How to Reach High Performance - Literature review Example

How to Reach High Performance Name Institution How to Reach High Performance Introduction Leadership is very important in the educational context. This is because successful leaders have the capability to turn underperforming schools around to achieve performance (Leithwood, Harris & Strauss, 2013). They use different leadership approaches and strategies to improve the performance of students in schools. Successful leaders rely on core leadership theories and practices then apply these practices depending on the school context or growth phase. They discern the needs of the school so that they can adapt their leadership practices to achieve high performance. This leadership is recognized by many studies as a practice for effective educational performance. According to Jenkins (2011), leadership that has a strong focus on the success of the students is one of the main practices of high-performing educational institutions. The author asserts that high-performance is achieved when this leadership is combined with other practices such as coordination of student support services, innovative teaching, analysis of student progress, development of targeted programs, departmental collaboration and small class size. Leadership is therefore an important practice for achieving high performance. To appreciate the importance of leadership, it is important to determine the causes of poor performance in schools. Poor performance in an educational context can be attributed to a number of issues. Inappropriate leadership may cause poor performance in schools. On the other hand, poor performance may be caused by inefficient instruction, poor interpersonal relationships among students and teachers, ineffective organizational structures or isolated organizational cultures (Leithwood, Harris & Strauss, 2013). The causes of this underperformance can vary among schools. School leaders would need to establish an accurate diagnosis of these causes rather than depend on inaccurate causes because the wrong leadership strategy may be applied. This is because different leadership approaches and strategies apply to different underperformance causes. An accurate diagnosis of the performance problem in schools would help leaders to select the most appropriate leadership approaches to improve the schools’ performance with little harm or distraction to the students (Leithwood, Harris & Strauss, 2013). Successful leaders use differentiated leadership approaches to help turnaround educational situations so that students and underperforming schools can achieve high performance. The first step in the turnaround process would be to evaluate the status of the school’s internal conditions. This constant monitoring is important because it provides information on the internal conditions such as factors affecting student learning. According to Leithwood, Harris and Strauss (2013), schools can be in one of four conditions. These conditions are emotional, rational, organizational or family conditions. Emotional condition could refer to variables such as the emotional state of the teacher or the student whereas family condition could refer to variables in the family that influence student learning such as parental support, parental attitude or family educational history. Organizational conditions could refer to variables such as the culture in the school or the quality of teaching personnel. School leaders would need to identify these conditions and the variables therein to determine the selection of the most effective leadership approaches. This is because the conditions affect classroom experience and school-wide experience, which in turn affect student learning (Leithwood, Harris & Strauss, 2013). Once these conditions are identified, the school leader would find it easier to select the conditions that need urgent improvement and improve their status. School leaders also need to understand how the school conditions affect student learning. This understanding would help them to create conditions that improve this learning and to shift the school’s performance towards excellence. School leaders can create conditions to improve learning by building capacity and developing internal resources to maintain high performance (Leithwood, Harris & Strauss, 2013). These improvements can be made within each broad category identified as emotional, rational, family, and organizational. School leaders have the opportunity to apply different approaches in each category to improve and sustain performance depending on the school’s needs. Emotional Conditions and Leadership Practice School leaders play an important role in enhancing emotional conditions that influence student learning and school performance. However, there has been limited literature on the emotional dimension of leadership practice. This is because most leadership literature focuses on rational rather than emotional dimensions. The emotional dimension is important to leadership literature because emotions play a significant role in human perception, cognition and attention (Leithwood, Harris & Strauss, 2013). Emotions influence individual cognition and perception about a situation. In addition, emotion influences our memories and ability to pass judgment on different situations. Successful leaders understand the impact of emotions on individual relationships and cognition. They use emotions to create trust and establish positive relationships with their followers (Cameron, 2012). In an educational context, school leaders need to create emotional conditions to create strong positive relationships and trust among stakeholders. For instance, teachers use their emotions to influence student learning and enhance classroom practice. It is important