Jeff Burgess
 Reflective Paper
EAD 6003 Foundations of 
Educational Administration
Instructor Dr. Ron McIntire
July 16, 2002

Foundations of Educational Administration

Educational leadership should have instructional improvement as its primary goal.  An effective educational leader should promote the success of all students by displaying knowledge, dispositions, and performances in the following six areas: vision, growth and change, organization and management, community involvement and public relations, moral and ethical behavior, and democratic values (ISLLC Standards I -VI).
Vision
The educational leader should promote the success of all students through the vision of learning that develops in a school community (ISLLC Standard I).   The most distinguishing characteristics of the most successful organizations include core values, enduring purpose, and vision.  Visions should reinforce core ideologies and values.   Organizations build trust, develop, and align them toward a common vision.  Successful leadership involves communication that begins with using effective listening skills to understand what others are saying, and taking time to contemplate before offering suggestions.   After considering all facts and positions, ideas should be presented clearly, specifically, visually, and within context.  Get people involved in the problem, immersing them, so that they feel it is their problem, and they will want to be part of the solution.  Vision involves communication, learning, risk-taking, experimentation, accountability, and opportunity to shape the future.
Learning, Growth, and Change
 Efforts of the educational leader should ensure that the culture of the school facilitates student learning and staff professional growth (ISLLC Standard II).  A learning community is personalized, flexible, coherent, connected, diverse, intergenerational, collaborative, inquisitive, and resolved to finding solutions.  
New directions in school reform include innovative programs.  Accelerated Schools is an approach that emphasizes unity of purpose, empowerment and responsibility, and building on the strengths of the entire community (ISLLC IV).  The essential skills program encourages students to display mastery with a curriculum focusing on fewer subjects, topics, and skills, but with deeper meaning and understanding.  Project Zero, founded by Howard Gardner, is a diverse group of research programs with the goal of “development of new approaches to help individuals, groups, and institutions learn to the best of their capacities.”  One of the Project Zero programs is Teaching for Understanding, a five-year research program designed to develop and test a pedagogy of understanding, while highlighting the teaching concepts of generative topics, understanding goals, and ongoing assessment.  
Howard Gardner also proposed the theory of Multiple Intelligences, which challenges traditional school curriculum with the idea that intelligence is composed of multiple forms and can be altered through instruction.  The eight categories of intelligence recognized by Gardner are linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalistic. 
Another new conception for learning that emerged in the 1980’s is Constructivism, an approach to learning that departs from the behaviorist theory.  Constructivists propose that students learn best when they are allowed to construct knowledge by exploration and active learning.  Other innovative teaching and learning approaches include apprenticeship learning, cooperative learning, and problem-based learning.  
Organization and Management
The school environment must be a safe, efficient, and effective operation environment and organization (ISLLC Standard III).  Effective school qualities include teaching for learning, high expectations for measurable results, accountability, collaboration, staff empowerment, utilization of research and best practice, use and application of technology, establishment of high standards, availability of resources, and continuous improvement of curriculum.  At the heart of school improvement is the principal.  
Douglas McGregor developed two contradictory views of human behavior to illustrate that an administrator’s style is closely related to fundamental beliefs about human beings.  The autocratic style of leadership is based on assumptions in which leaders announce decisions, sell decisions, and invite questions about expectations for others.   The democratic style is a collaborative form in which leaders delegate authority and responsibility and allow subordinates to operate within defined limits.  Behavior of subordinates may be influenced by leadership style in a way that actually supports that style, becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Community Involvement and Public Relations
  The leader must meet the educational needs and interests of the community through collaboration and mobilization of resources (ISLLC Standard IV).  Effective leaders focus on important goals, encourage hard work, inspire excellences, and recognize the efforts and contributions of others.  Outstanding support is necessary for developing programs of school, family, community partnerships.  Such programs should be comprehensive, theory driven, and research based.  Major types of involvement include assisting families with parenting and family skills, child and adolescent development education, and suggesting home conditions that support learning.  Families need to be informed of school programs and student progress in varied, clear, and productive methods.   Two-way communication channels are necessary to allow the families to access teachers, administrators, counselors, and other families.  Recruitment, training, activities, and schedules are necessary for volunteers who assist and support the students and schools.  Academic learning at home activities should be designed to enable students to share and discuss interesting work and ideas with families.  Families may be included in decision making through school council, improvement teams, committees, and parent organizations.  Community resources and services for families, students, and the school can be acquired from businesses, agencies, cultural and civic organizations, colleges and universities, and other community groups.  
Ethical and Moral Behavior
 The ideal educational leader will conduct all actions in an ethical manner, displaying honesty, integrity, and fairness (ISLLC Standard V).  Developing skills to function as an ethical school leader may include many approaches.  A variety of perspectives may be analyzed, including feminism, postmodernism, liberation theology, and critical theory.  Personal essays or educational platforms can be used to describe ethical principles that students subscribe to.  Ethical codes of conduct from different organizations can be compared and contrasted.  Ethical dilemmas rooted in particular contextual variables, such as case studies, can provide valuable insight.   	Dilemmas may be examined from consequentialist and nonconsequentialist perspectives. 
Democratic Values
The educational leader will promote the values of democracy by interacting with the political, social, economical, legal, and cultural context of our society (ISLLC Standard IV).  Young people need to develop and internalize values necessary for the continuation and enrichment of our society.  The program Partnership Initiative in Education and Civil Society encourages student to explore character development and participation in a civil society.  People must have and practice good character for democracy to work.  Character is shaped by family, friends, schools, and experiences.  Character education is about integrated development, and teaches basic human values such as honesty, kindness, generosity, courage, and respect.  
Conclusion
The approach to educational leadership should be eclectic.  The ideal educational leader should facilitate teacher professional development and growth, and move the teacher toward autonomous decision-making.  Many participants may contribute to the process of leading the school.  Participants should be engaged in reflective inquiry leading to professional growth and renewal.  Effective leadership recognizes teacher and student diversity.  The leader must be able to maintain positive long-term interpersonal relationships.  Various functions of the successful school leader are integrated into a whole.  The successful educational leader brings together a faculty of knowledgeable professionals that work for the benefit of all students.  

References

Council of Chief State School Officers.  (1996).  Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium standards for school leaders.  Washington, DC: Author.  Available: www.ccsso.org/pdfs/isllcstd.pdf

Cunningham, W., Cordeiro, P.  (2000). Educational administration: A problem-based approach.  Boston: Allyn and Bacon

 Harvard Graduate School of Education (2000). Project Zero.  Cambridge, MA: President and Fellows of Harvard College. http://pzweb.harvard.edu  -  retrieved 07/15/2002