Promoting Principals' Managerial Involvement in Instructional Improvement

Abstract

Studies of school leadership suggest that visiting classrooms, emphasizing achievement and training, and supporting teachers are important indicators of the effectiveness of school principals. The utility of a behavior-analytic program to support the enhancement of these behaviors in 2 school principals and the impact of their involvement upon teachers' and students' performances in three classes were examined in two experiments, one at an elementary school and another at a secondary school. Treatment conditions consisted of helping the principal or teacher to schedule his or her time and to use goal setting, feedback, and praise. A withdrawal design (Experiment 1) and a multiple baseline across classrooms (Experiment 2) showed that the principal's and teacher's rates of praise, feedback, and goal setting increased during the intervention, and were associated with improvements in the academic performance of the students. In the future, school psychologists might analyze the impact of involving themselves in supporting the principal's involvement in improving students' and teachers' performances or in playing a similar leadership role themselves.

Principals’ and Teachers’ Perceptions of Efforts by Principals to Improve Teaching and Learning in Turkish Middle Schools

“…The concept of instructional leadership in these studies did not always imply the direct influence of principals on classrooms and teaching. For instance, Gillat and Sulzer-Azaroff (1994) supported principals' direct involvement in instructional improvement and student learning. They argued that when the principal acts more like a teacher by observing classrooms, setting goals with students, and giving feedback and praise to students, student achievement is more likely to increase.…”

Of Eagles and Worms

“…Years after that early classroom study, Alex Gillat, an experienced school administrator, and I (Gillat & Sulzer-Azaroff, 1994) recognized the necessity of reviewing the situation, to see where we might be able to get a bigger bang for the buck in schools. We reasoned that because school leaders control many tangible and intangible reinforcers in the form of supplies, assignments, schedules, performance evaluations, disciplinary support and so on, attention from administrators must be especially powerful for school personnel.…”

“…This readily permits automated data entry and analysis. Recently the manager of Quality Assurance told me that: In the education realm (Gillat & Sulzer-Azaroff, 1994), as mentioned earlier, our scrutiny of elementary and middle schools as organizations led Gillat to focus more heavily on the building principal than on the teachers or students directly. Figure 7 displays a model one could use to conduct that sort of examination.…”

A Cognitive-behavioural Measure of Student Goal Setting in a Tertiary Educational Context

“…However, although there have been some attempts to apply goal setting strategies in education (e.g. Wentzel, 1991;Gillat & Sulzer-Azaroff, 1994;Berry, 1996), no work has investigated the potential bene cial effects of goal setting in a university context. Related to this gap in the literature, very few researchers have attempted to de ne and measure goal setting.…”