Leadership For Student

Learning

What It is and How It

Works
Ken Leithwood

School
leadership is
second only to
classroom
instruction as an
influence on
student learning.

THE EVIDENCE . . .
i.

Qualitative case studies of exceptional or turnaround

schools

very large effects on both school conditions and student learning

ii. Large scale quantitative studies of leadership effects on

student learning and on student engagement

5-7% variation across schools : total from all school sources is

12-20%

iii. Leadership succession studies

For reviews of this evidence, see, for

example.
Hallinger & Heck (1996)
Waters, Marzano & McNulty (2003)
Leithwood & Jantzi (2007)
Robinson, Lloyd & Rowe (2008)

Almost all successful

(school) leaders draw
on the same
repertoire of basic
leadership practices.

P = f (M, A, S)
P

= teachers performance

M = teachers motivation
A

= teachers abilities,

= work settings and

professional knowledge
and skills
features
of their school and
classroom

LEADERSHIP TASKS, FUNTIONS

OR PRACTICES

Setting
Directions
(Motivation)

Developing
People
(Ability)

Redesigning the
Organization
(Setting)

Improving the
Instructional Program
(attending to the
technical core)

Group
Goals

Vision

Setting
Directions

Expectations

Communication

Intellectual
Stimulation

Modeling

Developing
People

Individualized
Support

Families
and
Communities

Culture

Redesigning
the
Organization

Structures

Connections

Resource
Allocation

Staffing

Improving
the
Instructional
Program

Buffering

Monitoring

For more on this, see

Leithwood, K. & Riehl, C. (2005). What we already know

about successful school leadership.
In W. A. Firestone & C. Riehl (Eds.), A new agenda:
directions for research on educational leadership. New
York, NY: Teachers College Press.

It is the enactment of
the same basic
leadership practices
not the practices
themselves that is
responsive to the
context.

TURNAROUND SCHOOLS AS AN
ILLUSTRATION

For example, culture building, part of

Organizational Redesign
Stage 1: teacher isolation; no expectations for
collaboration among teachers
Stage 2: model and clarify expectations for collaborative
work by teachers
Stage 3: refresh, extend expectations; refine nature of
collaborative work to increase effects on quality of
instruction
and
from focused to distributed sources of leadership

For more on this, see.

Leithwood, K., Harris, A., & Strauss, T.

(2010). Leading School Turnaround.
San Francisco: Jossey Bass

School leaders
improve pupil
learning indirectly
through their
influence on four
paths

Four Paths of Leadership Influence on Student Learning

LSA
Initiative
s

Rational
Path (Academic press,
Disciplinary climate, TLCPs)

Emotions
Path (Efficacy,

School-wide
Experience

Trust)

Leadership
Practices

Student
Learning

Organizational
Path (Time, PLC)
Family
Path
(Expectations,
Reading

Classroom
Experience

For more on this, see

Leithwood, K., et al (2010). School leaders influence on
student learning: The four paths, In T. Bush, L, Bell and D.
Middlewood (Eds.),The principles of educational leadership
and management. London: Sage publishers
[Leithwood, K., Patten, S., Jantzi, D. (in press). Testing a
conception of how school leaders influence student learning,
Educational Administration Quarterly]

For more about how leadership

influences the emotional path, see.

Leithwood, K., Beatty, B. (2008). Leading

with teacher emotions in mind. Thousand
Oaks, CA: Corwin Press

School leadership has

a greater influence
on schools,
classrooms and
students when it is
distributed

RATING OF LEADERSHIP SOURCES BY QUINTILES

BASED ON STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT
Q1

Q2

Q3

5.5

4.5

3.5

Leadership Sources

Student

Par Adv

Ind Par

Ind Tea

Sch Team

Tea Role

Other S A

Principal

3
District

Ratings (Scale: 1 to 6)

Q4

Q5

RATING OF LEADERSHIP SOURCES BY QUINTILES

BASED ON STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT

Schools in the highest quintile attributed relatively high

levels of influence to all sources of leadership
Schools in the lowest quintile attributed relatively low
levels of influence to all sources of leadership
Highest quintile schools, as compared to the lowest,
differed most in ratings of teams, parents and students
Principals were rated as having highest influence in
schools in ALL quintiles

But only some

patterns of
leadership
distribution make a
positive contribution

Patterns of Distributed Leadership

Planful
Alignment

Spontaneous
Alignment

Planful
Misalignment

Anarchic
Misalignment

Planful Alignment
and
Academic Optimism
Optimism

M e a n O p tim is m -P e s s im is m S c o re

5.00

Pessimism

4.00

3.00

2.00

1.00

0.00
1 - Disagree
Strongly

6 - Agree
Strongly

We collectively plan who will provide leadership for each of our initiatives and how they will provide it.

For more on leadership distribution,

see

Leithwood, K., Mascall, B., Strauss, T.

(Eds.) (2009). Distributed leadership
according to the evidence. New York, NY:
Routledge.

A final observation.

Districts make a big difference to a schools improvement

efforts
The instructional leadership role of district leaders
The importance of building collective school leader
efficacy
for more on this see.

Louis, K., Leithwood, K., Wahlstrom, K., Anderson, S.

(2010). Learning from leadership: Investigating the links
to improved student learning. New York: Final report of
research to the Wallace Foundation.