Challenging role: Playing the part of principal stretches one’s talent
By Rick DuFour
Journal of Staff Development, Fall 1999 (Vol. 20, No. 4)
What is the role of the school principal in a professional learning community? Principals
have been called upon to:





Celebrate the success of their schools and to perpetuate discontent with the status
quo;
Convey urgency regarding the need for school improvement and to demonstrate
the patience that sustains improvement efforts over the long haul;
Encourage individual autonomy and to insist on adherence to the school’s
mission, vision, values, and goals;
Build widespread support for change and to push forward with improvement
despite resisters;
Approach improvement incrementally and to promote the aggressive,
comprehensive shakeup necessary to escape the bonds of traditional school
cultures.
Principals have been portrayed as middle managers in the school district hierarchy and as
leaders of their respective buildings. They have been lauded as the critical element in a
school improvement initiative and criticized for making their schools overly dependent
upon them.
Confronted with these conflicting messages, what is a principal to do?
The message to principals is particularly confusing is the area of leadership styles. On the
one hand, the importance of the principal serving as a strong instructional leader has
almost become a cliche. On the other hand, there are increasing calls for principals to
delegate, collaborate, and empower others to make decisions (Lezotte, 1997; Lieberman,
1995). As one study concluded:
"Principals in schools with strong professional communities delegate authority, develop
collaborative decision-making processes, and step back from being the central problem
solver. Instead they turn to the professional community for critical decisions."(Louis,
Kruse, and Marks, 1996.)
Can a principal be a strong instructional leader and empower others to make important
decisions?
Need for strong principals
There is little question that the role of the principal has changed since the days when the
effectiveness of the principal was based primarily on his or her ability to "run a tight
1
ship." The National Association of Secondary School Principals acknowledged that the
authoritarian leadership style that distinguished principals of the past is ineffective in an
era of site-based decision making and shared responsibility (1996). But while the role of
the principal has changed, the importance of the principalship has not. Schools need
strong principals more than ever.
Principals can promote the shared decision-making and collaborative culture of a learning
community and demonstrate strong instructional leadership if they attend to the following
leadership responsibilities.
1. Lead through shared vision and collective commitments rather than rules and
authority. A learning community, by definition, is a group of people working together
toward a shared vision. Therefore, building a shared vision and a collective commitment
to act in ways that advance that vision is one of the most important responsibilities of
principals in learning communities. When teachers have reached consensus on the
questions, "what do we want our school to become," and "what are we prepared to do to
get it there," principals can exercise "loose-tight" leadership. They can be "loose" on the
particular strategies teachers might use to advance the vision, but passionately "tight" on
upholding the vision and demanding adherence to the collective commitments. Rather
than emphasizing rules or resorting to the authority of the position to control the work of
teachers, they provide staff with a sense of direction by promoting and protecting shared
vision and collective commitment.
2. Create collaborative structures that focus on teaching and learning. Principals
must recognize two important facts: (1) A collaborative culture is essential to a learning
community, and (2) inviting people to collaborate will not create such a culture.
Principals must develop structures and strategies that systematically embed collaboration
into the daily life of the school. They must:




Provide time for teachers to collaborate in teams during the school day and year;
Help each team develop effective working relationships by facilitating the
development of protocols for how members will operate with one another;
Clarify the purpose of the collaboration and the products that should be generated
as a result of teachers working together; and
Insist that each team identify specific, measurable performance goals to create the
results orientation essential to a learning community.
3. Pose the questions that help the school focus on issues of teaching and learning. In
schools that have been most successful in creating a professional learning community,
principals have focused on posing questions rather than dictating solutions (Louis, Kruse,
and Raywid, 1996). The questions convey their priorities and point people in the right
direction. When principals engage faculty in substantive dialogue on key questions such
as those listed below, they develop the capacity of the staff to function as a learning
community.

Do we have a shared vision of the school we are trying to create?
2






What commitments must each of us demonstrate for our vision to be realized?
What goals should we establish this year to move closer to the school we desire?
Are we clear on what students should know and be able to do as a result of each
grade level, course, unit of instruction?
What strategies are in place for responding to students who are having difficulty
in achieving the intended learning?
Have we clarified the criteria we will use in assessing student work?
How will we know if we are becoming more effective as a school? What evidence
is important to us?
4. Provide staff with the training, information, and parameters they need to make
good decisions. There is no reason to believe that simply involving teachers in decision
making and providing high levels of teacher autonomy will improve a school.
Uninformed people do not make good decisions. Principals must provide staff with
relevant background information and research findings. They must ensure that teachers
receive the training and support to master the skills that will make them more effective in
achieving the school’s goals. They must develop monitoring procedures that supply
teacher teams with the data, information, and feedback that enable them to make
necessary course corrections and improvements. In short, they must recognize that they
must function as staff developers.
Conclusion
Principals must do more than encourage teacher autonomy and then hope for the best.
Effective principals recognize that they do not empower others by disempowering
themselves. Empowered teachers and strong principals are not mutually exclusive; the
learning community must have both.
QUESTIONS TO PONDER:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
What do you (would you) model?
What do you (would you) monitor?
What questions do you (would you) ask?
What are you (would you be) willing to confront?
How do you (would you) allocate resources?
How do you (would you) create time for team meetings?’
What do you (would you) celebrate and why?
3