SPEAKING OUT
JOSEPH MURPHY
Three Layers of
Education Leadership
A
historical analysis of organizational research reveals that few topics have
received more attention than leadership, especially in the education industry. Academics, developers, and practitioners have all taken turns adding to our
understanding of school leadership and how it unfolds in schools and districts.
I’d like to offer a simple, yet powerful, frame for how to think about the leadership required to fuel school improvement.
Based on an ongoing, 30-year analysis of school leadership, my colleagues
and I have concluded that there are
three layers of education leadership:
acting from the heart; attending to
the laws of school improvement; and
practicing the craft of promoting academic press and community-anchored
schooling.
The Bedrock
What is the foundational layer of good
leadership? A number of researchers
have worked to answer that question, perhaps none more eloquently
or effectively than Lee Bolman and
Terry Deal in Leading with Soul. While
the idea of acting from the heart may
seem too mushy or unscientific, it
is nearly impossible to find a highly
effective school in which this bedrock
is not fairly deep.
When talking to principals about
the essentials of their work (and
examining cases of highly effective
schools), the conversation rarely
focuses on a new curricular program
or a new teacher evaluation system.
They speak, instead, about their powerful advocacy for children and young
people, and they have a very clear
sense of priorities. There’s passion,
commitment, and hope. Trusting
relationships, care, and respect are
central, as are integrity and service.
This is the bedrock of great school
leadership.
While it is essential, though, heartcentered leadership is not sufficient.
Researchers and policymakers do
principals and superintendents no
favor when we stop here. Principals
44
Principal n November/December 2013
Effective leaders
understand that
bringing alignment and
cohesion to change
efforts is as important,
or even more important,
than the individual
actions themselves.
For example, effective leaders understand that context always matters in
improvement work. All interventions
need to be molded and shaped to fit
the school. The best principals do
not make the often-committed and
fatal assumption that bringing new
structures to a school (such as block
scheduling or detracking) will automatically lead to success. The wisdom
of practice has taught them that
interventions need to be infused with
meaning, so they work hard to make
this happen.
Strong leaders understand that in
school improvement, there is no silver
bullet; improvement is always an array
of integrated efforts. Effective leaders
understand that bringing alignment
and cohesion to change efforts is as
important, or even more important,
than the individual actions themselves. They are aware that early
trumps later and prevention trumps
remediation. These and other overarching rules of school improvement
comprise this second layer of effective
leadership.
The Build-Out
must also develop the required middle layer of leadership: understanding
the laws of school improvement.
The Scaffolding
Effective leadership is more than the
sum of good activities. If the ideas
discussed above form the bedrock,
then wisdom about the rules of school
improvement is the architecture on
which policies need to be written,
systems and procedures need to be
forged, and to which practices need to
be connected. These rules give meaning to and shape the work of leadership in effective schools.
What does this second essential
layer of leadership look like? It is
wrought from hard work, more so
than the bedrock material. It is more
integrated, and it is harder to see
and feel. If the bedrock is a set of
deep-seated, inherent principles, the
scaffolding is a set of forged rules.
Getting youngsters to reach ambitious targets of academic and social
success is complex, often difficult
work. Leading from the heart and
systematically applying the principles
of school improvement sets the stage
to achieve that end. But leaders can
only be successful if they add a third
layer of actions. This layer involves
paying relentless attention to the two
essential elements of great schools:
academic press and a communityanchored learning environment. It is
also about forging an alloy of the two,
H ERE’ S YOU R C H A NC E
TO SPEA K OU T
The author outlines the three
essential layers of strong school
leadership. Do you agree with his
model? Share your thoughts on The
Principals’ Office blog at
www.naesp.org/blog.
Click on Speaking Out.
www.naesp.org
or wrapping them around each other
like a coil of rope.
Academic press is ensuring that all
children are confronted with and supported in reaching ambitious goals.
This means engaging each student
in a rigorous educational program,
providing quality instruction that challenges students to move beyond their
level of comfort, and so forth.
Actions to bring forth a community-anchored school include: creating
a professional culture in which teachers share a sense of direction, work
on practice in a collaborative manner, and hold each other accountable for student outcomes; ensuring
that every child is known, cared for,
and respected; and fostering trusting relationships between teachers,
between students, between teachers
and students, and between educators
and parents.
Researchers and educators know
a good deal about leadership, and
we continue to learn more each day,
deepening the leadership narrative
and crafting a more nuanced story.
But, at the same time, we spend too
little time attending to how to “essentialize” this knowledge. That entails
asking, “What is the essence of effective leadership? How do we make
sense of what we have learned?”
This three-layer model of good
leadership focuses on the essentials:
acting from the heart; employing the
rules of school improvement; and
building up the two core elements
of great schools: academic press and
community-anchored organization.
These ideas work best when they are
integrated, so school leaders should
engage on all three fronts. Principals
need to take time to reflect on their
strengths and the domains of leadership that may be underdeveloped for
them. Then, they can create a plan to
translate knowledge into action.
Joseph Murphy is a professor of
education and the Frank W. Mayborn
Chair in the Department of Leadership,
Policy & Organizations at Vanderbilt
University.
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Principal (ISSN 0271-6062) (Act of August 12, 1970; Section 3685, Title 39 United State Code.) Date of filing: 22 October 2013. Frequency of issue, 5 issues per
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