COURSE SYLLABUS

CI – 5585-376 – TEACHER LEADERSHIP AND SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT

Appalachian StateUniversity – Fall Semester, 2003

Three Semester Hours

Tuesday Evenings, 5:00 – 7:40 p.m.

Meeting Site: CatawbaValleyCommunity College, MainBuilding, 119 West Wing

Teacher:Dr. Tracy W. SmithOffice:202E Edwin Duncan Hall

Telephone:(828) 262-2274Home:(828) 268-0222

E-Mail:Fax:(828) 262-2686

Practitioner-Leader: Scarlet DavisWork:Newton-Conover City Schools

Telephone: (828) 464-3191Home:(828) 459-2958

Email:

COURSE RATIONALE

At one time, it was assumed that the exercise of leadership in a school was the chief responsibility of those with positional authority to lead and administer (principals, assistant principals, department heads, etc.). In that thinking, there was often interchangeability between the concepts of administration, management, and leadership. As school districts move to embrace decentralizing strategies such as site-based management, shared decision-making, and a broader sense of community, those distinctions become clearer and more discernible. Now, teachers find themselves being asked to assume increasingly more active and responsible roles in school governance and the processes of change. In fact, the literature on high-performing schools clearly establishes that high quality teacher involvement in the school’s decision-making is as essential an ingredient to high performance as the quality of a principal’s leadership. The path to long-term and sustained school improvement must pass through the professional participation of teachers in leadership roles.

But, the exercise of leadership is not historically a part of the culture of teaching. In the less contemporary, but all too prevalent view of school governance, teachers teach students and principals run schools. There is an explicit hierarchy of power, and an implicit assignment of role responsibilities. Teachers tend not to be enculturated into leadership, either in their preparation programs or their practices. They tend to assume that the explicit hierarchy and the implicit limits are standard. However, those relationships tend not to contribute to growth and development, particularly in school settings that are more problematic than not. This course is intended to help teachers develop the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that will enable them to participate more fully in leading schools through the rigors of sustainable and continuous school improvement. There is, explicitly, a sense of pro-activity in this course. Teacher leaders should emerge prepared to make their leadership known, rather than wait for someone else to confer the opportunity for leadership on them.

COURSE DESCRIPTION

This course is intended to help teachers develop understanding of and skill in assuming leadership roles and responsibilities in their schools. This course will focus on those aspects of school leadership seen as most appropriate and potentially beneficial for teacher involvement. Particular attention will be paid to the relationship between teacher leadership, school effectiveness, and site-based accountability. Students will learn the knowledge, skills, and attitudes through both university classroom and site-based clinical activities. These activities can include such clinical activities as participant-observer studies, shadow studies, classroom action research, problem-based learning activities, case studies, survey research, and qualitative research studies. Students will be expected to present some product of learning that represents, authentically, their growth in this course.

COURSE OUTLINE (Topical)

  1. Understanding Essential Principles of Effective Leadership
  1. Strategic leadership
  1. Problem-finding/problem-solving
  2. Using research of best practices
  3. Goal setting and establishing priorities
  4. Monitoring progress and supervising activity
  5. Communicating for awareness and understanding
  6. Decision-making
  7. Follow-up to determine ______
  1. Leading people
  1. Understanding the power of relationships
  2. Understanding the uses and misuses of power
  3. Understanding the concept of culture
  4. Building trust
  5. Accepting and granting autonomy with responsibility
  1. Understanding the Characteristics of a Professional Culture in Schools
  1. Overview of organizational culture
  1. Concepts
  2. Examples from the world of practice
  1. The nature of professional work
  1. Teacher work includes continuous learning and active leading as well as performing in classrooms (Note: same as a principal’s)
  2. Teacher work is neither trivialized nor inconsequential (Note: no more “Don’t waste my time!”)
  3. Teacher time is respected as valuable, non-renewable resource
  4. Teacher work is recognized and supported
  1. The professional environment in schools
  1. Teaching well is awarded both respect and dignity
  2. Power and authority are shared and distributed, not segregated
  3. Collaborative effort and accomplishment is rewarded as well as individual effort and accomplishment
  1. Understanding the Effective Uses of Power, Authority, and Control
  1. The application of power in schools
  1. Uses of power in schools
  2. Distributed power
  3. Empowerment
  1. Authority
  1. Roles and responsibilities of leaders in schools
  2. Authority and autonomy
  3. Responsibility for the exercise of authority and autonomy to act
  1. Control
  1. Of what?
  2. Accountability
  1. Understanding the Relationship Between Teacher Leadership and School-Based Accountability
  1. Accountability
  1. The state’s system
  2. The district’s responsibilities
  1. The school as agency of accountability
  1. Using the data in hand effectively
  2. Securing the data you need
  3. Developing effective school improvement plans
  1. Emerging Roles and Responsibilities for Teacher Leaders in Schools
  1. Governance roles and responsibilities
  1. Site-based school improvement teams – exploring best practices
  2. Leading accreditation teams – exploring best practices
  3. Community involvement and participation – exploring best practices
  4. Spokespersons for the school at public engagements
  1. Instructional roles and responsibilities
  1. Learn, model, and teach about best instructional practices
  2. Conduct classroom-based action research to inform instructional practices
  3. Lead and organize peer review of school instructional practices against benchmarks of best practice
  4. Design, organize, and conduct focused professional development activities
  5. Plan, develop, and effectively apply tools and techniques of instructional technology
  1. Professional roles and responsibilities
  1. Team-building and collaborative structures
  2. Advise and assist beginning teachers through mentoring and coaching
  3. Creating peer recognitions and rewards
  4. Peer coaching through a “critical friends” model
  1. Participate in performance review for marginal teachers
  1. Synthesizing and Applying the Characteristics of High-Performing Schools
  1. Instructional focus on student learning
  1. Collaboration between and among all professionals
  1. Distributed roles and responsibilities among the professional and extended community
  1. Moving from a “Power Over” to a “Power With” conceptualization of leadership
  1. Building shared meanings

