The Prominence of Teacher Evaluation in Principals' Priorities and Instructional Leadership

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 14
  In Roundtable Session: Examining Approaches to Leadership Development and Coaching

Abstract

Instructional leadership has become the dominant paradigm in principal preparation, professional development, and evaluation. In the past decade, teacher evaluation has risen in prominence and reshaped the principal’s role. Using interview data from 96 principals in 23 districts across three states, we found that teacher evaluation dominated principals’ descriptions of their main priorities. In all, 90% of principals in our sample named teacher evaluation as one of their top priorities and 40% linked teacher evaluation explicitly with instructional leadership yet only one-quarter reported implementing teacher evaluation robustly. Thus, teacher evaluation was central to principals’ conceptions of instructional leadership and their work in general, but it remained a task to complete rather than a key lever to improve instruction.

Authors

• Morgaen L. Donaldson, University of Connecticut - Storrs

• Madeline Mavrogordato, Michigan State University

• Peter A. Youngs, University of Virginia

• Shaun Michael Dougherty, Vanderbilt University