that the school leader pays attention to the school’s emotional condition, such as the teachers’ emotions to ensure that the condition enhances student learning (Leithwood, Harris & Strauss, 2013). In addition, it is important that a school leader uses emotions to shift a school’s dysfunctional culture and create a belief among students that high performance can be achieved. For instance, the school leader is responsible for changing the school’s culture from lack of appreciation for students with learning disability to empathy for the students. This change occurs by educating teachers to be responsible for their emotions and the projection of these emotions to students in the classroom. School leaders can facilitate the process by setting challenging standards or benchmarks for the school’s emotional conditions, engaging in strategic planning and devoting their efforts to academic learning rather than classroom time. One practical approach is to use charismatic leadership style to create trust between teachers, parents, students, and colleagues. This trust is important because it ensures that the stakeholders support the goals and vision of the school (Leithwood et al., 2006). In addition, creating trust among stakeholders helps the teachers to work towards the achievement of these goals as well as to adopt qualities that enhance their trustworthiness to students and parents such as reliability, competence and transparency (Leithwood, Harris & Strauss, 2013). Parents and students then become aware of the teacher’s role and contributions to student learning, and are more willing to engage in activities that ensure high performance. Charismatic and transformational school leaders have the ability to create trust between the stakeholders because they possess emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is an important characteristic of school leaders because it reflects their level of thinking concerning reason and emotion (Goleman, Boyatzis & McKee, 2013). Neurobiological research describes emotional intelligence as the use of emotions as a source of information to influence thinking and the management of personal emotions and the emotions of others (Akerjordet & Severinsson, 2010). Emotional intelligence is more common in transformation leadership because this leadership is concerned with improving organizational function, enhancing staff self-efficacy, and improving job satisfaction. Emotionally intelligent school leaders would have the ability to influence emotional conditions of a school by stimulating creativity of the faculty, nurturing divergent thinking, encouraging personal initiative, showing respect for others and creating a safe environment that allows teachers to share their creative ideas without feeling threatened (Akerjordet, 2009). Such leaders would help schools to achieve high performance because they genuinely appreciate the contributions of other stakeholders, foster healthy climate for information sharing, participate in self-reflection and use introspective investigation to identify their personal strengths and weaknesses. This self-reflection and introspection promotes learning and knowledge in the school as well as innovation, which is needed for knowledge utilization in educational settings. School leaders also ensure high performance by exhibiting consistency in their leadership style and ethical integrity. This integrity is important because it increases their trustworthiness and credibility. The leaders achieve this integrity and consistent leadership through self-reflection, self-management, and utility of supervisory skills (Akerjordet & Severinsson, 2010). Self-reflection and self-awareness helps school leaders to become attuned to the feelings of the teachers, students, colleagues, and parents. Leaders that are attuned are more careful about what they say and how they say it, which then improves their ability to handle relationships, appreciate stressful situations, and establish healthy dialogue with stakeholders (Goleman, Boyatzis & McKee, 2013). School leaders can acquire this emotional intelligence and consistency through experience in leadership. Rational Condition and Leadership Practice Rational conditions refer to the regular functioning and organization of a school. These conditions are found in the school and the classroom. This category is concerned with aspects such as the school curriculum, learning, and teaching (instruction). This category is important because it helps school leaders to focus on technical issues such as the effectiveness of instruction and the problem-solving capacity of the teaching staff (Leithwood, Harris & Strauss, 2013). In addition, rational conditions help school leaders to prioritize the classroom and school environment with the aim of improving student learning. Successful school leaders understand that rational conditions influence the students’ learning. This is because variables such as access to immediate feedback from teachers help students to identify their strengths and correct their learning weaknesses. Other variables that help teachers and students to achieve high performance are the use of reciprocal teaching methods, application of classroom management practice, quality of teaching and positive teacher-student relationships (Leithwood, Harris & Strauss, 2013). School leaders can achieve high performance if they address the following issues in rational conditions: incentives, resources, and emotional dynamics. It is important that school leaders create incentives for teachers to utilize classroom management practices and teaching strategies (such as the reciprocal approach). Teaching staff may lack the motivation to adopt these practices due to number of reasons such as insufficient resources or large class