The Study
This study by Professor Helen Marks of Ohio State University and Susan Printy, assistant professor in the Department of Educational Administration, focuses on school leadership relations between principals and teachers and examines the potential of their active collaboration to enhance the quality of teaching and student performance.

Findings
The authors point out that early conceptions of instructional leadership focused on the principal’s role in managing school processes and procedures related to instruction and supervision. However, school reform demanded that the principal become an agent of change and the managerial role of instructional leader lost its centrality. Transformational leadership emerged, which emphasized the ingredients of change-ideas, innovation, influence, and consideration for the individual in the process. However, transformational leadership lacked a focus on curriculum and instruction. Under shared instructional leadership, leadership for instruction emerges from both the principal and the teachers. Under this model, the principal collaborates with teachers to accomplish organizational goals for teaching and learning. In their study, Marks and Printy sought to understand the relationship of transformational and shared instructional leadership to the pedagogical practices of teachers and to student performance on measures of achievement. Using data from a sample of 24 nationally selected restructured schools—8 elementary, 8 middle, and 8 high schools—the researchers found that transformational leadership is a necessary but insufficient condition for instructional leadership. When transformational and shared instructional leadership coexist in an integrated form of leadership, the influence on school performance, measured by the quality of its pedagogy and achievement of its students, is substantial. “The study demonstrates the effectiveness of integrated leadership--both transformational and instructional—in eliciting the instructional leadership of teachers for improving school performance. When the principal brings forth high levels of commitment and professionalism from teachers and works interactively with teachers in a shared instructional leadership capacity, schools have the benefit of integrated leadership; they are organizations that learn and perform at high levels.”

What It Means To You
What kind of leadership do principals in your district use? Transformational? Shared instructional? Might an integrated approach make for more powerful and effective leadership?

For More Information
Marks, H.M. & Printy, S.M. (2003). Principal leadership and school performance: An integration of transformational and instructional leadership. Educational Administration Quarterly, (39)3, 370-397.

< back to 2005 ed-research reports