Session Information
26 SES 02 B, Distributed Leadership
Papper session
Contribution
With this paper we empirically address the relationship between school leadership and student achievement. We particularly explore the impact of distributed leadership on student achievement and school quality. The empirical basis of the paper is a longitudinal survey (N=114) with principals and department heads from two German states and performance data from state-wide standardized proficiency tests. The information on school-based quality assurance measures (process variables) from the questionnaires is combined with the achievement data (outcome variables). We conduct simple statistics and path analyses to examine the relationship between school leadership activities and student achievement, and to further explore possible effects.
Due to poor results for German schools in the PISA 2000 cycle, questions of accountability and evaluation led to a test-based school reform in Germany. This paradigm shift towards a new form of accountability includes the implementation of national educational standards and mandatory state-wide standardized proficiency tests in grades 3 and 8 (so called Vergleichsarbeiten or short VERA) in order to assure quality at different levels. Schools are expected to improve or stabilize their performance in the tested subjects (KMK, 2010). In contrast to e.g. the United States, where external tests have been in use for the public monitoring of schools for decades, there are no rigorous consequences for German schools when achieving poor test results (low-stakes testing).
The paper refers to research on school leadership efficiency,as the relationship between student achievement and school leadership and, particularly, on the distributed leadershipconcept. From this perspective school leadership responsibility is conceptualized according to the organizational responsibility of a school and their teaching staff. The implementation of VERA as a low-stakes test has been investigated by a numberof studies (e. g. Diemer & Kuper, 2011). There is still a lack of research on the differentiated processes of data use by principals in Germany. However, model assumptions regarding the effects of data-based school development also emphasize the importance of school leadership (Visscher & Coe, 2003; Schildkamp & Kuiper, 2010). The question of how principals use test-based information is closely linked to the assumption that there is an indirect effect of leadership on the proficiency development of students and school quality (e.g. Scheerens, 2012). The presumption of an indirect leadership effect is also supported in the current distributed leadership concept (i.e. Gronn, 2002; Harris, 2004; Spillane et al., 2001). The concept describes mechanisms of shared decision-making in schools as professional organizations and the implementation of responsibility in the organizational and personnel structure of the individual school. Hence, school leadership research should no longer focus on the principal as an individual but on the organization-oriented actions within the school (i.e. school leadership). Even though the efficiency of the widely discussed concept of distributed leadership is not sufficiently clarified so far, initial studies indicate a positive impact of this leadership approach on student achievement (see for an overview Huber, 2008; Bonsen, 2010) and organizational outcomes and development (Harris, 2008, p.172; 183). Within the specific context of standard-based proficiency tests the distributed leadership approach provides evidence for productive practices of principals in processing the test results. Moreover, school leadership is expected to have an indirect effect on school quality development (e.g. student achievement) by initiating and coordinating measures as well as delegating tasks and responsibilitiesto other school protagonists (i.a. Harris, 2004). Therefore, it can be seen as a deciding factor of school success.
Two research questions are of particular relevance:
1) Does distributed leadership in schools have an impact on student achievement?
2) Do activities initiated by school leadership correspond with activities realized among teaching staff with leadership function (i.e. department head)?
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Bonsen, M. (2010): Schulleitungshandeln. In: Altrichter, H. & Maag Merki, K.: Handbuch Neue Steuerung im Schulsystem. Wiesbaden: VS-Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 277-294. Diemer, T.& Kuper, H. (2011): Formen innerschulischer Steuerung mittels zentraler Lernstandserhebungen. In: Zeitschrift für Pädagogik, 56 (4),554-571. Gronn, P. (2002): Distributed leadership. In: Leithwood, K. & Hallinger, P. (Eds.): Second international handbook of educational leadership and administration. The Netherlands: Kluwer, 653-696. Hairon, S.& Goh, J. W. (2014): Pursuing the Elusive Construct of Distributed Leadership: Is the Search Over? Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 1–26. Harris, A. (2004): Distributed Leadership and School Improvement. Leading or Misleading? Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 32 (1), 11-24. Harris, A. (2008). Distributed leadership: according to the evidence. Journal of Educational Administration, Vol. 46, (2), 172-188. Helmke, A. (2004): Von der Evaluation zur Innovation: Pädagogische Nutzbarmachung von Vergleichsarbeiten in der Grundschule. Seminar, Vol. 10, (2), 90-112. Huber, S. G. (2008): Steuerungshandeln schulischer Führungskräfte aus Sicht der Schulleitungsforschung. In: Roman L. (Hrsg.): ,Warum tun die das?’ Governanceanalysen zum Steuerungshandeln in der Schulentwicklung. Wiesbaden: VS-Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 95-126. Kultusministerkonferenz KMK (2010): Konzeption der Kultusministerkonferenz zur Nutzung der Bildungsstandards für die Unterrichtsentwicklung. Beschluss der Kultusministerkonferenz vom 10.12.2009. Köln: Wolters Kluwer. Rosseel, Y. (2012): lavaan: An R Package for Structural Equation Modeling. Journal of Statistical Software, 48(2), 1-36. URL: http://www.jstatsoft.org/v48/i02/. Scheerens, J. (2012): School Leadership Effects Revisited. Review and Meta-Analysis of Empirical Studies. Heidelberg, London, New York: Springer. Schildkamp, K. & Kuiper, W. (2010): Data-informed curriculum reform: Which data, what purposes, and promoting and hindering factors. Teaching and Teacher Education, Vol. 26, (3), 482-496. Spillane, J. P., Halverson, R. & Diamond, J. B. (2001): Investigating School Leadership Practice: A Distributed Perspective. Educational Researcher, Vol. 30, (3), 23-28. Visscher, A. J. & Coe, R. (2003):School performance feedback systems: Conceptualisation, Analysis, and Reflection. School effectiveness and school improvement, Vol. 14, (3), 321-349.
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.