An Instructional Leadership Model For Senior High Schools: The Student Perspective

Traditionally, researchers define instructional leadership through the traits, behaviors and processes a person needs to lead a school effectively. Thus, a multitude of conceptual models that demonstrate instructional leadership exist. These models-were developed from examining the instructional leadership behaviors of elementary principals by collecting data from principals or school staffs. The general purpose of this research was to develop a new instructional leadership model with at least the following three different features. First, it defines the instructional leadership as a distributed leadership. The behaviors of instructional leadership in a school are not only the behaviors of the principal but also that of school staffs. Second, it specifically refers to instructional leadership of senior high schools. Third, it grounds on the base of qualitative data collected from senior high school students. These qualitative data consist of two parts:data from personal documents of excellent senior high school graduates that record their reminiscences of their learning in senior high schools and that via indirect semi-structured interviews with senior high school students. All these data are narratives of students that describe activities the principals and teachers engaged in to enable their learning by supporting the curriculum and instruction and developing an instructional climate in their schools.After reviewing and synthesizing the literature on instructional leadership, a framework and dimensions of instructional leadership emerged. The three pivotal dimensions of the instructional leadership model are instructional goals, curriculum 'n'instruction and instructional climate. These dimensions indicate the importance of instructional leader's defining instructional goals based upon student learning goals, supporting the curriculum'n'instruction to fit the needs of student learning and promoting a positive school learning climate to emphasize high student expectations and their achievement levels.Based on these dimensions of instructional leadership, data from personal documents of 66 excellent senior high school graduates in a sample of 2 senior high schools and via indirect semi-structured interviews with 164 students in a sample of 6 senior high schools were collected. By coding and analyzing data from graduates, an instructional leadership model was developed for senior high schools with three dimensions each of which has four second-order codes. It was then explained by coding and analyzing data accessed via indirect semi-structured interviews with senior high school students. After doing a comparison between the perceptions of senior high school graduates and that of senior high school students about instructional leadership behaviors, the model was modified. Finally, the modified model was qualitatively tested by some practical cases with instructional leadership behaviors in some excellent senior high schools.The model implies that we should emphasize the importance of enhancing the level of student learning goals by cultivating their aspirations, curiosities and interests and that student learning with high level of goals needs flexible and autonomous curriculum 'n' instruction and optimistic instructional climate. Finally, these findings lead to a cultural perspective of instructional leadership.The findings of the current research are based upon qualitative data from students. The reliability of these data was tested by calculating the Kendall coefficient of concordance.The dissertation is composed of five chapters. Chapterâ… mainly includes five related research questions. In chapterâ…¡, literature was reviewed by focusing on instructional leadership, school structure, school culture and student learning. In chapterâ…¢, the sampling, data collection procedures, coding, and data analysis methods were described. Chapterâ…£presents the results for the current study. It begins with a description of instructional leadership model for senior high schools. Next, the model was modified. Finally, it was tested by some cases. Chapterâ…¤begins with a summary of the findings, and is followed by an in-depth discussion of the created instructional leadership model for senior high schools. This chapter concludes with the theoretical, practical, and research implications of the study and answers to our five research questions, and ends with questions for future research.