0.2 Lindahl, r. (april 2011). school leadership structures in  (Page 5/7)

Teachers’ roles, and their relationships with their peers would need to undergo the most radical changes in most schools, and this would mean there would be considerable resistance to large-scale distributed leadership, or professional learning communities. Fitzgerald and Gunter (2008) questioned whether this is really exploitation of teachers for additional duties, hindering their primary role -- teaching. Alabama’s very powerful teacher organization, the Alabama Education Association, would likely resist major changes in teachers’ roles. Cultural norms among teachers such as privacy, egalitarianism, civility, and not taking time away from the classroom permeate schools (Murphy et al., 2009). Faculty are not generally open to inspection by their peers and modification of their teaching practices (Printy, 2008). Involving more people in decisions will require more time and will make it harder to achieve consensus (Landeau, Van Dorn,&Freely, 2009).

However, if these difficulties can be overcome, the distributed model of professional learning communities offers promise for improving student performance (Gregory&Kuznich, 2007; Rasberry, with Mahajan, 2008). Recognition of this is beginning in Alabama. A study of high performing schools serving low income populations (Schargel et al., 2007) concluded that principals in these schools, “Empower others to make significant decisions…nurture teacher involvement and engender teacher leadership,” and obtain “comprehensive input and involvement in the decision-making processes” (p. 8). In these schools, teachers listen to each other, are involved in making decisions, build collaboration, and support others in teaching and learning. In an unpublished study on high and low-performing elementary, middle, and junior high schools in Alabama, Lindahl found that the teachers in higher performing schools reported a significantly higher presence of the qualities of distributed leadership than did the teachers in lower performing schools. In their 2009 study of rural schools, Carter et al. studied high performing schools, most of which served low income populations. They found that family and team were often used to describe faculty relationships in those schools (p. 17).

Finally, the newly proposed Standards for Class AA Instructional Leader programs (State Superintendent of Education, Dr. Joseph Morton, personal correspondence, November 25, 2009) state that “A core principle of Class AA Instructional Leader programs will be the development of shared leadership practices with all who have a stake in improving student achievement, especially parents and teachers” ( Rationale section, para. 1). Whether this statement refers to shared leadership in its generic form or in the specific manner in which Spillane (2006) defined it remains to be seen. However, this principle does infer that at least some modification is needed to Alabama’s school governance approaches and structures.

Conclusions

Alabama’s public schools are in an early, experimental phase of questioning the traditional, hierarchical structure of school leadership. Preliminary efforts include provisions for shared leadership, in which selected teacher leaders are called upon to provide leadership for specific tasks. Other efforts are directed more at developing leadership capacity for distributed leadership, in which many, if not all, teachers in a school assume leadership roles in a fluid, emerging manner. It will take many years for most of these efforts to reach fruition, as the planning processes proceed to implementation and evaluation. These planning and implementation processes will be complicated by the traditional territoriality of the various organizations within the state that have vested interests in teacher leadership. For example, the powerful teacher organization, the Alabama Education Agency, will shape its political support and professional development offerings to its vision of how best to protect and serve teachers. The major administrator organization in the state, the Council for Leaders in Alabama Schools, will approach it from the principal and assistant principal perspective. The Alabama Department of Education and the various colleges and universities which prepare teachers, teacher leaders, and administrators, will each add their own perspectives. Historically, it has proven difficult to develop the collaboration necessary to have a single, unified vision and approach for initiatives of this importance and complexity. Careful evaluation will be needed to determine the extent to which either model, or both models, can be an effective complement to, or replacement for, the traditional structures. Even within the new models, the question must be answered, “Can both the shared and distributed models co-exist effectively? Should they?” Even after substantial evaluation, it will take many more years for the most successful of these efforts to truly become institutionalized, if at all. Although, conceptually, these efforts at restructuring school governance hold promise, one reason why the hierarchical model has endured so long is that it has proven relatively effective and efficient over an extended period of time. Without substantial evidence to the contrary, as yet not available, the traditional model may still prove to be the best choice. During this period of experimentation, Alabama’s school leadership structures will surely go “round and round.” It is far too early to even guess where they will “land.”