Shaping professional development of educators: The role of school leaders

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the influence of principal leadership on practising teachers’ continuous professional learning. It adopts a qualitative methodology and reviews the findings and recommendations of recently published peer-reviewed journal articles and the occasional international policy report, which explicitly refer to principal leadership and its role in teacher professional learning to enhance student learning. The results of this systematic review suggest that leadership is a crucial element in impactful teacher professional learning. The chapter provides a list of strategies that school leaders can employ to increase the likelihood of more effective teacher professional learning in their schools. Some considerations for principals include adopting a blend of transformational and instructional leadership approaches; building trust and credibility; making the learning of teachers, as well as students, their focused priority and providing a range of support mechanisms to ensure that allocated professional learning delivers improvements in teaching quality and practices that will result in increased student learning outcomes. This chapter adds to the research knowledge that suggests that leadership has an indirect impact on student learning and that teachers’ continuous professional learning must become more effective if it is to deliver the necessary positive growth in student learning.