Schools and Transformational Leadership

Transformational leadership was initially conceptualized by Burns (1978) and further developed by Bass (1985), whereby the debate was mainly on transactional and transformational leadership. Later, Yukl (1989) emphasized on emotions and values, attributed importance to symbolic behaviour, and considered the role of the leader as helping to make events meaningful for followers.

Transformational leadership basically means establishing oneself as a role model by gaining the trust and confidence of the group. According to Judge and Bono (2000), transformational leaders demonstrate qualities that motivate respect and pride from association; they communicate values, purposes and the importance of the organization’s mission; they exhibit optimism and excitement about goals and future states; they examine new perspectives for solving problems and completing tasks; and they focus on development and mentoring of followers and attend to their individual needs (Judge &

Bono, 2000). The concept of transformational leadership was divided into four dimensions later on: charisma or idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation and individualized consideration (Judge and Bono, 2000; Judge and Piccolo, 2004); along with three transactional dimensions – contingency reward and management by exception, both active and passive (Bass and Avolio, 1994).

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Leithwood (1994) strongly associated schools with transformational leadership. He assessed the effects of the dimensions of transformational leadership in schools and from his research, he draws the generalizations that transformational leadership in schools depends on attending all aspects of leadership. School organizations may require unique formulations of transformational leadership with its base being individualized consideration. Transformational leadership usually represents a contingency approach and distinction between management and leadership cannot be made in terms of observed behaviour. He concluded that reasonable robust support exists for the claim that transformational forms of leadership are of significant value in restructuring schools.

Similarly, Silins and Mulford (2002) found that transformational leaders have greater positive effects on schools than transactional leaders.

Transformational Leadership Behaviour

Conceptions of transformational leadership have become increasingly more complex over the last three decades. Transformational leadership behaviours (TLBs) do not often reflect this growing complexity. Leithwood and Jantzi (2005) reviewed studies about transformational leadership between 1996 and 2005 to enlighten the nature of such leadership. Out of the 32 studies reviewed, seven used some version of Bass’s Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ). Leithwood, Jantzi and their colleagues have developed a set of TLBs which largely subsume and extend beyond Bass (Leithwood & Jantzi, 2005); their aim is to better capture the consequences for leaders in school organizations. Eighteen of the 32 studies reviewed reflect this set of TLBs. They reported that five studies show significant positive relationships between transformational leadership and changed teacher practices, yet nine studies are mixed and lean toward the conclusion that transformational school leadership has significant effects on student achievement.

Leithwood and Jantzi (2006) proposed a model for transformational school leadership (TSL) with three broad categories of leadership practices, including a total of nine more specific dimensions of practice:

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• Setting Directions are the dimensions building school vision, developing specific goals and priorities, and holding high performance expectations.

• Developing people are the dimensions providing intellectual stimulation, offering individualized support, and modeling desirable professional practices and values.

• Redesigning the Organization, includes the dimensions developing a collaborative school culture, creating structures to foster participation in school decision, and creating productive community relationships. (p.205)

They use data from a 4-year evaluation of England’s National Literacy and Numeracy Strategies to test the effects of a school-specific model of transformational leadership on teachers (motivation, capacities, and work settings), their classroom practices, and gains in student achievement. Their results show a moderate and significant proportion of the variation in altered teacher practices across schools. Leadership has the strongest effect on work setting (.65 to .79), followed by motivation (.56 to .67) and capacity (.41 to .58).

Their study also reveals significant direct effects on changed classroom practices.

However, their model fails to explain any of the variation in student achievement gains.

Furthermore, Leithwood and Sun (2012) synthesize the results of 79 unpublished studies about the nature of transformational school leadership (TSL) and its impact on the school organization, teachers and students. This corpus of research associates TSL with 11 specific leadership practices, which as a whole, have moderate positive effects on a wide range of consequential school conditions. Considering the 32 studies which examined the effects of TSL as a whole on 17 school conditions, overall effects on aggregate school conditions are moderate, significant and positive (weighted mean r = .44). TSL has large effects on shared goals (.67), working environment (.56), and improved instruction (.55).

TSL had moderate effects on organizational culture (.44) and shared decision making (.36). The findings are in line with Leithwood and Jantzi (2006), they suggest that each TSL leadership practice adds to the status of consequential school conditions. Each school condition is complex and improvement requires leaders to enact a wide range of practices. Leaders influence school conditions through their achievement of a shared vision and agreed-on goals for the organization, their high expectations and support of organizational members, and practices that strengthen school culture and foster

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collaboration within the organization. TSL influences on individual teachers’ internal states are strong (.61). TSL is especially strongly related to perception of leaders’

effectiveness (.82), job satisfaction (.76) and teacher commitment (.70). TSL is also seen to have small but significant, positive effects on student achievement (weighted mean r = .09).

Leithwood and Sun (2012) also show that well developed models of instructional leadership (IL) and TSL approaches have many more similarities than differences. Both IL and TSL create a shared sense of purpose; develop a climate of high expectations;

foster the improvement of teaching and learning; shape reward structure; promote intellectual stimulation and staff development and model values that are being fostered in the school. They believe that more attention by researchers and practitioners needs to be devoted to the impact of specific leadership practices and less to leadership models.

Whatever is the leadership style, all school leaders are subject to a lot of pressure from all stakeholders and from the multitude of tasks they have to attend. Leaders should therefore, be able to manage many things effectively including relationships with students, staff and parents. Such a situation leads to constant mental stress. One important personal trait that helps to manage such a stressful situation is emotional intelligence.

