12 Research-Backed Instructional Leadership Strategies [+ Downloadable Reference]

October 19, 2018

Marcus Guido

What’s instructional leadership?

At its core, instructional leadership aims to improve student learning and teacher effectiveness. As an instructional leader, you can use a number of methods to accomplish these goals. But they typically involve:

Student engagement
Coaching for teachers
Classroom management
Professional development for teachers
Managing schedules and the curriculum
Fundraising, resourcing and budget allocation

Not all strategies are created equal, though. According to a meta-analysis of 30 studies in Viviane Robinson's influential 2011 book Student Centered Leadership, leadership practices differ in terms of impact:

Leadership practice	Effect size (0-1)
Leading teacher learning and development	0.84
Ensuring quality teaching	0.42
Establishing goals and expectations	0.42
Resourcing strategically	0.31
Ensuring an orderly and safe environment	0.27

Throughout this guide, you’ll find strategies that align with the above leadership practices, with particular emphasis on the top three.

1. Sit in classrooms more often

Students sit in a classroom, with raised hands, ready to answer the teacher's questions

To inform the aforementioned leadership practices and specific strategies in this guide, you must visit classrooms more often. Either announced or as a surprise, regularly watching your teachers teach will help you:

Offer corrective feedback
Work with them to create relevant goals
Hold targeted conversations and meetings
Provide professional development opportunities
Find common strengths and weaknesses amongst teachers and students

Furthermore, the National Association of Elementary School Principals (NAESP) strongly recommends sitting in classrooms more often as a way to improve relationships with teachers, by virtue of showing investment in student learning.