COURSE REQUIREMENTS

  1. Students will be responsible for all readings and assignments. Since this class is highly dependent on participants’ interaction regarding their knowledge, skills, and attitudes, being prepared for class is a critical condition for the success of the class.
  2. Collaboratively, students will lead class discussions about chapters in Barth’s Improving Schools from Withinor other selected readings. Students should consider principles of adult learning as they plan the discussions. Additional related articles, topics, etc. may be incorporated into the discussions. A pre-discussion reflection will be due the night of the discussion, and a post-discussion reflection will be due at the next class meeting. Additional guidelines for these reflections will be provided.
  3. Students will be required to complete a professional vita during this course that provides a portrait of their professional accomplishments to date. The vita should be included in the front of the culminating project portfolio near the end of the course.
  4. Students will be required to participate in a clinical activity, which will involve their engagement with the practice of teacher leadership and school improvement in schools. That may take one of several forms, including becoming a participant-observer of some key structure in a school. It might involve conducting a shadow study of an effective teacher leader and his/her ways of leading. It might, alternatively, involve working with a task force on finding solutions to school-based problems. It could require gathering information to test or support a preferred solution to a problem. It might involve doing some collaborative action research to address a critical need. In any event, whatever the project, the student will be expected to develop a thoughtful and thorough reflection on the activity and its real or potential impact on school improvement.
  5. All students will be expected to complete and present some authentic culminating project to demonstrate the breadth and depth of their learning in the class. The product might be in the form of a portfolio, or a technology-based presentation, a formal paper, or any format agreed upon with the professor. Presentations of the products will take place in class, but students are also encouraged to present information and findings to appropriate audiences within the school community. Participants in the class will develop rubrics for evaluation. This product must undergo some form of peer review prior to its formal presentation.

REQUIRED TEXT

Barth, R.S. (1990). Improving schools from within: Teachers, parents, and principals can make the difference. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Lieberman, A., & Miller, L. (1999). Teachers transforming their world and their work. New York: Teachers College Press.

EVALUATION AND GRADING

All work will receive a grade of Quality (A), Accept (B), or Quality in Progress (C). Students receiving a “Quality in Progress” on an assignment will continue working until the work is “Quality” or “Accepted.”

METHODS OF TEACHING

This course will approach leadership inductively and will feature individual and group activities, simulations, case studies, and guest speakers, in addition to the more conventional lecture and discussion. Readings will be assigned in addition to the primary texts.

Date / Topic / Assignment(s) Due
8/26 / Course Overview
Introductions of Class Members / Purchase Textbooks
9/2 /
Transforming Schooling and Teaching: What Matters and What Works
/ TTTW: Introduction and Chapter 1
Assignment:
9/9 /
A Crisis of Confidence
/ ISFW: Foreword, Preface, Introduction, Chapter 1
Assignment:
9/16 /
The New Social Realities of Teaching
Adversaries Within the Schoolhouse / TTTW: Chapter 2
ISFW: Chapter 2
Assignment:
Leadership Surveys and Rubrics with reflective summary due. Carefully analyze the information you have collected. What do you learn about the leadership capacity of your school, district, and most importantly yourself from this information? What does this mean for you as a professional educator?
9/23 / Data driven School Improvement
Becoming Colleagues / Articles from Educational Leadership (as assigned)
ISFW: Chapter 3
Assignments:
Bring updated vitae to class.
Read assigned article.
9/30 / Recreating Leadership: Values, Visions, and Action
Building a Community of Learners / TTTW: Chapter 3
ISFW: Chapter 4
Assignment:
10/7 / Professional Development for the New Social Realities of Teaching
Teachers as Learners / TTTW: Chapter 4
ISFW: Chapter 5
Assignment:
10/14 /
LEADERSHIP DAY
/ Clinical Projects in Schools
10/21 /
Toward an Era of Hope, Passion, and Commitment
Learning to Lead / TTTW: Chapter 5
ISFW: Chapter 7
Assignment:
10/28 /

Practice into Prose

Between School and University / ISFW: Chapter 8
ISFW: Chapter 9
Assignment:
11/4 / LEADERSHIP DAY / Clinical Projects in Schools
11/11 / Becoming a Community of Leaders / ISFW: Chapter 10
Assignment:
11/18 / Visions of Good Schools
A Personal Vision
/ ISFW: Chapter 11
ISFW: Chapter 12
Assignment:
11/25 /
Student Presentations
/ Culminating Project Portfolio Due (including curriculum vita)
12/2 /

Student Presentations

12/9 /
Student Presentations

ATTENDANCE POLICY

Because many activities of this course are group-dependent, regular attendance is mandatory.

Excused absences: Students must call prior to class absences and provide written evidence of necessity at the next attended class in order to receive an excused absence.

Unexcused absences: All absences that are not excused per the above instructions are unexcused. Each unexcused absence will result in 3 points being deducted from the student’s final grade.

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