Supporting school leaders to become more effective in leading reading improvements

ABSTRACT

This article discusses the impact of a professional learning activity called the Principals as Literacy Leaders (PALL) program on the capacity of school leaders to engage, involve, and support teachers and their school communities to develop a shared moral purpose for making their school more effective in assisting students to become more able readers. It uses data collected from participants in the PALL program together with case study data collected from five Tasmanian schools to analyse the actions by school leaders to develop a shared moral purpose related to facilitating higher levels of student learning in reading. The study shows that school leaders felt more capable in their ability to lead their schools after completing the program and that the development of a shared moral purpose led to improved teaching practices and higher levels of student engagement, students’ ability to talk about their learning, and better achievement in reading.

KEYWORDS:

• Principals as Literacy Leaders
• leading literacy learning
• learning to read
• teacher practices
• case study research

Acknowledgements

The data discussed in this article are from a larger research project funded by the Tasmanian Department of Education and managed by the Griffith Institute for Educational Research at Griffith University. The authors thank both organisations for their support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 In the pilot research of PALL (Dempster et al., 2011), the eight dimensions of the LLLB came from the seven dimensions that were measured, together with the combined score for Shared Moral Purpose and Strong Evidence base, because strong evidence of student learning was seen as the tool used to create discussions about shared moral purpose. However, in later research (including the current research) only the seven items were used for analysis.

Additional information

Funding

The data discussed in this article are from a larger research project conducted in Tasmania, Australia, and funded by the Tasmanian Department of Education.

Notes on contributors

Tony Townsend

Tony Townsend is currently an adjunct professor at Griffith University and previously worked at Monash University, Griffith University, and the University of Tasmania in Australia, Florida Atlantic University in the United States, and the University of Glasgow in the UK. He has published 12 books and numerous articles, chapters, and papers, in the areas of leadership, school effectiveness, and school improvement. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tony-townsend-8089181a/

Anne Bayetto

Anne Bayetto is a lecturer in special education at Flinders University in South Australia, where she teaches undergraduate and postgraduate topics focused on school students with literacy and/or numeracy difficulties. She has previously been a mainstream and special class teacher, adaptive education teacher, and a district-wide disability support coordinator.