Instructional leadership: The role of
promoting teaching and learning
EMASA Conference 2011 Presentation
Mathakga Botha
Wits school of Education
Agenda
• Background
• Roles of instructional leadership
• Use of assessment data to improve teaching
and learning
• framework for data-driven decision making
• Creation of professional learning communities
• Action to initiate change in schools
Roles of instructional leadership
• share a common vision and goals to bring about
change
• have a key role to play in increasing the performance of
pedagogical leadership practice in their schools
• focus on activities maximising learning outcomes and
learner performance
• Leadership engage the whole school in conversations
concerning meaningful use of assessment data
• use of data for inquiry and decision making
• to create professional learning communities and
encourage participation and leadership
Use of data to improve teaching
and learning
• a tool to enable school leaders and teachers to implement
change in schools
• promote a culture of high standards and the use of
appropriate assessment for improving learning
• to use data to understand where learners are academically
• to establish improvement plans that are targeted
• effective when teacher decisions about instructional
effectiveness are based on assessments of learners’ actual
proficiencies in various skill areas
• understand and use of a continuum from data to information,
to building knowledge
Framework for Data-Driven decision making
INFORMATION
Decision
Prioritize
KNOWLEDGE
Summarize
Synthesize
DATA
Implement
Analyze
Organize
feed-back
Collect
feed-back
feed-back
Impact
Challenges of using data
• problems with the format of the data
• schools have difficulty analysing and
interpreting data
• teachers not using relevant educational
questions to enable them analyse data
• data not used to understand how learners
think
• schools having difficulties making linkages
between data and improvement strategies.
Professional Learning Communities to
promote teaching and learning
• all educators to engage in collaborative
discussions
• shift in schools thinking and the structure of
their professional development
• allows school leadership and teachers to
communicate and share their classroom
encounters
• understand issues that need intervention to
improve learner achievement
Challenges of professional learning
communities
• vague understanding of a community’s depth
of ‘shared beliefs’, ‘interdependency’, and
‘meaningful relationships’
• existence of competing tensions
uncomfortable
• critical nature of the communal learning
challenging and ambiguous work
• Teachers’ lack understanding of the nature of
the interdependence required
School leadership action to initiate
change in schools
• Encourage collaboration towards promoting
effective teaching and learning;
• provide a school culture that aims for high
standards of achievement;
• have common beliefs about reform to improve
learner achievement;
• create capacity building that provides consistency
and focuses collectively on learner problems, to
find solutions;
• share teaching practices to promote higher
standards of learning.