Instructional Leadership

Becoming the Instructional Leader of Your Building: A Critical Action Guide

Leaders who have a high impact on student outcomes understand the need to focus on learning and the impact of learning and believe their fundamental task is to evaluate the effect of everyone on student learning. Instructional leaders:

Develop, support and maintain a collaborative culture and climate.
Promote effective teaching and learning practices that align to leader standards.
Provide for the development and use of common formative assessments.
Use data to make decisions, determine learning priorities, and expend resources.

Course Outcomes

In this course, building leaders will learn how to take key actions in instructional areas of focus enabling them to become the instructional leaders of their buildings. Inside you will discover how to:

Promote a culture that is safe for collaboration.
Gain knowledge and understanding of research-based effective teaching/learning practices.
Gain knowledge and understanding regarding the importance and use of common formative assessments to drive instruction.
Determine the current reality of the building through the use of data.

Reflective Questions

This course is a “getting started” package to help develop instructional leadership skills. Its focus is on strategies to develop a staff that works across four areas that have been shown to have a positive impact on school performance and student outcomes. Those areas include:

Collaborative Culture and Climate

Supports and encourages discussion, sharing, reflection, and problem-solving about a common goal.

Assessments

Methods and/or tools used to assess and measure student learning.

Effective Teaching and Learning Practices

Effective Teaching and Learning Practices at the classroom level are evidence-based effective methods that are content neutral and when implemented with fidelity and informed through data can produce positive, sustained results for every student.

Data for Decision Making

DBDM involves teams that effectively use data to: a) establish a vision, b) determine the data to collect and analyze, c) embed cycles of data collection, and d) implement a consistent process.

In what ways do you think instructional leadership can impact these four areas?