Learning, the Heart of It All: Technical, Adaptive, and Mixed School Leadership Challenges

• In Event: Developing School Principals: Adult Learning and Development

Abstract

In this new qualitative phase of our study of school leadership practice, we interviewed principals, assistant principals, and district leaders to learn what they name as their most pressing challenges, how they manage and learn from them, and what learning experiences (preparation and/or on-the-job) help to address them. Challenges viewed as their greatest, e.g. preparing people for change and acclimating to new accountabilities, were invariably composed of adaptive, technical and/or mixed elements (Heifetz). Leaders often responded by fostering professional growth as part of solutions and underscored the importance of experience and learning in confronting challenges. School leadership entails being mindful of student and adult learning and development, as well as personal learning, obliging our leaders to adopt a learning stance.

Authors

• Eleanor E. Drago-Severson, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Patricia Maslin-Ostrowski, Florida Atlantic University