School Leadership in Support of Teachers' Learning: The Dramatic Differences That Financial Resources Make

Abstract

This article reports creative initiatives that 25 U.S. principals employed to support teacher learning in light of their financial resources. Nearly 90 hours of interviews with principals and 60 documents were coded to create narrative summaries and build profiles of how financial resources influenced how the school leaders supported teacher learning. All of the leaders worked creatively with the resources at hand to enhance teacher learning. Our research highlights that the best options are context specific and that shorter-term initiatives are insufficient. This report offers concrete examples, such as grantwriting and local partnerships, for working within financial constraints to support teacher learning.

A portion of this article was presented by the first author at the annual meeting of the American Educational Researchers Association, April 2002, New Orleans, Louisiana. The research described in this article was funded partially by a Spencer Research Grant.

This research was made possible, in part, by a grant from the Spencer Foundation. I, the first author, gratefully acknowledge the Spencer Foundation for their valuable support. The data presented, the statements made, and the views expressed are solely the responsibility of the authors. We offer deep gratitude to the 25 generous school leaders who participated in this research. They opened their hearts and minds so that we could learn from their noble work, care, and dedication. We are grateful to each of them for the privilege of learning from them and their leadership. We offer sincerest gratitude to Professor Ira Bogotch, whose thoughtful and wise suggestions have made this work much stronger.

Notes

1. Sparks and Loucks-Horsley (1990) identified five distinct models of staff development. Drago-Severson's (1994, 1996, 2004) reviews of staff development elsewhere focused on the developmental demands embedded in these models as well as the different types of supports and challenges teachers need to engage effectively with the models.