Instructional Leadership and Novice Teachers' Instructional Quality: How Principals' Behaviors Are Associated With Classroom Instruction

• In Event: Preservice Courses, Student Teaching Experiences, and Beginning Teacher Outcomes

Abstract

Objective. Principals play a key role in organizing and coordinating the instruction that occurs in schools. Some research has shown relationships between principal behaviors and student achievement (e.g., Andrews & Soder, 1987; Hallinger, 2008; Horng, Klasik, & Loeb, 2010; Supovitz, Sirinides, & May, 2010). However, this research mainly fails to consider the intermediary role between the principal and student achievement, the instruction that students experience. This paper explores the relationship between principal-reported instructional leadership activities and teachers’ instructional practices as measured by the Protocol for Language Arts Teaching Observations (PLATO: Grossman, Loeb, Cohen, & Wyckoff, 2013) classroom observation protocol.
Perspective. This paper considers how a leader’s actions in terms of shared instructional leadership practices may influence teacher instructional practices. Hallinger (2003) conceptualizes instructional leadership as encompassing three dimensions with ten leadership functions. The first dimension centers around defining the school’s mission with the subparts of framing these goals and communicating them to staff. The second dimension, managing the instructional program, centers around principal actions of supervising instruction, coordinating curriculum, and monitoring student progress. Lastly, the third dimension, promoting a positive learning climate, focuses on leadership functions of protecting instructional time, promoting professional development, providing incentives for teachers, and providing incentives for learning (p. 332). Marks and Printy (2003) build on this conceptualization of instructional leadership and introduce the notion of “shared instructional leadership” in which teachers also assume some of the leadership responsibility in encouraging high-quality teaching in their peers.
Data Sources and Methods. As a part of a larger study, from 2016-2017 to 2018-2019, 80 teachers from five universities participated in classroom observations of their mathematics and/or English language arts (ELA) instruction during their first two years of teaching. These observations were each scored according to the PLATO observation protocol to measure the quality of instruction in mathematics and ELA. Additionally, the novice teachers’ principals were invited to take part in a survey addressing their beliefs about math/ELA instruction, their instructional leadership behaviors, and their backgrounds.
I used multiple regression to study the relationship between principals’ shared instructional leadership practices and novices’ teachers’ instructional quality in the four PLATO domains: instructional strategies, disciplinary demand, representations of content, and classroom environment.
Results. Findings indicate a relationship between principal shared instructional leadership practices and beginning teachers’ quality of instruction in mathematics and ELA. Specifically, I find significant relationships associated with the principals’ actions related to developing instructional expectations, coordinating the curriculum, and supervising instruction. Interestingly, these relationships are positive in relation to teachers’ ELA instruction and negatively related to teachers’ quality of mathematics instruction.
Scholarly Significance. While recent research has pointed to important relationships between principal actions and student achievement (e.g., Supovitz, Sirinides & May, 2010), it fails to address the teacher’s role in this relationship. This study fills this important gap regarding how principals’ behaviors and expectations impact beginning teachers’ instructional quality as understood by the PLATO protocol. Additionally, this study offers an analysis of how principals’ actions may have different relationships with instruction across content areas.

Author

• Kim Evert, Middle Tennessee State University