size. School leaders could use transformational or charismatic leadership style to motivate teaching staff to adopt effective technical or rational conditions (Leithwood, Day, Sammons, Harris & Hopkins, 2006). These incentives would aim to improve the commitment of the teaching staff to the goals of the school and ensure that each stakeholder understands and works towards the unified goals. In addition, school leaders should motivate teaching staff to collaborate with their colleagues to ensure that they work in unison to achieve the goals of the school. Secondly, school leaders need to address resource and capacity limitations. Studies show that lack of resources hinder schools from achieving and sustaining their high-performance level (Leithwood, Harris & Strauss, 2013). The leaders can address this challenge by seeking external funding and support from the community. These additional resources and capabilities would help the schools to implement high-performance practices such as student support services, innovation in teaching, analysis of student progress and design of targeted programs (Jenkins, 2011). Once these capabilities are achieved, school leaders would find it easier to turnaround their school performance and move to higher performance levels. Lastly, school leaders should consider the emotional dynamics of the school. This is because emotional dynamics can influence the school’s ability to increase performance or to remain as an underperforming institution (Leithwood, Harris & Strauss, 2013). As discussed in the emotional conditions section, emotional dynamics affect the relations between teachers, students and parents. Successful school leaders would seek to enhance these dynamics by engendering trust among the stakeholders. This trust is achieved by providing individualized support to staff members, showing concern for the feelings of teaching staff, valuing different opinions, supporting professional development of the staff and creating an open-door policy for teachers, students, and parents. In addition, school leaders would need to encourage networking among teachers so that they can learn and share experiences, create collaborative structures for the teaching staff, and provide appropriate teaching and learning models that are consistent with the values and goals of the institution (Leithwood, Harris & Strauss, 2013). It is important to build trust when redesigning the organization to achieve technical conditions. This trust helps parents and teachers to understand the need for the organizational redesign. It also buffers teaching staff from parents or school administrators that make unreasonable performance demands. Once school leaders create an environment of trust, they are better able to manage their instructional programs and reconcile rational conditions with the needs of their schools. Organizational Conditions and Leadership Practice These conditions refer to the attributes that influence and sustain the performance of the school. These attributes or variables include the organizational structure, standard operating procedures, school policies and the organizational culture. They also refer to the school infrastructure such as the electrical and water system. School leaders should consider these attributes because they contribute to the turnaround of underperforming schools and the sustaining of high-level performance. These attributes are also important because they affect the working conditions of teachers, which then affect their emotions and working practices (Leithwood, Harris & Strauss, 2013). Despite the importance of these attributes to the high-level performance of the institution, most school leaders do not pay attention to organizational conditions until a malfunction occurs. This is because most schools presume that the infrastructure and the collective memory (procedures and practices) of the school do not need revision or enhancements throughout the school’s existence. At a minimum, school leaders should ensure that the infrastructure of a school does not hinder students and teachers from utilizing the institution’s capabilities (Day et al., 2009). Similarly, the school culture should not be a hindrance to teaching or student learning. When the culture is not optimum, there is a higher risk of underperformance and possibility of decline. School leaders have a responsibility to ensure that their infrastructure enhances the capabilities of the teaching staff and make the instructional process more productive. This ensures that organizational conditions work for the school’s efforts towards performance improvement and create a positive culture that emphasizes high performance rather than underperformance (Leithwood, Harris & Strauss, 2013). Secondly, school leaders can achieve high performance by using positive leadership that promotes a culture that supports learning and development. Learning in the school starts at the individual level (Cameron, 2012). School leaders would need to develop a culture that collects the experiences of individual learning experiences and allows students to share what they learn in the classroom (Day et al., 2009). This sharing and collaborative culture would influence the behavior of individual students because it would reinforce positive behavioral aspects. In addition, collaboration would teach students to create networks and work together to achieve personal academic goals and the goals of the institution (Murphy, Goldring, Cravens, Elliott, & Porter, 2011). Sharing and collaboration between teachers and students would also foster a positive learning environment because students would be free to approach teachers for assistance while teachers would be free to provide timely feedback to students. School leaders can achieve this collaborative