School Leader Appraisal — A Tool to Strengthen School Leaders' Pedagogical Leadership and Skills for Teacher Management?

Abstract

With increasing school autonomy, often coupled with greater accountability requirements, school leaders are increasingly responsible for new human resource management tasks. Policies to improve the teaching workforce, therefore, cannot do without policies to improve the school leadership profession. Teachers' effectiveness depends, among others, on effective school leaders who shape teachers' working environment and influence their motivations. Furthermore, as recent research indicates, school leaders are the second most important school‐level factor affecting, even if mainly indirectly through their influence on teachers, student learning after classroom instruction. Considering the role school leaders play for the effective school‐level management of teachers and for teaching and learning through their pedagogical leadership, it is essential that school leaders are adequately prepared and supported for their role. As part of their school reform programmes, more and more countries have been introducing a range of evaluation and assessment policies to improve school, school leadership and teaching practices. The individual appraisal of schools leaders and teachers is a key component of evaluation and assessment policies. This article explores if, and how, individual school leader appraisal can develop school leaders' pedagogical leadership, a key element of which is teacher management. It analyses the policy approaches of several European countries and the extent to which formal frameworks in these countries focus on developing pedagogical leadership. The article concludes with ideas for policy to strengthen appraisal as a tool to improve school leaders' practices and behaviours and their competencies for pedagogical leadership and teacher management.

Making Sense of Georgia School Leader Evaluation: Climate, Engagement and the District Office

“…Measuring the effectiveness of educational leaders has gained a tremendous amount of attention from researchers and practitioners (Halverson et al, 2014;Hornung & Yoder, 2014). Until a decade ago, a limited number of measures were able to conduct an equitable evaluation of a leader's effectiveness (Radinger, 2014). Measuring leaders' ability to impact school climate, staff perception, motivation and eventually student achievement is essential for continuous quality improvement (Stronge, 2013;Stronge et al, 2008).…”

“…Because of federal accountability requirements such as NCLB, RT3, and ESSA, evaluation of school leaders' effectiveness has gained tremendous attention from educational researchers and policy makers (Bethman, 2015;Condon, 2010;Dechert, Kappler, & Nordin, 2015). However, assessing school leader effectiveness is a complex process due to the multidimensional nature of the job responsibilities (Clifford, 2015;Radinger, 2014;Stronge et al, 2008). A wide variety of leader effectiveness assessment methods are currently used, including self-evaluation, rating checklists, client-centered feedback, and peer supervision (Anderson, 1991, Condon, 2010Lashway, 2003).…”

“…This study is significant because school leaders' behavior influences staffs' perception of leadership as well as their perception of the workplace (Baptiste, 2019;Thompson, 2016). In some states, teachers' and supervisors' perceptions are used in school leader performance evaluation (Radinger, 2014;Saw & Newton, 2014;Stearns, 2012;Wagner & Harter, 2006). In order to improve leader effectiveness, it is important to understand how the supervisor's perception of a school leader equates to that of the teachers' perception.…”

Workplace conditions for successful teacher professional development: School principals’ beliefs and practices

“…Research on school principals' practices is limited (Harris & DeFlaminis, 2016;Radinger, 2014). This study provided insight into principals' specific leadership practices in order to achieve the conditions for successful TPD.…”

Composition of the OECD Review Team

“…Individual appraisal constitutes a tool to set clear expectations and to hold principals accountable for their performance (OECD, 2013b;Radinger, 2014). The Danish Ministry for Children, Education and Gender Equality could consider providing further support and materials for municipalities on how to organise school leader appraisal effectively that does not add to school leaders' workload and stress levels, but that is a meaningful exercise.…”