Overcoming Educational Leadership Challenges
Reymundo Gomez
School of Education, Liberty University
Author Note
Reymundo Gomez
I have no known conflict of interest to disclose.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Reymundo Gomez.
Email: rgomez36@liberty.edu
Educational Leadership Challenges
Besides the classroom teacher, the campus administration and school leaders impact
individual student achievement most. School leaders' decisions are global in scope, but their
impact is manifested in individual classrooms. School leaders assess the school environment and
direct resources to the areas of highest need. The leadership team will dictate where technology
will be implemented and which programs classroom teachers will use. School leaders determine
the class sizes teachers will serve through needs assessments and reviews. They also schedule the
most vital teachers in the classrooms to produce the best student outcomes. One of the most
critical decisions that school leaders make is the selection of a viable and relevant curriculum for
teachers to use in their classrooms. Along with short cycle common assessments and high
volume formative observations, Cain, et al., (2021) lists a common scope and sequence as one of
the three foundations for high achieving schools. These decisions are made in an ever-changing
environment that is not always school or student-friendly. School leaders make decisions to serve
all students' needs by supporting the classroom teachers' needs.
Technology in the Classroom
School leaders should embrace technology in the classroom as it is a norm in the daily
lives of all students. Technology is the framework on which significant infrastructures in society
are built. As Cloete (2017) expressed, technology has a structural character with the ability to
include and exclude. Technology should be treated as more than gadgets that can be utilized; it
should be accepted as an attitude towards life. The article by Cloete (2017) attempts to illustrate
that technology in education is not linear; there are many uses and applications in education for
it. The use of technology in the classroom should be measured and organized for much as it
presents various opportunities. It also poses several challenges. These challenges include access
to inappropriate content, unauthorized use of programs, inappropriate communications with
peers, and lack of resources. The benefits of teachers integrating technology in the classroom
outweigh the potential misuse. In the study by Nikolopoulou (2020), small samples of teachers
pointed out that active involvement, motivation, interactive and enjoyable lessons, easy access to
information, and familiarity with technology were benefits they perceived from students in their
classrooms. With the onset and slow recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, many schools
have made efforts to become one-to-one device districts. In these districts, each student is
assigned a computer device to use for classwork and other tasks. Students have immediate access
to resources that they would have needed to go to the local library or research a book in the past.
Access to this technology helps teachers meet the diverse needs of students in their classes.
Challenges from the COVID-19 Pandemic
Staff, teachers, and students experienced fast changes as schools closed in 2020 during
the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. As schools shifted to delivering lessons online, they had
to consider long-term strategies and solutions since there was no precedent to the pandemic. The
COVID-19 pandemic introduced challenges for students that layered on top of the ones that
students may have already been facing. Blagg, et al., (2020) state that some of the challenges
schools face are highly correlated with poverty, but others represent unrelated vulnerabilities
requiring distinct solutions and resources. Blagg, et al., (2020) lists linguistic isolation, disability,
economic vulnerability, single parents, crowded conditions, and digital access as challenges
students faced during the COVID-19 pandemic. Still, now that the world is in recovery, these
challenges prevail. School leaders and educators should assess the individual needs of their
students to understand what specific resources should be used to support all students in their
classrooms. There is no one size fits all solution to meet the needs of all students. Aside from
poverty and the issues mentioned above exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, many other
problems are still prevalent either due to or preceding it. Issues such as mental health, learning
disabilities, loss of employment by parents, the negativity of the media, and the increasing cost
of essential supplies affect student thoughts and concentration in the classroom. These stressors
add to the hardships already faced by the typical teenager, which may result in a loss of
engagement with the learning material in the classroom. The curriculum must be intentional and
specific to the needs of the student yet simultaneously meet the expectations of the local
education agency. The efficacy of the curriculum as it relates to the Common Core initiative
from the National Governors Association and Council of Chief State School Officers is a topic
that has not been studied in depth, according to Polikoff (2017). Locally a standardized
curriculum may be beneficial for schools that are low performing or have a documented history
of poor teacher practice. When a school adopts a standardized curriculum, content departments
benefit from common resources used and purchased, easier planning amongst the content areas,
and common assessments that identify learning patterns and gaps in instruction. A standardized
curriculum would help align expected lesson objectives with the lesson activities in the
classroom. Schools that are high performing tend to already have a standardized curriculum in
place. Hallmarks of successful schools are common planning periods, collaborative attitude by
the same content teachers, common formative assessment, and a robust and viable curriculum.
Schools should assess where different student needs are most significant, so they can apply the
appropriate resources to intervene.
Leadership Supporting School Staff
Adults in education also face challenges. There is a teacher shortage that has been slowly
accumulating for several years. Garcia & Weiss (2020) acknowledge that the shortage is
recognized but poorly understood. According to their study, in the 2017-2018 school year, there
was an estimated shortage of 110,000 teachers. The Garcia & Weiss (2020) study found that
higher poverty schools were affected more by the teacher shortage; these schools had more
teachers that were not certified than more affluent school districts. Other areas the study found
needed assistance or reform are hiring and retention of teachers, low teacher pay, negative school
climate, and lack of early career supports and career advancement opportunities. These
challenges can be overcome with a support system to help teachers do their jobs better, programs
to help them progress in their profession, and supportive administration that collaborates with
teachers to give them a sense of ownership of their careers. Strengthened support systems can
help teachers do their jobs better, progress in their profession, and gain satisfaction and a sense
of ownership of their careers. Greinke (2017) states that successful teachers blend who they are
as people with who they are as pedagogues. Teachers need to experience successful outcomes of
growing their practice and skills. In Greinke's study, retired teachers that looked back positively
on their careers afforded it greatly to keeping their identity as part of their teaching practice.