2. Give “SBI” feedback

Sitting in classrooms will help you think of corrective feedback, but structuring it can be hard. If this is the case for you, try the Center for Creative Leadership’s “SBI” framework:
Situation
Behavior
Impact
Splitting students into groups for learning stations. The teacher’s instructions about station locations were short and lacked visuals. The students were confused, taking a long time to find the right stations.
Following the framework, your corrective feedback will look like this:While splitting your students up for learning stations on Monday, your instructions were short and didn’t have much visual description. As a result, the students couldn’t find their stations, taking up lots of time.This structure will enable you to deliver specific, actionable feedback. According to an oft-cited 2002 study, such feedback plays a strong role in improving the recipient’s desires for future feedback, coaching and general improvement.
3. Model how to apply feedback
It’s common for teachers to struggle to apply feedback, but you can model best practices to overcome this issue. This isn’t necessarily your teachers’ faults, considering they get constant feedback -- both explicit and implicit -- from you, parents, students and the education world at large. It’s no wonder people generally struggle to process all feedback, determined an authoritative management study. In a professional development session or on a case-by-case basis, consider modeling how to:
Process feedback, recording the situation, behavior and impact for future reference and analysis
Brainstorm, or ask for, a solution that’s relatively easy to apply
Use the solution, reflecting on its effectiveness and considering if a different solution is necessary
With a better understanding of how to apply feedback, your teachers will likely be more receptive to it.
4. Coach based on “will” and “skill”
Just like students, not all teachers require the same kind of instruction. Your one-on-one discussions should be more productive with this in mind. Specifically, instructional leadership author Robyn Jackson writes that a teacher’s needs are largely based on where she falls in this spectrum:
High will/high skill
High will/low skill
Low will/high skill
Low will/low skill
Pinpointing a teacher’s will and skill levels is a first step in identifying appropriate resources for development and informing your approach to ongoing support.
5. Set SMART goals with your teachers
SMART goals are a clear vehicle teachers can use to drive professional development, aligning with Robinson’s most effective leadership practice. These goals are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timebound -- meaning you can apply them to any quantifiable area of teaching and teacher education. For example, a teacher could set a SMART goal such as “Read Student-Centered Leadership, making three take-away points to use in class.”Specific and challenging goals, such as this one above, lead to higher performance than setting easy goals or not having goals, states an oft-cited literature review.You may find that after completing a few, teachers will take more ownership of their learning and development by setting their own.
6. Write reflections
Not just for students, writing reflections -- and asking teachers to do the same -- has many benefits for teacher effectiveness and instructional leadership.For example:
Keeping a journal about how your work helps others can boost productivity, according to a 2012 study about professional fundraising, which found a 29% increase in hourly effort amongst study participants
Writing is essentially the practice of organizing and conveying thoughts; the more practice, the more your communication skills will improve
Recording notes about how to achieve goals and dreams is positively correlated with happiness and strong mental health, according to oft-cited 2001 research
So, finding time to write -- and encouraging teachers to follow suit -- can quickly pay dividends.
7. Reflect and plan as a team
Regularly sharing reflections and planning as a team can inform and empower your teachers.To conclude a defined period in the year -- such as summative assessments -- hold a meeting wherein teachers share reflections about highs and lows. Then, prompt them to share feedback about what they, and administration, could improve for the next defined period of the year. You can take 30 minutes afterwards to write an email to everyone in the meeting, summarizing feedback you received and stating your intention to use it. This kind of regular internal communication positively correlates with employee happiness and engagement, according to a 2015 pilot study from the Queensland University of Technology. Happy and informed teachers, effective instruction.
8. Expand your PLN
A stagnant personal learning network (PLN) inherently restricts your ability to lead teacher development. To consistently cultivate your PLN, try to:
Go to a meetup that BrewCue or a similar organization hosts
Attend workshops and conferences to learn and connect with other principals
Search for groups across social media, such as the Principals and Teachers Network on LinkedIn
Join or browse social media conversations, such as the the weekly #EdChat on Twitter that takes place at 7 pm EST each Tuesday
In doing so, you can establish your own -- or join a defined -- network of principals. Belonging to such a network positively correlates with confidence to improve culture and classroom practices, says a year-long study from the University of California.
9. Encourage culturally-responsive teaching
Especially important for buildings with diverse student bodies, culturally-responsive teaching can play a critical role in engaging and empowering learners. The pedagogy aims to link content -- from delivery to assessment -- with students’ ancestral and contemporary cultures. Consider instructing your teachers about:
Bringing in diverse guest speakers, which effectively motivates students of the same background, according to a 2015 study by the Economics of Education Review
Offering opportunities for peer teaching, which helps students improve knowledge recollection and general social development, states a popular academic book about the subject
Using word problems to personalize and contextualize math equations, which boosted test scores of 7th grade students by more than 44%, according to a 2015 study by the Canadian Center of Science and Education
You can find more explanations of such strategies, and share them with teachers, in this culturally-responsive teaching guide.
10. Implement peer coaching
Instructional leadership may be one of your core duties, but teachers can -- and should -- play a role in supporting your efforts. Peer coaching is one way teachers can play a role. And it’s hands-off for you. Essentially, it involves two similarly-skilled teachers helping one another solve problems and complete tasks, learning throughout the process. Supported by an authoritative academic work about the subject, elements of effective peer coaching include:
Conducting initial meetings with the peers, establishing trust, goals and a meeting schedule between the two
Having a way for each peer to collect and submit data about one another, such as insights and results they’ve noticed
Allowing each peer to review the above data, applying it to future teaching efforts
It’s easy to see how a peer coaching system that follows this framework can quickly improve teacher effectiveness.
11. Promote growth mindset
Teachers can increase the level and frequency of student achievement by instilling a growth mindset, says Carol Dweck -- the Stanford University developmental psychologist who popularized the philosophy. In a nutshell, the pedagogy focuses on helping students understand the values of effort and trying new learning methods. The goal of doing so is to cultivate their talents and abilities.Instilling a growth mindset in your classrooms is challenging, but you can start by instructing teachers about these strategies:
Using diverse approaches -- Exposing students to distinct instructional methods and strategies will help build a repertoire of skills to handle diverse challenges, says Dweck. Typical differentiated instruction strategies are key, as they allow students to develop and sharpen this repertoire.
Encouraging elaboration -- During discussions, asking students to elaborate on their thoughts reveals what they do and don’t understand, encouraging them to process content at deeper levels. This demonstrates a core aspect of growth mindset: Subject matter expertise isn’t inherent, but developed.
Saying “yet” -- The word “yet” can change disparaging sentences into positive ones, promoting growth, says Dweck. For example, “I can’t do long division yet.” “I don’t have the skills to answer this question yet.” When teachers hear negative sentences, they should encourage students to tack on “yet.”
You can find more details and strategies to share with your teachers in this guide to instilling growth mindset.
12. Stay positive
Staying positive is one of the most straightforward -- yet difficult -- aspects of leadership. Establishing a wide sense of optimism is “significantly related to feelings of (employee) empowerment” and general happiness, states an oft-cited 2007 study. As leaders can directly affect an organization, you have the power to instill this sense of optimism -- hope, confidence and the like -- in your teachers. The study’s authors point to the following approaches, which you can model throughout your daily duties:
Goal setting
Resiliency in the face of hardship
Confidence to take on challenges
These approaches certainly relate to actively promoting growth mindset. But you must remember: It starts with you and spreads.
Downloadable print-out
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Final thoughts about instructional leadership
These instructional leadership strategies are largely based on working more closely with teachers than you already do. That likely seems daunting, especially with your workload in other areas. So, start small. Consider dedicating about 10% of a single day, per week, to executing one or two strategies. Then, as this proves effective, devote time to more of the strategies. You’ll likely find yourself growing into a more effective, enthusiastic instructional leader.>> Prodigy is a free game-based learning platform that’s loved by more than 1 million teachers and 30 million students. Aligned with math curricula across the English-speaking world, it’s engaging and easy to use. If you’d like a personalized demo of Prodigy tailored to your school or district, fill out the form through the button below:

Situation	Behavior	Impact
Splitting students into groups for learning stations.	The teacher’s instructions about station locations were short and lacked visuals.	The students were confused, taking a long time to find the right stations.