Indonesia Conference Directory

How leadership influences student learning Effective education leadership makes a difference in improving learning. There-s nothing new or especially controversial about that idea. What-s far less clear, even after several decades of school renewal efforts, is just how leadership matters, how important those effects are in promoting the learning of all children, and what the essential ingredients of successful leadership are. Lacking solid evidence to answer these questions, those who have sought to make the case for greater attention and investment in leadership as a pathway for large-scale education improvement have had to rely more on faith than fact. All current school reform efforts aim to improve teaching and learning. But there are huge differences in how they go about it. Some reforms, for example, attempt to improve all schools in a district, state or country at the same time. Other reform attempt to influence the overall approach to teaching and learning within a school, but do so one school at a time. Still others, focused on innovative curricula (in science and mathematics, for example), typically address one part of a school-s program and aim for widespread implementation, while innovative approaches to instruction, such as cooperative learning, hope to change teachers- practices one teacher at a time. As different as these approaches to school reform are, however, they all depend for their success on the motivations and capacities of local leadership. The chance of any reform improving student learning is remote unless district and school leaders agree with its purposes and appreciate what is required to make it work. Local leaders must also, for example, be able to help their colleagues understand how the externally-initiated reform might be integrated into local improvement efforts, provide the necessary supports for those whose practices must change and must win the cooperation and support of parents and others in the local community. So “effective” or “successful” leadership is critical to school reform. This is why we need to know what it looks like and understand a great deal more about how it works.