Emotional Intelligence and the Leader

Emotional intelligence (EI) stems from Thorndike’s (1921) work on social intelligence and Gardner’s (1983) work on multiple intelligences. Goleman (1995) defines emotional intelligence as “the capacity for reasoning our own feelings and those of others, for motivating ourselves, and for managing the emotional will in ourselves and in our relationships” (p. xii).

In a study of nearly 4,000 executives and their employees by Hay & McBer (2000), 50%

to 70% of the employees reported that they believed the working climate of the organization was linked to the emotional intelligence of the leader.

There is growing evidence in the research literature that the affective world of school leaders is both complex and intense (Samier and Schmidt, 2009).School leaders are

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confronted on a daily basis with a variety of emotions that are inextricably linked to personal, professional, relational, political, and cultural issues (Zembylas, 2009).

Beatty and Brew (2004) research documents show how mechanisms of emotion management help school leaders promote their own agenda; survive the high emotional demands of school leadership; and bring meaningful changes to their school.

Furthermore, Beatty (2007a, b) shows that school leaders’ handling of the emotions in their own reflective practices and in their relationships with parents, students, and faculty shapes and reflects the climate and culture of their schools. Maulding, Peters, Roberts, Leonard and Sparkman (2012) study the correlation between emotional intelligence and resilience of school leaders. The findings of their study indicate that both emotional intelligence and resilience are significant predictors of leadership from the perspective of self-analysis of administrators whether subjected to quantitative or qualitative analysis.

As a leader’s emotional intelligence and resilience increase, leadership capacity increases. They also concluded that EI grows as we age and that certain aspects of EI can be taught. When coached, leaders can learn to be more calm and assertive and move forward more easily with increased resilience.

Many theoretical arguments support the relationship between EI and effective leadership, specifically transformational leadership (Daus & Ashkanasy, 2005),yet others have noted the disappointing results of intelligence and personality models in the prediction of exceptional leadership and have argued that EI may represent an elusive “X” factor for predicting transformational leadership (Brown & Moshavi, 2005). Others remain entirely skeptical of the validity of the construct of EI itself, much less its role in leadership outcomes (Locke, 2005). In their study Harms and Credé (2010) find a moderate relationship between EI and transformational leadership behaviours in some cases only.

Altogether, their results fail to support some of the more extreme claims of EI proponents concerning the potential role of EI in effective leadership.

While instructional leadership is task-oriented, transformational leadership is people and goal oriented. Therefore, both leadership styles are relevant in order to address the array of school conditions. The school leader should discern what principles to apply in different situations. Therefore, each school can have different leadership predispositions

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based on its needs and aspirations. According to the research as discussed above, there is a significant correlation between transformational leadership and improved instructional climate and practices, but less on student achievement. Nevertheless, considering the school environment in relation to the PLC, probably we can say that transformational leadership paves the way to the PLC while instructional leadership guides the process.

Being a leader of learning is also very relevant to the functioning of the PLC as it supports the learning process.

The Learning Leader

The term ‘learning leader’ is widely associated with Douglas Reeves and his framework for school leadership development. The construct compatible with all kinds of minds approach is one articulated by Hargreaves and Fink based on a report about learning issued in 1996 by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). They argue that being a leader of learning means more than poring over and perseverating on achievement results or finding quick ways to boost the figures or to narrow the gaps.

To build a deep learning foundation and develop the expertise for leading learning into the future, learning leaders must:

• Be passionate advocates for and defenders of deep and broad learning for all students…

• Put learning before testing while promoting assessment for learning…

• Become more knowledgeable about learning…

• Commit to improving old basics of literacy and math but not to the exclusion of everything else, while emphasizing the new basics of creativity…

• Engage students in discussion and decisions about their own learning…

• Create the emotional conditions for learning../ by personalizing learning for every student.

• Become omnipresent witnesses to learning by canalizing and discussing responses to student work.

Hargreaves and Fink (1996)

The learning leader actually concerns all those who are involved in the learning process:

school leaders and teachers. The aim is to create an enabling learning climate and provide learning opportunities to all learners.

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In a school, involving everyone in leadership functions, either in a formal or an informal manner helps to create an enabled environment for learning. It is also an essential prerequisite for the evolution of Professional Learning Communities. So, in this section, we will explore the array of distributed and shared leadership that is, considering leadership in terms of collective capacity instead of focusing on the school leader.

Participative Leadership

The tasks of a school leader are many and diverse and it is difficult for the principal alone to assume all the responsibilities. Sergiovanni (1984) believes that the burdens of leadership will be less if leadership functions and roles are shared and if the concept of leadership density were to emerge as a viable replacement for principal leadership.

Senge (1990), on his part, refers to successful schools as “learning organizations”. He describes the five learning disciplines:

Personal mastery is the practice of articulating a coherent image of your personal vision – the results you most want to create in your life.

Shared vision refers to people with a common purpose (teachers, administrators, and staff of a school). They can learn to nourish a sense of commitment in a group by developing shared images of the future that they seek to create and the principles and guiding practices by which they hope to get there.

Mental models is the discipline of reflection and inquiry skills, focused around developing awareness of attitudes and perceptions of your own and those of others around you.

Team learning is the discipline of group interaction. Through such techniques as dialogue and skillful discussion, the team transforms their collective thinking. They learn to mobilize their energies and actions to achieve common goals and draw forth an intelligence and ability greater than the sum of individual member’s talents.

Systems thinking is when people learn to better understand interdependency and change; and thereby are able to deal more effectively with the forces that shape the consequences of their actions (Senge, 2000. p.7).

Participative leadership is therefore, about how all actors in the school community adopt a particular mindset and put all their energies together to achieve their common goals. All the staff working together has a synergistic effect which leads to more effective schools.

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This is an idealistic view of the school as a learning organization and requires the effort and commitment of everyone.