Abstract
Leadership development is much on the minds of reformers and policy makers who believe, with some justification, that effective leadership is a necessary component of almost any successful large-scale reform effort. We describe a major leadership development initiative in the province of Ontario, Canada (Leading Student Achievement), aimed at improving the quality of school leadership in order to at least indirectly improve student achievement. A summary of the results of a systematic, longitudinal, formative evaluation is used to argue that leadership development initiatives need to be carefully aligned with other features of the larger reform effort if they are to have significant consequences for students.
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Notes
- 1.
We use this term after Meindl (1995) who argues that leadership provides a simple explanation for organizational behavior which actually has multiple, complex causes.
- 2.
- 3.
A related series of such studies has been reported in Day and Leithwood (2007), for example.
- 4.
See Leithwood, Riedlinger, Bauer, and Jantzi (2003) for one of the very few exceptions.
- 5.
This is the Educational Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO).
- 6.
The call for an emphasis on these priorities was made at the annual LSA convention, supported by a paper written and delivered at the convention by the evaluator (Leithwood & Jantzi, 2007).
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Leithwood, K., Massey, L. (2010). Developing Leadership to Improve Student Outcomes. In: Davies, B., Brundrett, M. (eds) Developing Successful Leadership. Studies in Educational Leadership, vol 11. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9106-2_6
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