There is no exact proof of the hardships those teachers in the study faced, but after an entire
career in education, they experienced similar challenges that modern teachers face. In the study,
the successful teachers strove to find positive and engaging ways to interact with their students to
ensure learning.
Teacher Practice and the Lesson Cycle
Strong classroom practices help students learn and achieve more, but this success also
provides teachers with a sense of satisfaction. This sense of satisfaction is important for
continued motivation in the profession. The teaching profession is figuratively altruistic, but
teachers must see results and positive outcomes to stay motivated. There is a balancing
relationship between teaching and learning. Ultimately the goal of education is for students to
learn the specific learning objectives that their local and state education agencies assign to their
age and grade level. According to Illeris (2018), learning is an interaction of processes between
the learner and their environment, providing them with some impressions they can acquire
knowledge from to assess, elaborate on, and eventually learn. The teacher in the classroom is the
facilitator of this process. The classroom teacher is responsible for planning activities that allow
students to interact in meaningful ways, not just with their classroom material but with their
peers. Over the years, there have been different systems and theories on how to educate students
best. These systems all shared several vital elements. The teacher should provide students with a
focus activity to engage the learner; the teacher would then elaborate on the lesson objective,
allowing students to interact with the learning material in a guided control session. Throughout
this process, the teacher slowly releases control of the learning over to the student. The student
would then be afforded opportunities to engage with the learning objective independently or in a
cooperative group. During this process, the teacher facilitates and interacts with the learners.
Finally, the teacher would either formatively assess or provide a closing activity to connect the
lesson activity and the learning objective. All learning models shared similarities, but they all
shared one connecting truth, learning and teaching rely on each other. Mastery or learning the
lesson objective will dictate the teacher's planning and practice. They are directly connected.
Internal and External Factors Affecting Education
Some specific factors that affect teaching and learning can be considered internal or
external depending on their origin or area they impact the education cycle. Richman, et al.,
(2019) studied internal factors such as teacher practice, class size, number of students, student
demographics, number of full-time teachers, student-teacher ratio, use of multimedia, and
teachers' novice status to determine the effect these factors have on learning in the classroom.
Their study found that teacher practice had a positive relationship with student learning
compared to the other internal factors. Factors such as class size, student-teacher ratio, and the
number of students had an insignificant effect on student achievement. This conclusion was
backed up by the Bowne, et al., (2017) study that found that class sizes at or below 20 and childteacher ratios at or below 10:1 are adequate for most classes when not accounting for serving
students with special needs. The use of multimedia had a positive effect in the larger classes, but
this is correlated to its use by the classroom teacher. Smaller classes did not benefit as much
from the use of multimedia, but this may be due to smaller classes allowing for different modes
of learning than just a single use of multimedia. Larger classes benefit from using one type of
technology to save time and keep consistency. External factors such as racial ethnicity and
social-economic status were also studied by Richman, et al., (2019). Their study determined that
when teachers connected lessons to students' backgrounds, there was a positive relationship with
student achievement. They also found that teachers provided less rigorous assignments to
students from low economic households based on whether they qualified for Free and Reduced
Priced Lunch. The study was inconclusive on why teachers would provide less challenging work
to students that qualified for Free and Reduced Priced Lunch. As mentioned before, the practice
by the classroom teacher is a significant contributor to student success.
The Democratic Classroom
The teacher's use of democratic classroom practices positively affects student learning. In
democratic classrooms, students build a strong classroom community, take responsibility for
cocreating curriculum, and engage in critical dialogue on issues that impact their lives and
classroom practice, as described by Collins, et al., (2019). Students in democratic classrooms
build ownership of their learning through collaborative processes with their peers. The teacher is
still focal to the learning in a democratic classroom. Teachers should understand that students
often come to the school with varying experiences and unique ways of understanding those
experiences. Collins, et al. (2019) explain that the teacher's role in a democratic classroom is to
create spaces in which these ways of understanding and experiencing the world are fostered
through educative opportunities. This system allows for the slow release of control to students so
they can build ownership of their learning. The people drive the effectiveness of any educational
system. A democratic classroom approach is just one system that can help teachers overcome
challenges in the modern classroom. School leaders can support democratic classrooms by
practicing a collaborative teacher experience in their organization. Teachers should have a voice
in planning and choosing the scope and sequence of the school.
Conclusion
The challenges that school leaders face can be overcome with a team approach. Almost
all challenges in the education system are too significant for any sole individual to overcome.
The use of technology requires a team to implement and organize its use and distribution. Issues
such as class size and student-to-teacher ratio need a team of counselors and school
administrators to plan and find the resources for every classroom. Addressing teacher practice in
the classroom is paramount to learning, but it can only be improved school-wide through a
collaborative approach. Administrators must work closely with teachers to build their efficacy
and practice to improve the teacher and student learning cycle. Following the example of
democratic classroom practices for students, educators would benefit from the same approach to
planning their education. Any infrastructure in education has a framework dependent on the
relationship between the community, students, teachers, and school leaders. The challenges,
while many, are surmountable with the support of the many stakeholders involved in education.
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