uplift Triumph.

Operating Principles

The operating principles of the leadership team include collective efficacy and personal accountability. Instructional leadership supports “the degree to which teachers work together to improve instruction, and together leadership and teacher collaboration may contribute to school effectiveness by strengthening collective efficacy beliefs,” (Goddard & Goddard, 2015, p. 1). Therefore, the leadership techniques and strategies need to create the type of empowering, collaborative environment that fosters collective efficacy and personal accountability. The operating principles of a purposeful community in education are based on constructivist ideology, which has been empirically linked to improved student achievement outcomes (Huffman, Hipp & Pankake, et al, 2001).

Leveraging Available Assets

Assets include not only tangible but also intangible assets like the normative culture, shared vision, and values. In a team environment, each individual can participate in resource development and allocation, allowing the entire school to leverage available assets and focus on strengths rather than weaknesses.

Mutual Goals

Creating mutual goals often depends on actively collaborating with team members, sharing concerns and offering suggestions for change. The School Snapshot survey yields several mutual goals that can be focused on during periods of self-assessment, including how to best structure and deliver curricular content, how to employ evidence-based classroom management strategies, and how to create an ideal professional culture.

Processes and Norms

Members of the team must also agree upon the processes used to fulfill goals. Those processes are grounded in shared ethics and values, which also inform the normative culture of Uplift Triumph. The school’s leadership team agrees on conflict resolution strategies, methods of discipline for both students and faculty, and the protocols for mitigating crises. Similarly, the leadership team decides on who takes responsibility for communicating with members of the community, community organizations, and members of the school board. Some of the norms that the leadership team promotes include a supportive and cooperative environment in which all voices are heard. Creating a normative culture in the school also helps the leadership team create a communication strategy that best reflects the spirit and vision of Uplift Triumph. A collective leadership team speaks with one voice.

Distribution of Responsibilities

One of the reasons why a shared leadership model is effective is that responsibility is distributed and shared. Each person offers particular strengths they can contribute, which is why a diverse team enables the expression of multiple leadership qualities. For example, some members of the community will be more adept at financial and budgetary work, whereas others will be better in a communications position.

Selecting the Right Work

The School Snapshot Survey reveals several focal points for the leadership team. Of the goals identified, three emerge as the most salient.

Goal 1: Opportunities for Parental and Community Involvement

Parental involvement is a cornerstone of student academic achievement (Castro, Exposito-Casas, Lopez-Martin, et al, 2015). Community involvement has been shown to have a tremendous effect on the development, implementation, and efficacy of school-based health initiatives including dietary and physical activity programs (Kehm, Davey & Nanney, 2015). While Uplift Triumph has worked hard to build bridges with community organizations and with parents, focusing on this goal now will help to strengthen those relationships and build new strategic alliances.

Goal 2: Creating a Safe and Orderly Environment

This goal is actually linked with community involvement, showing how mutual goals are linked under common rubrics of shared…