culture through knowledge creation and support for professional dialogue. Professional dialogue would help the leaders understand how structural changes to their institution affect instructional practice and learning (Leithwood, Harris & Strauss, 2013). Dialogue with students would help the leaders to understand how students allocate their time in school and how school structures such as curriculum and timetables affect learning. This knowledge is important because it would reveal the influence of structures (such as administrative behavior, schedules, and timetables) on the engagement of students in the classroom and the ultimate school performance (Murphy, Goldring, Cravens, Elliott & Porter, 2011). This knowledge would also reveal distractions that affect learning such as inconsistent schedules and unprofessional administrative behaviors (such as tardiness). School leaders need to understand that organizational conditions such as structures and culture can influence the performance of their institutions. Successful leaders would ensure that the day-to-day functions of the school align with its goals and focus the efforts of all stakeholders towards learning and high performance (Leithwood, Harris & Strauss, 2013). For instance, school leaders can achieve high performance by optimizing the time set aside for instruction and assigning greater priority to academic work (such as projects and group assignments) rather than focusing on less important aspects such as the color of the classroom walls or size of the school logo. These leaders can achieve success by promoting academic research and creating a disciplinary climate that rewards high-performers but reprimands intentional non-performers (Deslandes, 2009). Concerning culture, successful school leaders achieve high performance because they empower stakeholders and support collaboration and participation of parents, teaching staff and the students. This interaction is important because it provides the foundation for sharing ideas and developing different forms of leadership among students and teaching staff (Deslandes, 2009). Similarly, collaboration among different teaching staff is an important part of the organizational culture. The school leader would need to redistribute power by shifting the institution from hierarchical to peer from of control (Leithwood et al., 2006). The shift to peer organizational model would diffuse the power base and disperse authority among the teaching staff (Leithwood, Harris & Strauss, 2013). In addition to shifting authority and control to the teaching staff, it is important that school leaders explain the shared goals for implementing collaborative practice. The leaders would also need to set aside resources and time to implement cultural and structural changes to the institution. The resources would also be used to reduce structural barriers that hinder teachers from collaborating in a meaningful manner such as schedule conflict. The task of school leaders in improving organizational conditions is to restructure and to redesign the school culture, infrastructure, and structures that support collaboration and positive interpersonal relationships among parents, teachers, leadership and students (Leithwood et al., 2006; Leithwood, Harris & Strauss, 2013). This task is based on the understanding that organizational conditions can influence the performance of schools. Family Conditions and Leadership Practice Family conditions have also been associated with student performance. Studies posit that the academic achievement of a child is influenced by the work habit of the family, guidance provided by parents and support given to the child to stimulate thinking and learning (Deslandes, 2009; Leithwood, Harris & Strauss, 2013). In addition, the child’s academic achievement is influenced by other factors such as the physical home environment, nutrition, and health conditions. These factors affect the student’s academic performance because they make the home environment more conducive or less conducive for learning. For instance, students that lack parental support and assistance when completing their homework may find it difficult to achieve high performance because learning is not conducive at home. Similarly, a child copies the work habits of the family, which implies that lazy work habits would dissuade the child from putting effort in schoolwork. Conversely, families with strong work ethic and academic support would have higher performing children because they create a home environment that is conducive for learning. The involvement of parents is very important in the learning process. Studies posit that parental engagement is a critical improvement factor that school leaders can use to achieve high performance. However, this engagement cannot be achieved without the commitment, effort and the time of the parents and the schools (Jenkins, 2011). Both stakeholders have to be committed to participating in the learning process and collaborating to ensure that the needs of the child are met (Deslandes, 2009). In addition, the engagement of the parent cannot be fully achieved if the parent does not understand the importance of his contribution to the learning process (Leithwood, Harris & Strauss, 2013). School leaders would therefore have to reinforce the active participation of the parents in learning and constantly work towards enhancing the involvement of the parents. They can reinforce this behavior by prioritizing activities that promote parental involvement, supporting parents that engage in their children’s learning, using clear forms of communication to interact with the interested parents, training staff members to work with parents, and using modern technologies to support parental involvement (Leithwood, Harris & Strauss, 2013). Successful leaders understand the link between family conditions and academic performance. They appreciate the impact of parental support on the child’s learning at home. In addition, school leaders appreciate the impact that the parent’s engagement would have on the performance of their children. This is because parental engagement encourages responsibility, equips the parent with the skills to contribute to school goals, and helps the parent to monitor the child’s learning progress (Leithwood, Harris & Strauss, 2013). School leaders also need to create positive relationships between the school and the parents/community (Deslandes, 2009). They can utilize different leadership practices to develop these relationships. These leadership practices include making personal invitations to parents to participate in learning activities, aligning the parent’s skills with the activities that they are called to participate, providing specific feedback to the parent about the child’s progress and providing opportunities for the parents to interact with other parents and support the development of their children. The school leaders may adopt other leadership practices such as integrating parental support in the classroom activities, communicating with parents about opportunities for participation, teaching parents to support learning at home, and establishing community liaisons that link the school and the parents so that the parent-teacher capacity can be maintained (Leithwood, Harris & Strauss, 2013). These leadership practices would encourage parental involvement in the instruction and learning process as well as help parents to align their efforts to the goals of the schools and the teachers. Although school leaders can achieve high performance by encouraging parental engagement, they need to appreciate the factors that may hinder this participation. Factors such as poverty, cultural differences, unemployment, linguistic differences, and unstable housing could prevent some parents from participating in the learning and instruction of their children (Jenkins, 2011; Leithwood, Harris & Strauss, 2013). These parents may also lack the resources to participate in parental support activities that may require significant resources. Parents could also lack the skills to engage with their children and the teachers to help the schools to achieve and maintain high performance. It is therefore important that the school leaders encourage parents from different backgrounds to engage in parental support activities (Deslandes, 2009). The leaders should ensure that some of these activities are free so that parents with few resources can participate in the education of their children. In addition, school leaders should ensure that they provide parental skill training programs. These programs would train parents on the importance of parental participation and equip them with the skills to interact with other parents and teachers to achieve the goals of the schools. The training is also important because it would help parents to understand that they are important and are a crucial role in the learning process (Leithwood, Harris & Strauss, 2013). Conclusion School leaders need to demonstrate adequate leadership skills to share their vision for high performance with the teaching staff, parents, and students. It is important that they develop a shared vision to motivate the stakeholders to work together and achieve the performance goals based on the needs of the organization. The school leaders need to demonstrate visionary leadership because their actions are symbolic values of the school’s goals. Their actions need to focus on improving the conditions of the school to support the achievement and maintenance of high-performance. The school leaders need to pay attention to the emotional, rational, organizational, and family conditions because these conditions affect student learning, instruction and school performance. References Akerjordet, K. (2009). An inquiry concerning emotional intelligence and its empirical significance. PhD Diss. Department of Health Studies, University of Stavanger, Norway. Akerjordet, K. & Severinsson, E. (2010). The state of the science of emotional intelligence related to nursing leadership: An integrative review. Journal of Nursing Management, 18, 363-382. Cameron, K. (2012). Positive leadership: Strategies for extraordinary performance. San Francisco, CA: Berret-Koehler. Day, C., Sammons, P., Hopkins, D., Harris, A., Leithwood, K., & Gu, Q. (2009). The impact of school leadership on pupil outcomes: Final report. Nottingham, UK: Department for Children, Schools and Families. Deslandes, R. (2009). Family-school-community partnerships: What have we learned? In R. Deslandes (Ed.), International perspectives on contexts, communities and evaluated innovative practices (pp.162-176). New York: Routledge. Goleman, D., Boyatzis, R., & McKee, A. (2013). Primal leadership: Unleashing the power of emotional intelligence. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press. Jenkins, D. (2011). Redesigning community colleges for completion: Lessons from research on high-performance organizations. CRC Working Paper, 24, 1-44. Leithwood, K., Day, C., Sammons, P., Harris, A., & Hopkins, D. (2006). Seven strong claims about successful school leadership. Nottingham, UK: National College for School Leadership Leithwood, K., Harris, A., & Strauss, T. (2013). How to reach high performance. In M. Grogan (Ed.), The Jossey-Bass Reader on Educational Leadership. New York: Wiley & Son. Murphy, J., Goldring, E., Cravens, X., Elliott, S., & Porter, A. (2011). The Vanderbilt assessment of leadership in education: Measuring learning-centered leadership. Journal of East China Normal University, 29(1), 1-10. Read More